Early this year, I decided to take a risk.
As a geek, I like to reward those in the industry that try to be bold. That try to be different. That try to leave the beaten path. That look at the norm in the market, and decide to ignore it. Despite all its flaws, Microsoft did just that with its Metro user interface, incarnations of which are used on both Windows Phone and Windows 8.
I was a Windows Phone user since day one. I bought an HTC HD7 somewhere around release day, and imported it into The Netherlands, a year before the platform became available in The Netherlands. I wanted to reward Microsoft’s mobile team for trying to be different, for being original, for not copying iOS and Android and instead coming up with something fresh and unique. Despite all the limitations and early adopter issues, I loved it.
As such, it was a no-brainer for me to jump on the Windows Phone 8 train late last year. I bought an HTC 8X, and loved it again. The first worries did start to appear on the radar though – while WP8 now ran on the NT kernel instead of the CE kernel, there was little to no progress on the user-facing side. I gave Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, though, since I appreciated the complexities of moving from CE to NT, and recognised it as a future-proofing step.
Now, a year since I bought the HTC 8X, I have given up on the Windows Phone platform. Progress has been non-existent, and you don’t have to take my word for that – even Microsoft’s biggest Windows Phone partner, Nokia, agrees with me. Windows Phone 8 still has considerable issues with multitasking, applications not saving state, compatibility with Google services, low-quality applications that are clearly side-projects in between Android and iOS work, and so on.
In fact, other than performance improvements which partially stem from faster hardware, the differences between my HTC HD7 on release day and my HTC 8X now are minute. If you compare this to the platform to beat, it becomes clear just how slow development has been for Windows Phone. When Windows Phone 7 was originally released, Android was at version 2.2 Froyo. Let that sink in for a while.
So, as I said – I took a risk earlier this year. Still firmly in love with Windows Phone, I decided to buy a Surface RT. From the very beginning, I knew this was a huge gamble – Windows on a (for Windows) new architecture, with an entirely new userland running alongside the old-fashioned classic desktop. This had disaster written all over it, but with my own little company doing quite well, I have a little more spare cash lying around for geek indulgement.
The moment I started using the Surface RT, I knew Microsoft still had a long way to go. But, you know, Windows 8 was relatively new, and the application store still needed to fill up. The applications we did have were of abysmal quality, but we were told this wasn’t because of any issues in Windows RT, WinRT, or the Metro stack – applications would surely improve quickly and the issues would iron themselves out.
During those first few months, using the Surface RT was an exercise in keyboard-snapping frustration. The lag. The slowness. The random bugs. The crashes. The memory leaks. The application hangs. The random disconnects between the Touch Cover and the device. Skype regularly hard-crashing the entire device. The input lag, where you start typing and it takes 15 seconds for the device to catch up. The total and utter lack of application updates.
It was so horrible that I simply put it away. Several months, I only used it for Skype, and that was it. It just was not a usable device.
But! There was a glimmer of hope rising on the horizon. A new version of Windows which would take us poor Surface RT owners by the hand and guide us to the promised land of smooth performance, great applications, no more crashes, no more hangs, no more unresponsiveness. It would be glorious, like a glitter-covered unicorn riding a rainbow made it out of tequila shots and Hello Kitty images, guided by the sound of Australian laughter.
So, when Windows 8.1 was finally released, I blew the dust off my Surface RT, anxiously awaiting the glitter-covered unicorn etc. etc. My first big surprise was that even after weeks of being turned off, there were no application updates (and I turned automatic updating off). I decided to ignore this, and proceeded to install Windows RT 8.1. My unicorn was on its way.
A week later, and she still isn’t here.
Windows RT 8.1 did not revive my Surface RT. It’s still the same useless piece of crap that it was when it ran Windows RT 8. Other than Microsoft’s own applications, there have been no application updates. ‘Window’ resizing is still slow with black screens and application logos (if the application even supports it, which most do not). Typing still has input lag. The keyboard still often will not pop up when you tap an input field, forcing you to tap it multiple times. It’s still unresponsive. It’s still laggy. Applications still crash and hang. The embedded browser view is still awful to the point of uselessness. The list just goes on and on.
