Why so much hate for RT?

cckgz4

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I'm seriously considering buying this, especially at the new price it's at now. I need a pc/laptop that will last more than 2 hours off the charger, so I need to investigate to see if this meets that need. I'm not worried about installing legacy or third party apps due to the fact that we have a TON of laptops in this household that are on Windows 7.
 

accasey

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At the current price I am almost considering buying another one. I have had an RT for about 8 months, and haven't regretted. I do not really notice any performance issues. I am very happy with it.. I'd get the 64gb version though, its always nice not to have to worry about disk space!
 

offyoutoddle

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The press keep banging this drum, but truth is I haven't met anyone who has used RT who hates it. Marketing failures do not equate to a bad product. MS will stick to this with their usual bullishness I expect which will see it through. Keep trying boys, whatever your reasons are - you can't make it a bad product just by saying it is to anyone who will listen.
 

loribinca

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The press keep banging this drum, but truth is I haven't met anyone who has used RT who hates it. Marketing failures do not equate to a bad product. MS will stick to this with their usual bullishness I expect which will see it through. Keep trying boys, whatever your reasons are - you can't make it a bad product just by saying it is to anyone who will listen.

I thought it was crap until I came to terms with what it can (and more importantly cannot) do - I must admit I made some (I would say valid) assumptions about the device, and I was let down when they turned out to be not there ( It's for touch and not inking - even capacitive pens don't work on this thing like they do on an iPad - that and the lack of Cisco VPN almost had me shelving it.

I ended up buying a type cover and using RDP to my desktop to run apps - of course in typical MS fashion they cripple remoteApps in Windows 8 (You need enterprise version to do that - asinine MS - just enable it across the board)

So with the type cover and RDP, I do actually use the thing now.
 

rav16

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@ all

Very nice thread and very useful insights shared .

One common statement I hear from rt owners is , the surface is great but it is not perfect .

Now what that means ? What exactly you all mean when you say its not perfect ?

I use a windows phone since launched and very happy with what if offers . Have a iPad as my tablet happy with it too , but I want to try a nokia tablet or surface rt tablet now for a change .
 

Michael Alan Goff

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@ all

Very nice thread and very useful insights shared .

One common statement I hear from rt owners is , the surface is great but it is not perfect .

Now what that means ? What exactly you all mean when you say its not perfect ?

I use a windows phone since launched and very happy with what if offers . Have a iPad as my tablet happy with it too , but I want to try a nokia tablet or surface rt tablet now for a change .

It means that there are flaws, which I assume anyone here could list them.
 

tgp

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The press keep banging this drum, but truth is I haven't met anyone who has used RT who hates it.

I haven't met anyone with one who hates it either, but neither have I met anyone who has one who would buy another. It's too high priced and too limited in functionality. One of my friends used his a lot... until he get a Galaxy Note II. Now his RT collects dust. Another one is a Microsoft MVP, in other fields, and he says the RT doesn't do enough to be worth it.
 

Derausgewanderte

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as I wrote in my previous post, initially everybody mocked me at work. There are two colleagues now that just purchased a Surface RT after the price drop. One of them is advocating it to others and is very impressed - makes my day when I see him in the hallway explaining to somebody else what he has and how well it works. He is a Mac person and used iPads before. He now says the iPad is a toy compared to the Surface RT, which allows him to actually get work done. He is a research group leader and is trying to get more for the branch. The tablet pilot program didn't go so well with several devices including the iPad and they dropped the idea of using tablets in the lab for now. I strongly believe that they would change their minds if they ever tried the Surface RT. For that it was a little late, but I believe in the future this will change.

The notion that the Surface RT is too expensive is in my opinion a result of the common believe that Microsoft must be cheap. Nobody has any problems paying $500-600 for an iPad but at the same time many of the same people claim that MS should sell the Surface RT for under $200. I believe that a lot are underestimating the hardware and build quality of the Surface RT and are overestimating the quality of the iPad. It has become a status symbol. To change that will take more than a year or two. I think it's a good move by MS to offer these to schools at a much reduced price and once they get some traction among students more and more people will realize that there are a lot of advantages in using the Surface RT as a homework and research tool.
 

nlcbryan

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I have a surface RT 8.1. What i can say about the good sides are:
  1. Able to run office
  2. windows explorer - i can access files easily
  3. USB - most devices work. I can print too
  4. Integrated stand and keyboard

For the bad sides:
  1. It is still sluggish at times
  2. IE11 is a pain - browsing through facebook website is super slow and crashes..youtube too. And many websites that are incompatible
  3. apps are bad

