Surface, The Microsoft Tablet-PC: Fail?

Updates

December 11, 2012: update on the Surface --

“The public reaction to Surface has been exciting to see. We’ve increased production and are expanding the ways in which customers can interact with, experience and purchase Surface,” Microsoft Surface general manager Panos Panay said in a news release.

All well and good. Unless you read this piece from Dealnews, which cited a report that Surface sales are well below expectations: 

"According to estimates from Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, Microsoft is on track to sell between 500,000 to 600,000 Surface RT tablets in the December quarter — far below its expected sales of 2 to 3 million."

The Dealnews story noted that part of the problem might be the limited availability of the Surface, which it seems Microsoft is on its way to addressing with its Tuesday announcement. 

The other issue remains price, according to Dealnews: "And at a time when $199 mainstream tablets are becoming the norm, the Surface RT's high $499 price tag is undoubtedly hurting it."

November 30, 2012: PC or Apple in the corporate world?

• GE moving to Apple, WSJ, January 18, 2012
• Ratio of PCs to Macs sold at levels not seen since the 1990s, BusinessInsider, July 3, 2012
• Apple as the last hope for PC growth in the business place, NY Times, September 10, 2012
• Apple has quietly become the gold standard for computing in the US military; too many sources to link, personal observation after 30 years in the US Air Force; but here is one CNN link
• The movie industry and graphic-based businesses (like advertisers) "all" use Mac OS, LinedIn.com
• I experienced a personal epiphany in 1993, when taking a by-name-invitational tour of the control tower at the Frankfurt (Germany) International Airport: the graphics were all Apple/Mac; the Brits and the Europeans moved to Apple/Mac well before the Americans for creative work; mundane office computing, yes, goes to the PC

November 30, 2012: from a comment at MacRumors.com regarding memory for the Surface:

If it turns out that the Pro starts at 64gb cause that full version of Windows needs 32gb plus the 16gb that Metro needs ...

November 30, 2012: Windows 8 gets a slow start, WSJ. 

While the bulk of the holiday selling season is still ahead, "clearly, Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD.

November 30, 2012:  The major selling point for the tablet: a) light, compact; b) long battery life. Additional plus: few slots; folks were being weaned from attaching printers, fax machines, hard drives, etc., to their mobile device. The bed may not be the #1 place where one finds an iPad, but it's high on the list. The Surface Pro: a) clunky; b) short battery life; c) being seen more as a computer than a tablet. So, we're moving back to a laptop?  People see it as something for the workplace, not for fun. The iPad is fun.


November 30, 2012: the bad news for Microsoft Surface continues. From MacRumors.com:

The RT version of the Surface officially has an eight hour battery life with some testers finding slightly longer running times, implying that the Surface Pro will feature a battery life of roughly four-and-a-half hours, less than most laptops. This low battery life information comes at a time when Microsoft is seeing poor sales of the Surface RT. A report on Black Friday from Piper Jaffray revealed that the brick and mortar Microsoft stores experienced low Surface sales in comparison to iPad sales at the Apple Store.

There was 47% less foot traffic at the Microsoft (MSFT) outlet than the Apple (AAPL) store. Shoppers bought 17.2 items per hour at the Apple Store and only 3.5 items per hour at the Microsoft Store. All but two of the Microsoft purchases were X-Box games. Shoppers at the Apple Store bought an average of 11 iPads per hour. Despite heavy TV, print and billboard advertising for the new Microsoft Surface tablet, not one was sold sold during the two hours Piper Jaffray spent monitoring that store. Doesn’t bode well for Microsoft’s answer to the iPad.

Original Post

Perhaps it's too early to tell, but from MacRumors.com:

A recent report from Digitimes indicates that Microsoft has reduced its tablet orders and may consider lowering the price of the Surface RT.

The upstream supply chain of Microsoft’s Surface RT has recently seen the tablet’s orders reduced by half, and with other Windows RT-based tablet orders also seeing weak performance, sources from the upstream supply chain believe the new operating system may not perform as well as expected in the market. Microsoft originally expected to ship four million Surface RT devices by the end of 2012, but has recently reduced the orders by half to only two million units. The sources also noted that Microsoft may consider reducing its Surface Pro price to attract more consumers; however, such a decision may put the already awkward relationship between the software giant and notebook vendors in an even worse situation.

