Need help deciding on a tablet...

rkeenan

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[FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]The 3 tablets I am considering are Windows RT, New iPad or the Galaxy Note 10.1

I need something that can do textbooks well, as well as other things such as different video media types. I would like to be able to replace my laptop with a tablet and Surface RT maybe the best choice. Is Office RT Student completely free or is it a trial version? I need Microsoft Office for things such as typing research papers and the occasional powerpoint. I looked at the Surface RT Pro but I can't justify the price for my need of a tablet. I do need something with a great keyboard as well. Also I need something with decent battery life.
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[FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]My cellphone is android but I am very intrigued by the Microsoft Surface line.[/FONT]

It would be awesome to be able to dual boot Linux or Android with it.
 

12Danny123

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Hey man. Office 2013 comes preinstalled on EVERY windows RT tablet and its completely free. Unfortunately.man. You cannot boot android or Linux on any win rt tablet
 
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stmav

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It is a full version of Office Home and Student RT. You should be able to use it for papers and powerpoint with no problem. I get about 10 hours use on mine. I just surf, e-mail, read and some games. Some of the games have dropped it to around 8 hours of use. The touch keyboad has a little bit of a learning curve, but I have no problem using it. Though some have said the type keyboard feels more like a reguar keyboard and have had no problem from the start.
 

rkeenan

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Hey man. Office 2013 comes preinstalled on EVERY windows RT tablet and its completely free. Unfortunately.man. You cannot boot android or Linux on every win rt tablet

Perfect! I will have to look at all the Windows tablets to ensure that I make the right choice. I really hated the iPad 3 that I owned and there is just something I don't like about Android tablets. I think the Windows RT Tablets would be the way to go.
 

rkeenan

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It is a full version of Office Home and Student RT. You should be able to use it for papers and powerpoint with no problem. I get about 10 hours use on mine. I just surf, e-mail, read and some games. Some of the games have dropped it to around 8 hours of use. The touch keyboard has a little bit of a learning curve, but I have no problem using it. Though some have said the type keyboard feels more like a regular keyboard and have had no problem from the start.

Yeah, I was kind of concerned about how efficient the touch tablet is since I am a rather quick typer. I really try to stay away from games, so battery life after games doesn't concern me too much. Which Windows tablets can you dual boot on?
 

aldovelco

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Yeah, I was kind of concerned about how efficient the touch tablet is since I am a rather quick typer. I really try to stay away from games, so battery life after games doesn't concern me too much. Which Windows tablets can you dual boot on?

Actually... WindowsRT devices won't allow you to dual boot at all. Windows 8 and RT use a security option called UEFI.
I think you can see more about it here More fun with Windows 8 UEFI, Secure Boot, Fedora and Ubuntu | ZDNet
 

johnbash612

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If you're a student, and it sounds like you are, I cannot stress how much better the surface is than the other tablets. Just the way that you can store files on a desktop is reason enough. Office adds great productivity to the surface. I store every paper or assignment ever on skydrive (which to be fair you the other tablets have as well). The way I describe it is that windows rt is way closer to windows 8 than ios is to mac operating system. For some reason when you read reviews they see this as a flaw? "oh damn it its just a tease version" blahblahblah... its not a tease version, its a mobile version, and I don't see the iPad getting docked for essentially releasing the same os every year (minor updates, I will give them that). Sorry for that minor rant. There is one thing I have complained about, the surfaces aspect ratio makes reading textbooks much harder than the iPad. The text also isn't as clear as it is on an iPad. Whenever you zoomed in the iPad would render the text more often to make it clear, the surface on the other hand has "levels" of clarity, and I often find myself zooming in and out little by little to get the text just right. I'm not sure if this is just the reader app, but I've had the same issues with adobes reader as well.
 

TeknoBlast

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Also remember, if you work on an Office document on one computer, say a school library's computer or friend's computer, you can copy that file to a thumb drive and then copy it over to your Surface RT device via USB. Not many tablet can do this or cnat think of any that can.
 

rkeenan

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If you're a student, and it sounds like you are, I cannot stress how much better the surface is than the other tablets. Just the way that you can store files on a desktop is reason enough. Office adds great productivity to the surface. I store every paper or assignment ever on skydrive (which to be fair you the other tablets have as well). The way I describe it is that windows rt is way closer to windows 8 than ios is to mac operating system. For some reason when you read reviews they see this as a flaw? "oh damn it its just a tease version" blahblahblah... its not a tease version, its a mobile version, and I don't see the iPad getting docked for essentially releasing the same os every year (minor updates, I will give them that). Sorry for that minor rant. There is one thing I have complained about, the surfaces aspect ratio makes reading textbooks much harder than the iPad. The text also isn't as clear as it is on an iPad. Whenever you zoomed in the iPad would render the text more often to make it clear, the surface on the other hand has "levels" of clarity, and I often find myself zooming in and out little by little to get the text just right. I'm not sure if this is just the reader app, but I've had the same issues with adobes reader as well.

Yeah, the rendering of textbooks is a worry for me. How is the Kindle app for the Surface RT?
 

rkeenan

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Also remember, if you work on an Office document on one computer, say a school library's computer or friend's computer, you can copy that file to a thumb drive and then copy it over to your Surface RT device via USB. Not many tablet can do this or cnat think of any that can.

Yeah I can't remember that last time I used a thumb drive. Cloud storage has made them obsolete unless you are working with big files. I will have to look into more productivity apps for iPad as well.
 

johnbash612

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Yeah, the rendering of textbooks is a worry for me. How is the Kindle app for the Surface RT?

Oof, I don't know about that one. Mainly use pdf textbooks. I do want to stress that reading on the surface rt is more than doable, but when I had my original iPad...when it actually opened my book without crashing, it was a better reading experience, but everything else done by the surface productivity wise and even gaming wise (snes8x with Xbox controller=awesome) is, in my opinion, ahead of the iPad, but you are on a surface forum so I think I'll get some support :)
 

ALpHa.Q.RoUgH

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Does anyone have any experience with Google Drive & Google Slides? Many people highlight Skydrive and OFFICE however, google has Drive, Slides & Docs which people say is a good equilvalent
 

inteller

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they key word is EQUILVALENT. There is only ONE Office with GUARANTEED compatibility and rendering of other Office formats. Everything else is a cheap imitation.
 

rkeenan

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Does anyone have any experience with Google Drive & Google Slides? Many people highlight Skydrive and OFFICE however, google has Drive, Slides & Docs which people say is a good equilvalent

I use Google Drive for word processing for homework. It does the job. It doesn't have a ton of options like Word though. Just like anything, it depends on what your needs are.
 

johninsj

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Does anyone have any experience with Google Drive & Google Slides? Many people highlight Skydrive and OFFICE however, google has Drive, Slides & Docs which people say is a good equilvalent

if you live in the google ecosystem, then those are the equivalent services and apps. If you live in Microsoft's ecosystem they are poor substitutes.
 

TeknoBlast

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Yeah I can't remember that last time I used a thumb drive. Cloud storage has made them obsolete unless you are working with big files. I will have to look into more productivity apps for iPad as well.


Well the USB drive is just an option. Be aware, that Skydrive works very well with the Surface. I'm constantly working on my files from work and home using Skydrive. At work, i install the desktop client and I open my files as if it's another drive on my computer. When I'm on the go and I need access to my files on Skydrive, then my Surface automatically accesses those files.

There's really no need to fiddle around with multiple accounts from different cloud services since Skydrive does it all and it's native to the Surface. Unlike having whatever google is offering and DropBox, that's just another unnecessary account to manage.
 

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