Microsoft Surface Review: a Tale of Two Tablets 183
zacharye points out an early review of the Microsoft Surface tablet. Here are some relevant snippets:
"When you get over the shocking realization that, yes, Windows is now different, you begin to realize that the new home screen makes a lot of sense. ... Despite the Surface’s quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset and 2GB of RAM, Windows RT is not always as smooth as I would like. Apps sometimes take a few extra beats to open, and in some cases opening an application on the Surface is much more like launching an app on an old Windows PC than on a modern tablet. ... The good news, though, is that Windows RT was built for multitasking. Commonly used apps can and should be left open, and switching between apps is as easy as swiping in from the left side with a finger or touching a mouse cursor to the top- or bottom-left corner of the display. Open apps come back to life instantly, and the animations that transition the user from one app to another are quick and smooth. ... While Windows 8 is the version of Microsoft’s new OS that has split personality disorder, the Windows RT-powered Surface truly is a tale of two tablets. On one hand, it is an engineering feat with a design that is novel and functional. It really is the perfect combination of a tablet and a notebook thanks to the Touch Cover and the Type Cover, and I felt right at home with the Surface the moment I turned it on. On the other hand, the software experience does not feel like home. It’s new, and for many it will be scary." Additional reviews are available elsewhere, take your pick: AnandTech, Wired, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, The Verge.
Gotta admit (Score:5, Interesting)
While I can't stand the look of Metro, the Hardware itself is simply beautiful.
Ugly Metro (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ugly Metro (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually you can choose the color at setup.
And after all this crazy debate saying how there is so much eye candy you are now going that there isn't enough!
Windows 8 is actually very nice in appearance, it isn't trying to be show off but going more to a simpler effect. Being the Metro Display doesn't overlap stuff so you don't need to be 3d, with those other effects.
Re:A true MS product (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm. I read a couple of reviews and I kind of like the Surface concept. I will not buy one, since it does not suit my needs and will certainly stay as far away as possible from Windows 8, but your post sounds like an unfounded anti-MS rant. Because I do not like Slashdotters to be considered mindless MS-haters (but only thoughtful MS/Apple/Google/XXX-bashers when there is good reason), I think I should address your post as it will be surely getting modded to +5 by the time I am finished...
It has a magnetic charger connection. It has a powerful magnet... BUT when it pulls the connector out of your fingers, it doesn't align properly and doesn't work. it has to be fiddled with. Like a worn out old fashioned round charger. It is ALMOST but NOT quite the apple charger experience. Almost but not quite.
Let me guess, you haven't tried it yourself and you are just selectively quoting reviews? Read Anand who is as big an Apple fan as you can find without reaching the "extreme-fanboi" status, and who says while it is not perfect he actually likes it and pointed out the fact that it has advantages over Apple's weaker magnets.
Then, I can share my experience with a MacBook I got back around 2008 and its magnetic charger coupling: I could not detach the damn thing without grabbing the cord. The tiny and shiny plastic plug was most of the time (depending how dry your fingers were I guess) impossible to grab without it slipping from your grip. I immediately went to apple.com and looked at the reviews for the charger. Well, 2/5 stars average with most reviews saying that while it was so expensive, the cable would break in less than a couple of months since the users had to pull it! I did not break mine because I replaced the Mac with a Mac Mini (due to other reasons related to how it handled my multi-monitor setup).
It comes with MS Office... except if you like to actually use it, then you need to buy a seperate license. The ONE thing MS can use as a sales argument is that their stuff comes with full MS support and then they don't deliver unless you pay through the nose on an already expensive device. MS has in the past given Office for free to entire governments to keep customers, yet on their own device, they charge you for a non-cripple ware version.
I don't understand your comment. According to the reviews I read, Surface comes with the Preview version of Home/Student, because the final version is not yet ready. Once it is available, it will be a free install for Surface. Are you referring to something I had read in earlier reviews, that Office RT would be lacking some pro features like VBA? But I read that it is not a matter of paying for a license, you just won't have some features with the RT version.
The touchpad on the the covers is there, possibly because you sometimes don't want to touch the screen but it is hopelessly primitive version, barely more then a trackpad.
Well, there is no space left, so according to the reviews nothing much better could really fit. They were going for maximizing the key size, which is what is really missing from a tablet. I would thin it would have been even better to not put a touchpad at all and use those little thumbsticks my old Thinkpad had - but maybe others prefer touchpads...
Resolution is what top end devices came with, last yet. Full HD is what new devices come with now. And people know it.
Hey, you got one point. While I think something like retina is certainly overkill, Full HD would probably have been a good idea. But I do prefer a good screen with a lower resolution than a higher-res that has glare, low contrast etc. According to the reviews the display at least has some solid performance, so they got it half right. Yeah, higher resolution BUT with similar performance would have been nice. No, not all new Full HD devices come with good displays. Not even the majority.
Windows RT is compatible
I want a GNU/Linux KDE / Unity / Gnome alternative (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an Android phone and an Android tablet, both of which I like a lot, but with the tablet's 10" screen I do now find myself wanting a more power user desktop environment to use on it. I could make a list of features that I would like to see but I'd just end up describing a typical Linux distro with a decent desktop environment with some modifications tailored towards touch.
So what is the status of projects working towards this goal? I know KDE is working on Plasma Active and Canonical is obviously working towards making Unity as touch friendly as possible, so how far off are we from seeing tablet devices running a GNU/Linux distro with one of these desktop environments? Most GUI apps will require some work to be made touch friendly but that's never going to happen until a stable OS is readily available for them to run on.
Give me a proper taskbar, support for running KDE / QT / GTK / X applications, scripting and all the CLI stuff we take for granted on Linux along with a decent collection of apt-get style software repositories and I think I'd fall back in love with my tablet.
And before anyone replies with 'get a laptop!', I'm quite happy with my laptop thank you, but I also like the tablet form factor for many reasons and I'd just like to see some options for more 'traditional' computing brought to these devices.