The Surface RT is currently available from Microsoft for $499 for the entry level 32GB tablet. 

The Surface Pro will soon be released also; comparing the two. 

By the way, does anyone know what "RT" stands for in Surface RT? I did not and I follow this stuff fairly closely. But here's the answer:

With the launch of the Microsoft Surface, the first computer the company has ever made, comes the launch of the newest flavor of its Windows 8 operating system, Windows RT. And as shoppers eye up the impressive-but-complicated new product, one question is likely to be asked thousands of times in the coming weeks: what does “RT” mean?

Short answer: Nothing, officially. 

Longer answer: Something, kind of.

In Windows 8, software developers wanting to build programs for the system use a set of tools known as Windows Runtime, abbreviated to WinRT (this is, remember, not the same thing as Windows RT). WinRT lets developers create software that can run both on traditional computers that use the kind of processors made by Intel and AMD — basically all the laptops and desktops in the world today — as well as on devices running on chips based on a different framework, ARM, which are common in mobile phones and tablet computers.

Fail? Go to the links. At MacRumors (the first link above), be sure to read the comments.

Oh, by the way, that linked article comparing the Surface RT with Surface Pro fails to mention that the battery life of the Surface Pro is about four, maybe five hours. Compare that with ten hours for the Surface RT and at least ten hours for the Apple iPad. 

Remember That Rumor About A Whiting Buyout?

Link here to ZeroHedge -- a huge thank you to "anon 1" for finding this.

This is the WSJ story.

MDW noted it (back on September 13/14, 2012).

Another About Ready To Bite The Dust? Fisker Idles Production

Link here to Reuters.

Fisker Automotive Inc said on Thursday that it has temporarily idled production of its Karma plug-in hybrid after its lithium-ion battery supplier A123 Systems Inc cut its output.

A123, which is the sole battery supplier for the Karma, slowed production after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher said.

Fisker has enough lithium-ion batteries on hand in case an owner needs a replacement, Ormisher said. The company expects to have clarity on its battery inventory after December 6, when an auction to sell A123 is scheduled.

How many replacement batteries would one owner need?

This Is Absolutely Not About The Bakken

Updates

December 18, 2012: by the way, about that Antarctic ice melting in the original post. Breaking news;

In an interesting twist on the issue, British researchers last year [undated] published an article in the peer reviewed scientific journal Nature showing how volcanic activity may be contributing to the melting of ice caps in Antarctica—but not because of any emissions, natural or man-made, per se. Instead, scientists Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey believe that volcanoes underneath Antarctica may be melting the continent’s ice sheets from below.

And so it goes. Something tells me this won't be added to Al's PowerPoint presentation.


November 30, 2012: wow, this very same story was picked up by WSJ. And placed on page 3 of the first section as the only story .

This is quite amazing. Last night I posted the "original post" below and came up with a figure of 0.47 inches which I rounded one-half inch (see below -- over 20 years the oceans have risen exactly 0.47 inches). Smack dab in the middle of this WSJ story is a graph -- and there it is: 12 millimeters (0.47 inches). I.N.C.R.E.D.I.B.L.E.

Again, buried near the end of the article:

The latest findings show that the rate of ice loss in Greenland has increased almost fivefold since the mid-1990s, while Antarctica overall has been losing relatively small amounts of ice at a more or less constant rate.

"Antarctica is so cold that even if warming occurs it won't melt" at the rate seen in Greenland, said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and a co-author of the new paper.

One tricky question is whether the overall accelerated melting of the ice sheets can be linked to man-made climate change.

The shrinkage of the permanent ice sheets can't entirely be explained by any of the decades-long or century-long natural shifts in climate cycles, according to Prof. Shepherd. 

And remember: the Antarctic accounts for 90% of the earth's frozen water. 

