Microsoft joins Swedish online financing firm Klarna to offer consumers zero-percent, 24-month financing and a limited 18-month upgrade option on all current Surfaces.
Microsoft just announced a new financing option for Surface Laptops, Surface Pro 2017s, Surface Books and Surface Studios. On the, uh, surface, the Surface Plus plan for individuals looks quite inviting: A new Surface Pro 2017, for example, only costs $34 per month for 24 months; Surface Laptops run $42 per month, and Surface Books $63 per month. But before you take the plunge, be aware of the footnotes.
I priced out a top-of-the-line Surface Pro 2017, i7,16 GB, 1 TB storage, Iris Plus, Extended Service, and came to a total of $2,848, or $119 per month with Klarna financing (formerly Kreditor) , plus sales tax. If you go with the least-capable Surface Pro 2017, you end up with an m3 processor, 4 GB, 128 GB storage, built-in graphics and a Standard one-year limited warranty — for $799, or $33 per month.
In both cases, at the end of the 24 months, you end up paying for the machine at a zero-percent rate. If you miss a payment, you get hit with a late payment fee of $35, plus interest at 19.99%. The 18-month upgrade option specifically requires you to upgrade to another Microsoft product and use Klarna again for 24-month financing.
The Surface Laptop comes with Windows 10 S — the version that doesn’ t run old-fashioned Windows programs — but through the end of the year you can upgrade Win10 S to Win10 Pro (which does run regular Windows programs) for free. The other machines come with Win10 Pro right out of the box.
You get preview versions of the Office apps. The Surface Plus page says that the Surface Pro 2017 and Surface Book come with a 30-day Office 365 trial, while the Surface Laptop gets one year of Office 365, if you activate in time (“Office applications install from the Windows Store and are currently in preview on this device. Must activate within 180 days. Offer ends 10/15/2017”) . In any case, you can get Office 365 Personal for $70 per year on one machine.
The financing for Surface Plus for Business comes from a different company, New York-based LiftForward. As Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet notes, it isn’ t at all clear how Surface Plus for Business compares to — or works with — last year’s Surface as a Service business leasing program.
