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Japan gets 256GB Surface Pro with Office 2013 for free

by Mark Tyson on 29 May 2013, 14:21

Tags: Surface

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The Surface Pro is to be launched in Japan on 7th June which is relatively late compared to many other territories but the land of the rising sun gets quite a few added bonuses as consolation. The Surface Pro in Japan will be available with storage capacities of both 128GB and 256GB. Buyers will get a free pre-installed copy of Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business. Also some unique touch cover designs are to be made available for Japanese consumers.

Price matters

First let us have a look at the prices compared to the UK. The UK Surface Pro 64GB costs £719 direct from the Microsoft online store. Japanese customers won’t be offered such an SKU. The UK Surface Pro with 128GB of fixed storage costs £799. In Japan this model will cost ¥99,800 which converts to around £650 today. Japan’s Surface Pro with 256GB of fixed storage is listed at ¥119,800 which converts to around £780.

The additional storage will be very welcome, especially to users who might want to use the Surface Pro as their primary computing device. Being short of storage was a criticism of both the Surface RT and Pro versions released in other territories. The Microsoft GB Surface information pages still contain a ‘warning’ of sorts spelling out how little user storage is available on a new machine.

Having a full version of Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business bundled in Japan is also a very nice carrot to would-be buyers. In the UK buyers are given the option on the order page to buy Office 365 Home Premium for £60 (including a £20 discount special offer for first year).

The Japanese market will also have a new range of custom touch covers made available, designed by popular local artists. You can see an initial trio of designs pictured below.

Surface 2 models are coming soon anyway

With rumours of a completely new line of Surface computers set to be revealed in June these Japanese market upgrades to the original line might not be so interesting to buyers in the US, for example. The new Surface computers are reckoned to include smaller screened versions and, being revealed at Microsoft’s Build Developer Conference at the end of June, should benefit from newer Intel Haswell processors which will have been launched by then.



HEXUS Forums :: 20 Comments

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So, unless I misread that, Japan gets a version of Office included free, permanently. We get a £20 discount of Office 365 which, first, we're still asked to pay for, and second, asked to pay again, every year.

Gee thanks, MS. Don't do us any more favours, will you?

Me = underwhelmed.

Oh, and I wonder is this is “free” in the sense that BMW tried to sell me a new version of my car a few years back, telling me that air conditioning was now “free” …. but that the car was £5k dearer than mine. And in that case, completely ignoring the fact that I didn't even want the air-con anyway. It stopped me buying the new car.
Office 2013 was free at launch in UK too for the RT, but only home and student, not commercial. It's nice they are giving it free for commercial too now.

Hexus have made a boo-boo on this thou, What you're confusing here is the nomculture, which is so incredibly brilliantly helpful. It has “Home” but not “Home Premium”, iirc, thats Outlook, Access and Publisher missing.

I'm guessing this is what is going on in Japan. My question is why only let them have the 256gb one! Is it all those extended UTF-8 chars?!
A cheaper and higher capacity Surface, and a Ghost in the Shell keyboard? Maybe I should import.

Oh, wait, it's Arise. No then.
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ja-jp

Here's a link that says “Office Home & Business 2013” comes as standard.
mtyson
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ja-jp

Here's a link that says “Office Home & Business 2013” comes as standard.
Yeah, NOT the premium one.

Hexus
In the UK buyers are given the option on the order page to buy Office 365 Home Premium for £60 (including a £20 discount special offer for first year).

People are confusing this, to mean it doesn't come with office. It does, they both do.