So bottom line:

• 90% of earth's frozen water is in Antarctic and that ain't gonna melt
• scientists agree: tricky question -- whether accelerated melting up north is anthropogenic
• scientists agree: the shrinkage of ice sheets cannot be entirely explained by any of the natural shift if climate cycles
• the polar bears are thriving
• the north polar ice cap is melting just in time for oil companies to start drilling
• a northwest passage to the Orient may yet appear
• the WSJ and I come to the same conclusion: in the last 20 years, the oceans have risen 0.47 inch if one trusts the data; it could be worse. It could be 0.49 inch

Original Post

From the LA Times:

The loss of ice covering Greenland and Antarctica has accelerated over the last 20 years,...

The study, published Thursday by the journal Science, comes weeks after Hurricane Sandy’s destruction of coastal communities in New York and New Jersey starkly highlighted the risks posed by sea level rise, especially during storm surges. [We're talking 12 millimeters here -- see below -- or one-half inch.]

Sea level has risen an average of 3 millimeters a year since 1992, but the effect is cumulative and accelerating, Abraham said.

Since 1800 A.D., or so, the oceans have risen 8 inches, according to the linked article. [Don't ask me to compare inches and millimeters; I'm not sure why the spokesman mixed inches and millimeters. Let's just stick with one or the other.]

Ice sheet melting accounts for 20% of ocean level rise since 1992.

The oceans have risen an average of 3 millimeters / year since 1992. That's from the linked article. Three millimeters.

 Twenty percent of 3 mm --> 0.6 mm.

Some years ago, I put a popsicle stick in the sand at Cabrillo Beach, San Pedro, California, to measure the rising ocean. I marked the stick in one (1) millimeter hash marks. Unfortunately, I used water-soluble ink. My experiment gone awry. But I digress.

0.6 mm/year. Reproducible? Hardly. Statistically significant? Unlikely.

0.6 mm / year. But this is the scary part, from the linked article:

“Most people think they don’t have to worry about it, because it’s just a few millimeters,” he said. “But every inch we get makes a storm surge worse.”

Look at Hurricane Sandy. 

By the way, the year "1992" was picked for a very good reason. That was the year Al Gore was named Bill Clinton's running mate; by that time he had already warned us of the global warming disaster awaiting us. I find it incredible that the ocean started rising that same year. And to think that in 1992 the oceans were at their pre-ordained, perfect, level, as set by the Intelligent Designer.

What frustrates me is that "we" had 20 years to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. Just having generators on top of high-rise buildings instead of in basements would have been a start. And pre-positioning FEMA trailers a bit more inland.

Wells Coming Off Confidential List Friday; Almost 30K In First Month -- Hess Nelson in Hawkeye

RBN Energy: good year for the barges. This should be interesting.

Active rigs: 182

Wells coming off the confidential list:

• 22068, 567, Liberty Resources, Sylte 156-101-15-22-1H, Tyrone, t6/12; cum 49K 9/12;
• 22397, 149, Hess, EN-Dakota S-155-94-211609H-5, Manitou, t10/12; cum --
• 22754, 2,324, BR, Iron Horse 31-2TFH, Union Center, t11/12; cum --
• 22982, 868, Hess, HA-Nelson A-152-95-3427H-2, Hawkeye, t9/12; cum 29K 9/12;

Fourteen (14) New Permits

Bakken Operations

Active rigs: 182 (sort of steady, but decreasing, one above all-time post-high low of 181)

New permits --

• Operators: Petro-Hunt (6), Newfield (3), G3 Operating (2), True Oil, SM Energy, OXY USA
• Fields: Snow (Billings), Siverston (McKenzie), Red Wing Creek (McKenzie), Tobacco Garden (McKenzie), Clear Creek (McKenzie), Climax (Williams)
• Comments: Wow, there hasn't been a well drilled in Snow oil field since the early 90's and both of those are now abandoned; Snow oil field is a 6-section field about 15 miles northwest of Dickinson; in/near Whiting's Pronghorn sand prospect;

Wells coming off confidential list were reported earlier; see sidebar at the right.