Other than these, im happy with RT..IE11 has to be fixed though its too slow
 

Derausgewanderte

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I have a surface RT 8.1. What i can say about the good sides are: 2. IE11 is a pain - browsing through facebook website is super slow and crashes..youtube too. And many websites that are incompatible
Other than these, im happy with RT..IE11 has to be fixed though its too slow
try this, it sped up IE both on 8.1 and 8.0 for me especially with sites that use a lot of flash ads.
http://forums.windowscentral.com/surface-windows-rt/237750-rt-touch-browser-site.html#post2087459
 

garak0410

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I have a surface RT 8.1. What i can say about the good sides are:
  1. Able to run office
  2. windows explorer - i can access files easily
  3. USB - most devices work. I can print too
  4. Integrated stand and keyboard

For the bad sides:
  1. It is still sluggish at times
  2. IE11 is a pain - browsing through facebook website is super slow and crashes..youtube too. And many websites that are incompatible
  3. apps are bad

Other than these, im happy with RT..IE11 has to be fixed though its too slow

I can echo the sluggish part. I like top stream our home video collection from my main PC to the XBOX 360. Using an RT device is not ideal as it renders the video on the Surface then to the 360 and it never plays without caching. :(
 

Onager1286

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The Surface RT is a good device, but I'll be the first to say that the performance is disappointing for a device that carries a premium price. Sometimes it takes a good 5 seconds for a tab in IE to close.
 

ramonq619

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I bought mine on launch date and I love it. It does everything I need and has Microsoft office. The only thing I hate is the app selection but I mostly do everything on the web anyways. I'm my opinion its light years away from the iPad. Do more for less money
 

baloo247

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I think the initial mistake with the Windows RT was the name and the price.

1. Price - HP made the same mistake with the touchpad, which I owned and loved. The IPad can sell for it's price becuase as a content consuming device it has the content. Windows RT currently is limited in this respect. We then run into a chicken and egg situation, how do we get content without developers believing the sales potential is there. With this in mind Microsoft should have taken a hit on the initial price, the current price is what it should have initially been released for. This was they get the sales in, the user base is present and developers will produce the apps.

2. The Name - My wife runs IT for her school and she just purchased 20 Surface RTs as a result of the Microsoft education deal. The one remark all her colleagues say is that "it's windows, why can't I install windows apps??". Microsoft should have called it something different, maybe just RT, this way by name it's a differentiated product.

So my opinions on the device -

1. Lag, slowness, delay: I've been playing with my wifes for sometime and I have to say an excellent product, and I haven't experienced any issues. We all have to remember that this is a 1st Gen product so it may have a few niggles. Remember the iphone not having copy and paste, or the ipad not having true multitasking.
2. Multitasking - excellent, what can I say. We've got one other RT running 8.1, and the dual screenn mode, dual app on one screen modes are excellent.
3. Office - Excellent, not more I can say. Works really well.
4. Hardware - excellent quality, really really good.
5. Multiple User accounts and family friendly security features - For the education market this device is perfect. You can have multiple user accounts, share apps between users and it provides parental controls to limit applicaiton usage, device usaged based on time and a whole host of other features. This is out of the box, something the Ipad and Android just doesn't have.
6 Full USB Support and device support - plug in a keyboard or pendrive. Case rested.

Overall I think it's an excellent product that deserves its place in the market. It's an content consuming device, we need to remember that's the use case for tablets. Content creation, though not limited to tables, is a secondary services.

Apps .... the dreaded lack of apps -

When people say to me there's no apps my first response is, what's the purpose of apps? why did apps even come about in the first place?

Apps essentially provide a touch friendly delivery method for mobile websites or desktop applications. Now RT has IE10, it's not the best browser in the world but it is a FULLY fledged browser, with full flash experience. So for example, there is no Spotify app on RT but you can use the web based Spoitfy function in IE10. The point is for most missing apps just use the website. It works and you probably get more functionality. I will not deny that apps are better. The UI is specific to a touch centric device, but in the interim IE10 also works.

I'm very PRO the surfact RT. I think it's an excellent device. As a content consuming device it just needs more content specific to the device. This will come with time.
 

chrislamuk

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Why the hate?

I have just listened to some podcasts with Kevin Tofal from gigaom.

He's not a liker of the RT and sights the lack of apps as a reason not to use it, however the guy can justify paying $1000+ for a chromebook pixel! As far as I can see (and having used one) the chromebook only has one app - the browser!
 

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