About 30 minutes ago, after using it intensively for a week, giving it yet another set of chances, I have decided to give up on my Surface RT, and by extension, Windows 8 and Metro. The Surface RT is simply a very bad product, barely worthy of the ‘alpha’ label, and while throwing more computing power at Windows RT might alleviate some of the performance issues, it will do little to address the endless list of other problems.
So, when I read Microsoft’s PR boss Frank Shaw’s blog post about Apple making iWork free, I cringed.
So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up.
I think they, like others, are waking up to the fact that we’ve built a better solution for people everywhere, who are getting things done from anywhere, and who don’t have hard lines between their personal and professional lives. People who want a single, simple, affordable device with the power and flexibility to enhance and support their whole day.
This man has his head so far up his own ass he has absolutely no idea just how terrible the products he is spinning are compared to the competition. And, unlike him, I have no horse in this race. I gave my Surface RT, Windows 8, and Metro a fair chance – several of them, in fact – but the cold and harsh truth is that my cheap-ass, first-generation 8GB Nexus 7 running Android 4.3, bought in June 2012, is infinitely more useful, has far better applications, and has crazy better performance than the Surface RT.
The Surface proposition is intriguing. Sadly, the quality of the software is not. It’s been 3.5 years since the release of the original iPad, and everything Microsoft has to show for itself is broken, crappy software that is entirely unpleasant to use.
Frankie, I’d take another look at iWork on the iPad.
MS “try to leave the beaten path”? They did it just one time, and it wasn’t really leaving the path, but trying to be the first running on an already existing path = Windows NT. Apart from it, they never ever did anything innovative, they just bought innovation or did something horrible
The beaten path was the classic 20 years old Windows UI concept most people grew up with and that guided Microsoft during all its past succesful years. Android and iOS are both closer to that classic concept any half of that split personality Metro-vs-Classic-Mix permanent presented and present in Win8 is.
Edited 2013-10-24 00:00 UTC
If the rumors are true ALL blame at MSFT can be laid square at the feet of one man…Steve Ballmer, because according to rumor Sinofsky wanted to do the SMART move and make Win 8 as Win 7 SE while having Metro be the new mobile and then take any popular bits and later roll them into Windows proper as an optional component, just as Apple has done with OSX/iOS but it was Ballmer that forced him out and went for a lame ass EEE play like it was 2002 and shoved the software out the door before it was ready.
While this is a rumor I tend to put stock in it as it fits what we do know, that Ballmer shoved Vista out the door with everyone saying it wasn’t ready (including us beta testers) and he likewise did the same with Winphone 7 as Mr Holwerda found out.
Frankly anybody should have seen this coming as this is Ballmer’s MO, see something hot and put out a half baked poorly supported copy which is promptly abandoned when it doesn’t do as well as what its knocking off…Zune,Kin,killing PlaysForSure (the ONLY media division they had that was actually GAINING users) for a bad iTunes ripoff Zune market,Sidekick…Ballmer’s reign is littered with half baked ideas,poorly supported and abandoned hardware/software.
Hell look at Win 8, if ever the words half baked applied to anything its that mess! I mean here we are on a site DEDICATED to Operating Systems, populated by geeks that LOVE learning new OSes and are happy to dive into even the offbeat OSes like Haiku and ReactOS but when I pointed out how stupid it was to have shutdown under settings I had a half a dozen folks chime in with “So THAT is how you shut it down!” because its got such poor discoverability they couldn’t figure out how to shut the stupid thing down! Some were using the power button, others were logging off to find the button, if that doesn’t scream bad design I don’t know what does.