Producing wells completed:

• 23537, 1,168, Whiting, Amber Elizabeth 9-4H, Hay Creek, t10/12; cum --

A Note to the Granddaughters

Some years ago I was in my JRR Tolkien phase, reading everything I could about him, his philology, and his masterpiece.  While writing the post above, "JRR Tolkien" flashed in front of me for some reason, and thus the embed:

Soundtrack, Lord of the Rings
Our older granddaughter will get a kick out of the narrative and the music at 39:10; her instrument is the ... flute.

Now The Hobbit.

The Hobbit is a series of films. The first is due to open soon in the United States; I believe it has already opened in New Zealand. The second and third films will open in 2013 and 2014.

Corporate Updates -- Links

Don sent me the latest PDFs/webcasts/etc. I haven't looked at them. Will post them now for later review. (I don't even know if the links will work; if not, let me know, and I will see if I can fix them.)

AXAS
KOG
CLR
TPLM

By the way, I hear the UN voted statehood status for Palestine. I was out bicycling and missed the news. Does anyone know how Ms Rice voted?

Current NOG Presentation

Link will take you to a PDF.

Three things jumped out at me:

a) able to update net acres for many companies; first time to see Slawson net acreage (>100,000 acres); probably there before but never paid attention; updated "FAQs." Biggest discrepancy: acreage for Hess.

b) 191 rigs in ND; NOG has working interest in 182 rigs; pretty impressive, if I understood the graphic correctly.

c) margin for OAS and NOG: $60 to $61 /bbl.

Fiscal Cliff

Correct me if I'm wrong, but generally we're only hearing about the tax cuts that will expire on December 31, 2012.

I haven't heard much talk about the automatic spending cuts that will take effect, beginning January 1, 2013 if no budget plan is reached.

There has to be a reason we're not hearing about the automatic cuts.

Sequestration will hit California particularly hard, Victor Valley Daily Press.

California will be hit hard by sequestration, the automatic spending cuts in the federal budget set to go into effect Jan.1 unless Congress agrees on a plan by year end to reduce the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion, according to a study by an private economic development council.  

If sequestration goes forward, combined with the earlier mandated cuts to the Department of Defense, the state will lose 336,000 defense-related jobs, $21 billion in economic output and $6.9 billion in personal earnings over the next eight years, according the Southern California Leadership Council and the Southwest Defense Alliance. 

Sequestration will account for 136,000 of these lost jobs, $7.5 billion in reduced economic output and $2.4 billion in lower personal earnings, the study revealed.
Sequestration calls for $1.2 trillion in spending reductions from fiscal years 2013 through 2021 from both defense and non-defense departments. 

However, defense spending will be disproportionately affected. The Department of Defense accounts for 19 percent of the federal budget but is slated to take 50 percent of the required sequestration cuts, meaning that the Pentagon must cut $492 billion in military spending over the next 10 years. This is on top of the $487 billion already set to be cut from the defense budget over the same decade.

Small Union Shuts Down LA Ports -- 40% of The Nation's Import Trade

Updates

December 7, 2012: after 2015, it's going to be more difficult for longshoremen at the LA Port / Long Beach Port to hold their employees hostage. Read the story at the link to see what this is all about:

Savannah’s rise was fueled by competitors’ misfortune when a 2002 West Coast dock strike -- more sweeping than the just- ended walkout at Los Angeles/Long Beach -- spurred customers to divert traffic to other eastern ports. Savannah’s volume surged 32 percent in 2003.

“Economists anticipated it would drop off after the West Coast reopened, but the next year it grew even more,” Siplon said. “Here was this sleepy little port, and shippers realized they got all their boxes through. It was a big testing point for Savannah and they passed and haven’t looked back.”

December 4, 2012: Seventeen ships have been diverted to other ports since the strike began. One port that loves the business: Ensenada, Mexico. 

The Southern California strike ended its first week Monday, with negotiations continuing but no signs of an immediate resolution.

The strike by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit, which handles paperwork for incoming and outgoing ships, has crippled the nation's two busiest cargo ports.

