I want your honest opinion on the Surface RT

[Dewg]

Look at it this way... vote with your dollars. If you like where Microsoft is going with the Surface tablet, buy it. If you like competitors to Apple, buy it. As others have said, if you return it or wait and see, you are voting with your dollars and telling the market that Surface should fail. Worse, if you instead buy an iPad then you are letting the market know Apple should hold onto its dominance. I love the Surface because it gives me all the things I was missing from the iPad. Yes, it has some issues, but I am letting the market know that I want competition and innovation.

Imagine a world where Apple completely wins and dominates the marketplace. You honestly think they will innovate at the same pace and keep prices where they are?

 

[inteller]

just wait until the update this week and you will see how far Microsoft plans on taking the Surface. Other tablets simply cannot enjoy the levels of updates Microsoft will provide.

 

[PHVL]

This is a revolution.

 

[Digital Savior]

Ever since I've got my Clear hotspot I've been using it a ton more at work. From watching videos/streams to programming from remote desktop.

 

[Dr. Impossible]

A few people here have mentioned that the sluggishness was fixed with the update a few weeks ago. I am still experiencing this on my machine for whatever reason. Yes, I do have multiple tabs and apps open at once, but that, honestly, was what this machine was touted as being good at. I mean, they built the screen-split functionality right into it.

The only other gripe I literally just found was that linking people in the People app is a pain. Using the search function to find the linked contact just starts the process over again. They should have ported the function from windows phone where you tap on the letter, it brings up an alphabet list that lets one quickly jump to the desired contacts section.

I know the perforfmance will be fixed and other than what I mentioned above, I love this thing. So great to use, money well spent.

Thanks

-Doc

 

[Michael Muscat]

Hello, I registered just to tell you that you can pinch to zoom out or click on the little minus symbol (-) in the bottom right corner of the screen to select contacts alphabetically. I for one am really enjoying my surface and find that it fulfils 90% of what I used to do on my old laptop. Just wish there were some better content creation tools, but I'm looking into RDP to fill in the gaps

 

[marcociccone]

Hey guys, interesting discussion. I'm looking to Surface or Samsung Ativ Tab. I would like to use it as laptop replacement, I need a general purpose device (I have an external monitor, bluetooth keyboard+mouse if I need to work).
Sometimes I work at home, I work with web platform (like Adwords) and office files. How can Surface RT handles large excel files? I don't use macros but my spreadsheets are big (6-7 sheets of datas plus 2-3 sheets with graphs). It's the same for powerpoint (large ppts, about 3-4 mb). How Win RT on Tegra3 handles these files?

I believe a lot in WinRT on tablet, it's the future in my opinion even if ARM processors are not enough powerfull to work seriously with a big external monitor.

 

[power5]

I think MSFT really needs to work on the no desktop aspect. What do you need the desktop for on an RT? Cannot install anything. If you just need it for file management, lets have the team develop a new way to do the same thing. It is definitely nice to be able to select many items and drag them to another explorer window. I can open 5 different locations and drag items from each one to the new folder location. In RT land you basically have to select an option called "move" or something and then go select the new location. This does not even work in all situations. And you have to do it for each source file location. Then there is the 2 completely different "settings" environments. PC settings in RT land and the control panel in desktop land. Why? I see no reason the control panel could not be brought into the RT world. Its the same as the PC settings. Lots of different options to select through and trees to navigate. Office does not need to be based in the desktop to look like the desktop version. Just simply make the UI look like desktop but with larger targets for finger touch as well as mouse input. My biggest gripe on RT side is IE10. Works ok, but I am not too familiar with it. I have just kept with the desktop version of my browsers on my win8 pc at home.

my hope is that a s4 quad version comes out early next year. That is all I need to get an RT.

 

[NickA]

I think MSFT really needs to work on the no desktop aspect. What do you need the desktop for on an RT? Cannot install anything. If you just need it for file management, lets have the team develop a new way to do the same thing. It is definitely nice to be able to select many items and drag them to another explorer window. I can open 5 different locations and drag items from each one to the new folder location. In RT land you basically have to select an option called "move" or something and then go select the new location. This does not even work in all situations. And you have to do it for each source file location. Then there is the 2 completely different "settings" environments. PC settings in RT land and the control panel in desktop land. Why? I see no reason the control panel could not be brought into the RT world. Its the same as the PC settings. Lots of different options to select through and trees to navigate. Office does not need to be based in the desktop to look like the desktop version. Just simply make the UI look like desktop but with larger targets for finger touch as well as mouse input. My biggest gripe on RT side is IE10. Works ok, but I am not too familiar with it. I have just kept with the desktop version of my browsers on my win8 pc at home.

my hope is that a s4 quad version comes out early next year. That is all I need to get an RT.

I think you answered your own question as to why there is a need for the desktop still. Even if you had a Modern UI version of Office, I couldn't imagine working with an Excel sheet and a Word doc, and not easily being able to drag/drop between the two. Or being able to drag an image into PowerPoint from Windows Explorer or the desktop.

On my desktop/laptop, I boot into Desktop mode. I haven't seen the new Modern UI Start screen in weeks.

 

[power5]

As I said though, just because its running in the desktop environment, does not mean it needs to look like the old windows environment. Use the same background as the metro interface. Use the same look as the Metro interface. But instead of only allowing 1 app to be open at a time, allow conventional workflow for office users. I also have excel and other programs open all the time at work. I could not work with just the metro UI. Would be a major step back in productivity. Still there is a way to make the desktop environment work better with the Metro environment. As many have said, its basically like using parallels on a mac. On one desktop I am in windows, in the parallel I am in tablet windows. I think the only time you should see any UI shift is if there was an admin type function to get to deep OS controls. Though everything should be capable of moving to the new metro UI language no matter how high level the function.

 

[inteller]

only thing I'd really like to see is all of the Windows Accessories deprecated for Metro versions. Wordpad should go away entirely since we have Word. I think they left these because maybe there are some Office dependencies?

 

[thecaringkind]

****** love? Tablet isn't ready? Ok. What is the tablet not ready for? Can you be specific? The Surface RT was designed to be a powerful TABLET. Not a desktop or laptop replacement. As a tablet it offers productivity & file management abilities that other tablets just cannot match. The platform is valid & getting stronger everyday. Its been on the market approx 10 months & with the 8.1 update Microsoft has managed to produce a very solid and capable tablet. Their primary mistake was overpricing the RT, building way too many and doing a HORRIBLE job of marketing the product. Well a price cut, time, many updates and better marketing is slowly righting the ship.

Are there Microsoft fanboys? Probably. Unlike the Apple variety, we actually do our homework.

 

[D4X]

App switching performance - Surface RT - YouTube to see what difference an update can make..
I like my Surface RT a lot, and hope/expect the few annoyances I have with it will be resolved; we also have another tegra 3 device, the nexus 7 and I express exactly the same hope/expectations for it. RT is just different, and to me it is refreshingly so!