Debunking the Chris Pirillo’s Negative Surface Review Video
Someone sent me today a link to Chris Pirillo’s YouTube page comparing MS Surface with the iPad shown below:
Chris as usual was negative about MS product and recommends people not buy the Surface, he based his argument on the browser test he did at the Peacekeeper browser test page of Futuremark. Naturally I was curious about his comparison. I also have a tablet, a Core i5 x86 tablet that smokes an iPad in terms of performance with the following specification:
So I went to the Peacekeeper browser test page and did a test of my system. You can imagine my surprise when it came back with the following result:
You are telling me an ARM tablet called iPad is faster in performance than a Core i5 x86 device? Are you kidding me? Of course, there is no knowledgeable soul on earth that will believe this report. You then have to ask yourself, what this site is actually testing. For one, not all test were done in IE10 because the browser was blocking the Add-In used in the measurements. I counted at least four tests that were skipped. Note the “HTML5 Capabilities 2/7” given under my 374 score above, on Chris’ test Surface had 3 of 7 tested. So if IE10 is protecting users by blocking shitty Java add-ins, it is punished by this Peacekeeper page? And this is the problem with the internet these days. You don’t get the warning that the tests on Microsoft’s platform was incomplete, users are not warned and test results refused because it is no more a fair test. I for one don’t run anything Java. I am of the opinion Java is a gaping security hole on any system. If you don’t believe me, see Kaspersky’s IT Threat Evolution Report page. I just cleaned a Neighbor’s PC this weekend, all Java Trojans! Java should be banned on any system period.
So I am presented with an incomplete result. Even the Surface is faster than my Core i5 Tablet! And this is the convoluted world we on the Microsoft platform live in these days. We have to deal with un-informed popular opinion. Even the so called “Experts” have no clue about the technology they are talking about. Hello Mr. Chris Pirillo, after this test on the Peacekeeper page, to be fair, you should also have done a test on Microsoft’s IE Browser Test Drive page. I am sure you would see a different performance report. Take the de-facto FishBowl test with 10 Fishes, how many FPS are you getting on both Surface and iPad? Then take the Particle Acceleration Test, what is the Score on both Surface and iPad? I am getting 25FPS for FishBowl and 15000avg for Particle Acceleration on my Tablet.
There you have it. A test based purely on HTML5! No Add-In, no extra web-kit optimized pages. Just pure HTML5 which is the future standard of Internet. What are you getting as score? Unfortunately, I am yet to receive my Surface device and I don’t have an iPad to test with. So I am calling on you normal people using both of these devices to do a test for yourselves. Please go to the Test Drive page and run the FishBowl and the Particle tests, let me know what scores you are getting on Surface and iPad. Know the truth, and the it will set you free as the saying goes. We cannot depend on the so called “Tech Press” anymore as most of them are just opinion shapers these days. They have vested interests that determine their vision. Most of these Tech journalists, if you can call them that, have Apple Stocks, and they will do everything to shape popular opinion to the advantage of their Stock Portfolio. They should now make it a law that any Blogger give a full disclosure of their affiliations and Stock Portfolio. Period.
Please do the tests if you have a Surface and an iPad and come back here to give your findings in the comments below. Thanks for helping rid the world of FUD against Microsoft.
[Update 2012-11-06]
All, please see the response of the Peacekeeper product manager here below in the Comments. He indicated that the test at the Peacekeeper page is not using any Java Add-Ins etc, but based purely on JavaScript language that IE10 also supports. So that clears a bit of the riddle at the moment. However, the question still remains, what are the influence of the Tests skipped in IE. Does this contribute to the Score? I definitely think so. If that is the case, this Test is actually testing Browser performance (also indicated by the product manager here below) and therefore is not a device performance test like Chris makes the world believe. The Story continues.
P.S. You may not be aware but Chris has made another video test with Microsoft IE FishIE Tank test in which the iPad still obviously beat the Surface. Can anyone confirm this also? Thanks All.
McAkins
Nazmus Khandaker
ugh a Place filled with MS Fanboys this article in itself is bias
Sorry for the delay – I put in the option to get an email if there is a followup but for some reason never did.
The HTML5 tests (the N/M thingy) are not calculated into the overall performance score at all. This is because a fair amount of browsers are not able to run them all, so that segment of the benchmark is more of a test of capabilities. Eventually we will make them a part of the main suite – once all the major browsers are able to support them.
Thanks for the screenshot, but unfortunately the test ID I needed is in the URL of the, ie something like this
http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/results?key=5UJO
the idea is that this URL you can share with anyone and they can even run a test against your score to see the difference – no screenshots required.
Aah OK, I’ll make another test and send you the url.
Hi,
I’m the product manager in charge of Peacekeeper, and would like to clarify a few things mentioned in this post,
– Peacekeeper is a javascript benchmark, not java. Java is not used anywhere, nor are any other add-ons or plugins.
– The HTML5 score you noticed calculates the HTML5 capabilities of the browser. As mentioned in our FAQ, this is not calculated into the overall performance score. Performance scores are comparable even regardless of the HTML5 capability score.
Note that Peacekeeper is a browser benchmark, and thus the major factor affecting the score is the browser itself – in most cases quite a bit more than the hardware in question. I’m still quite curious about the result you obtained with your x86 win8 tablet – are you able to share the result id with me?
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this post and for your clarification. I am just curious then how you measure the performance while skipping about four test. I think this is indicated in your 2 out of 7 (2/7) indicated under my score as above. If you look in Chris video, your test measured 3 of 7 (3/7). What does this mean? I assume an incomplete test, and if so, the result cannot be complete compared to iPad.
I didn’t notice the Test ID while doing my test, I will re-run the test and give you the ID, after my office hours. Thanks.
OK, as requested, done a new test on your Peacekeeper site with this result: http://mcakins.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/2012-11-06_195002.jpg
I couldn’t see any test ID on the result page. Let me know if you need any more information.
He did the fish bowl test here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Bg3SMBJ4o
it was run in different resolution. Surface = 1366 x 768 … Ipad = 981 x 644
Lol..you guys just got trolled big time by Chris. If you know anything about the guy, is that he drives traffic with negative articles. By getting people into flame wars and thus driving more traffic to his site. He’s really a Microsoft boy pretending to hate Win 8.
Remember sometime back when he did a video about his dad using Win 8 for the first time. It was cut out leaving only frustrations from his dad and thus making it seem like Win 8 is a fail. Then last week or so, he released the whole 40+ minutes full video of his dad using Win 8 and disproves basically his earlier video.
all he did was try to show flaws in the touch screen. I have a surface and it never acts like he was showing, you never even seen him touch the Ipad once.
this person shouod not be evaluating ms products, it seems like he is one of few that are trying very hard to steer people away from windows 8, like the video of his showing his dad how not to use windows 8.
Yes, he didn’t mention to people het is getting paid by Pokki to tarnish Windows 8. I am just glad ordinary people who are using Surface have a different opinion completely. See how users rate Surface better that the Tech blogosphere combined: http://is.gd/HlOhTV
this guy needs some fresh air (pirillo). i mean really does he think that Apple can do no wrong and Microsoft do no right? Off topic: can you help me promote the #FlotillaFTW hashtag? a friend (also works at Nokia) is trying to make this trend for another friend and author Daniel R. Haight.