Microsoft’s Surface Pro is marked down 50 percent to $500 today

You can score a huge discount on Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet today. It's on sale at Office Depot/Office Max for $500, down 50 percent from its list price and significantly cheaper than Microsoft's $799 sale price (it's out of stock on Microsoft's site anyway).

It's not unusual to see the Surface Pro discounted from its list price, though typically the savings are nowhere near this deep. Our hunch is that Microsoft and its retail partners are looking to move existing stock to make room for upgraded models, though nothing has been announced yet.

The specific model that's on sale is the 7th generation Intel Core i5 variant with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid state drive. It's a step up from the entry-level Core m3 model with the same RAM and storage configuration, which is also priced higher at $799 on Microsoft's site.

Obviously the Surface Pro is not great for gaming. It's also not a true laptop, though if you add a keyboard, it's certainly a serviceable solution for general purpose computing and productivity chores.

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Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).