The union won't accept a salary offer of $195,000, up from their current salary of $165,000.  Other unions have honored the strike.  Two words: Economic.Suicide.

Original Post

Link here to LA Times.

A judge ordered the union back to work but the union refused.

During the past several years there has been a move for shippers to find alternate ports. This could hasten those efforts. I haven't heard much about the huge new Mexican port lately.

"The danger here is that this could call into question the reliability of the San Pedro Harbor ports," O'Connell said. "The Wal-Marts and the Home Depots may be forced to think twice about relying on these ports as their primary gateway."

The San Pedro Harbor ports are the Los Angeles Port and the Long Beach Port.

From an old 2008 LA Times story:

Mexico's government is preparing to open bidding on the largest infrastructure project in the nation's history, a $4-billion seaport that could transform this farming village into a cargo hub to rival the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

If completed as planned by 2014, the port would be the linchpin of a new shipping route linking the Pacific Ocean to America's heartland. Vessels bearing shipping containers from Asia would offload them here on Mexico's Baja peninsula, about 150 miles south of Tijuana, where they would be whisked over newly constructed rail lines to the United States.

My hunch: the strike will not last long. 

Did Oil Just Jump Almost $7.00? Yahoo Error?

I often forget to look at price of oil, especially when it drops below $90, but I just checked Yahoo. Is that correct: up $6.76 (7.82%)?

Fastest way to confirm: check share price of ... let's pick one ... CLR: up 2%; EOG: up 1%.
Majors not moving much at all.

Now oil is back to a more reasonable jump, up $2.00. Yahoo has been really acting strangely with regard to its oil price crawler this past couple of weeks. For several days it did not move at all, and then today, extremely wide moves.

Random Update of North Dakota Wells on Confidential Status

Disclaimer: numbers could be in error; done pretty quickly; but probably pretty close.

Wells on confidential status:

• November 29, 2012: 2,117
• November 20, 2012: 2,049
• October 11, 2012: 1,872

EOG wells on confidential status:

• November 29, 2012: 28
• January 17, 2011: 66
• March 14, 2010: 39
• February 5, 2010: 54
• January 24, 2010: 60
• December 11, 2009: 83
• October 20, 2009: 79 

Other selected operators:

• Baytex: 11
• BEXP: 204
• Burlington Resources: 102
• CLR: 271
• Hess: 190
• KOG: 97
• OAS: 39
• XTO: 77
• Whiting: 51

Wow, This Says It All -- Detroit Unnerved By Fiscal Cliff; Government Motors Sees No Need To Plan For Fiscal Cliff; Ford Plans

Updates

December 4, 2012: GM getting ready to idle plants due to excess inventory.

December 3, 2012: GM truck inventory up to 140 days; healthy number -- 70 days.


November 29, 2012: this is not an update to the story below. But the story brings back wonderful memories. General Motors is bringing the Chevy SS back to market.

The SS replaces the Chevy Impala as GM's race car in NASCAR.

Chevy has long used the SS (Super Sport) designation on high-performance models. It first appeared in 1957 on a Corvette prototype race car, and the fist production vehicle with an SS option package was the 1961 Impala. The SS designation returned to the Chevy lineup in 2010 with the debut of the fifth-generation Camaro.

The first car I ever owned was a 1973 Chevy Nova SS. One of the best cars I ever had.  I had to sell when the Air Force assigned us overseas back in 1983.

Original Post

Link here to Bloomberg.

Ford Motor Co., the second-largest U.S. automaker, is making contingency plans should the nation’s economy falter if President Barack Obama and Congress go over the fiscal cliff. Its main domestic rivals aren’t.

The looming fiscal cliff has Detroit unnerved. Just as the auto recovery picks up speed, the administration that saved the industry now could bring it to a screeching halt. Auto demand would plunge as much as 20 percent if Washington can’t find a solution to avoid a lethal combination of tax hikes and spending cuts coming at the end of the year, said Lacey Plache, chief economist of auto researcher Edmunds.com.

General Motors Co. isn’t making specific contingency plans ,...

I can't make this up. Verbatim cut and paste from Bloomberg.