Why you should respond to Windows 8

Over on his Clear & Simple blog, my buddy Steve Fogg has a great post, “7 Great Church Websites That Have Responsive Design.” It’s a great post with some good examples of some church websites, both local and overseas, that use responsive design to great effect.

Australian Surface Pricing

In the early hours of this morning (Australian time), Microsoft announced it much anticipated Surface pricing and opened pre-orders. There has been a lot of excitement around Surface since Microsoft announced it back in June, so when there was news that pricing would be released, many of us techos waited with baited breath.

One thing that we’ve (begrudgingly) gotten used to here in Australia, is what we’ve come to know as the “Australia Tax”. That being, despite a very strong Australian Dollar, tech companies love to charge us more for our gadgets (surely it costs about the same, or even less, to ship containers from China to Australian as it does to the US). As of writing, 1AUD can buy 1.0266USD, so surely that should mean that we should pay less (in dollar for dollar terms) for a Surface in Australia than in the US? Well, no apparently.

Here’s a quick price breakdown for the base unit
(Surface for Windows RT, 32GB, no Touch Cover)

Store	Local Price	Converted Price
US	499USD	486.07AUD
Australia	559AUD	573.87USD

So, by my reckoning we’re paying $72.93 more just because we live in Australia.

Anyway, it’s not all bad news. Back in June, Microsoft said that the surface would be competitively priced against other tablets on the market (no second guess for what “other tablets” they were talking about). In fact it stacks up quite nicely. Take a look… http://sdrv.ms/SZc6qm