I only hope the board manages to oust Gates along with his little buddy Ballmer and then if we are all REALLY lucky they’ll split the company, bring back Sinofsky and put him in charge of Windows and Office and then put someone else in charge of mobile. Because if they put Elop in the big chair, the guy that thought candy colored Surface RT units were a good idea? Stick a fork, sell the stock, they are toast. If you want to see how much disconnect there is at that company just look at how Win 7 Home costs just $80 at most places while they want $120! for Win 8.1, an OS that nobody wants!
This is a rumor that doesn’t line up with the facts.
First of all it was Sinofsky that went to great lengths to defend Metro. He is the one who would write pages of sophistry and use grey data like “metrics” and then avoid simple one line questions like: Why not allow corporate environment to turn it off? No one else in that company was treating Metro/Windows 8 like their baby. Sinofsky also played “whack a mole” with feedback, deleting detailed user tests from registered MSDN members and then responding to anonymous comments like “Looks neat, will there be Angry Birds on release?”.
Other executives would simply avoid talking about Windows 8 on their blogs and seemed embarrassed by it. Sinofsky deleted the most damning criticism and links to polls showing outright rejection. He also avoided interviews and open talks with developers. His posts and canned responses reeked of delusional artist syndrome, whereby he is a genius that the public simply can’t recognize and thus all negative feedback doesn’t matter.
Ballmer fired him after it was poorly received by the public. The plan to have dueling desktops and forced Metro was known almost a year before release. Oh and it was also Sinofsky who told us that Metro would be an option, then he later deleted that comment and pretended it never happened.
Ballmer has a lousy record of greenlighting projects but he still has never been in charge of the Windows division. Other divisions have prospered underneath him, not because of him but because they had better executives.
I used one in a store once, for about ten minutes. Most of these minutes were spent waiting. It was very slow and just didn’t work very well.
Too bad, because the hardware sure looked and felt nice. Now if only the firmware wasn’t so closed and non-standard, we could maybe load android on it, or just run something like unity.
I used to hang out in the Microsoft store at the mall while the wife did her shopping. I do not recall having problems with lag or crashes with the Surface RT, although the time spent on the device was obviously less than Thom’s. My nephew thought the kid’s game where he slashed a bunch of bananas and watermelons was great, and again, no crashes.
A locked down throwaway Windows device that I don’t have to maintain, that allows me to free my other machines of the Windows monstrosity? Great! I would have probably purchased one for my Microsoft Office-dependent second job if there were a single decent keyboard offering available. The chiclet keyboard is only *slightly* better than the VTEC-style keyboard, but still flimsy, and totally not worth the extra $100 they were asking.
Other than wanting a keyboard cover, you’re free to use almost any USB or Bluetooth keyboard.
Didn’t have any problems with the original Surface RT, apart from it being too locked down. Fortunately my young niece became very attached to it and “borrowed” it indefinitely.
So I replaced the Surface RT with a Surface Pro, which has completely replaced the “heavy” in comparison Mac Air i used to haul about.
I got a Windows Phone 8 (Lumia) and a Vaio running Windows 8, because I wanted to develop for the platform.
I complained too much about Windows Phone 8 and Thom summarized my problems prety well.
But Windows 8 was also a bad experience so far. Usability was always worse than Windows 7, hardware support was hit and miss (Plenty of WiFi disconnection issues with the Realtek chipset), and 2 months after I got the computer, a regular windows update made the computer un-booteable and un-recoverable. I just couldn^A't get it to boot Windows 8 Again.
Frustrated, I installed Ubuntu on it, which worked absolutely flawlessly and kept using it for a few months until I learned you can download a Windows 8 ISO from the internet, and it will detect the serial in your bios automatically. (Sony will not give me the boot disks and Microsoft will not either).
That worked like magic and got Windows 8 working again and legally, after getting the system builder ISO torrent. Why does microsoft not provide the ISO for download??? wtf??? I go the drivers from Sony site and all set..
..until I upgraded to Windows 8.1. Upgrade went fine and the machine worked even better. But after the first updates that required reboot, the notebook refused to boot again, so back to Ubuntu.
Oh well, I tried..
Edited 2013-10-23 23:19 UTC
Obviously you didn’t try very hard.
In Windows 8 type “recovery drive” at the start menu (or search) and then click the “Create a recovery drive” icon. In addition, since you have a Sony the Vaio Care application can create recovery media. Not sure how you so conveniently missed these options. Brings into question the legitimacy of your “problems” in general.
Edited 2013-10-23 23:37 UTC
What needs a working Windows 8… please read harder, “un-booteable”.
Edited 2013-10-23 23:47 UTC
You said you had Windows 8 running… twice. Seriously there are multiple ways to create recovery images, install media, etc. as well as roll-back patches without re-installing. If you’re too incompetent to use them then don’t blame Microsoft.
No wonder Microsoft are losing this fight, if recovery images and patch roll-backs are considered a reasonable thing for their customers to deal with…
Probably because their bullshit recovery method is a crap shoot and by turning it on is one of the few attack vectors for malware.
Creating install media is an attack vector for malware? Do tell.
It’s been a vulnerability since its introduction. Malware is hidden in system restore files and is launched from there. The only way to clean it is to boot into safe mode and turn off the service to remove the backups. In normal mode your a-v software cannot delete it although it can typically find older generations of it. Some will even automate the removal.
You can’t recover a bricked Android system without recovery either. So how is this a Microsoft specific problem?
Bricked is not same as unbootable.
Please look at the year of your calendar display. It’s 2013 – not the nineties any more.
The sole Windows 8 user in our household is my wife: She is a midwife and needed a new laptop last summer. It had to be Windows because she needs one specific accounting app.
Can you imagine the look on her face if I tell her to create a recovery image?
The accounting application runs on the desktop of course. I cannot count the curses she issued when she is inadvertently thrown to the tile screen or the charms suddenly bar pops up while entering data.
Can you imagine the look on her face when you tell her you lost all of her data because you refused to take simple precaution steps that are not Windows specific?
Please read again my posting: It’s her computer and she is using Windows 8. Why is it my responsibility?
I’m not even a Windows guy anymore as MacOS works fine for me …. but that’s just me: Always use the right tool. Nevertheless I flirted with the Surface Pro – but see my other posting on that issue.
The midwife accounting app is great by the way: It forces data backups on external media. Data loss was never an issue.
When buying new gear these days one should expect that it just works. I don’t want to tinker -as reduz did- with my wife’s computer just to keep it running. There are better ways to waste my time.
I did take that precaution, but after upgrading to Windows 8 it refused to create recovery media. And now the old recovery media offers only re-imaging of the hard-drive.
Interestingly, my Realtek RTL8188CE works fine under Windows 8.1 (and was doing so under 8 also). I still have other Windows-specific issues with hardware though.
I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/1kn1eo/is_it_true_that_the…
You shouldn’t have done that. When you get past the top comments, plenty of them say it’s dog slow.
I don’t think we’re reading the same article.
Microsoft is well known for coming late to the market, then “rushing” bad quality products, and subsequently use a full toolbox of shady practices to enforce their position in the market eventually.
The only real innovation I have seen from Microsoft since their incarnation is the mouse wheel.
So what did you expect? Balmer’s reign made things worse, not better. Why should it be different with Phone 7? Microsoft is now in this comfortable position of always delivering too little, too late.
Their original strategy is not fit for present market dynmaics anymore and on top of that, they have huge management and corporate structure issues.
I still don’t really pity them.
The problem with Microsoft is either they don’t use their products, dedicated to their cash-cow consumers, and use Apple’s in-house instead. Or they don’t use competition products to compare their against. In both scenario they are doomed to fell some way or another, if they haven’t that Windows legacy that deep rooted into firms with a maintenance/upgrade plan running.
BTW, when you see a Microsoft ad, you see people enjoying the trip like on acid or some other “cool” substances, you see the product dancing, whirling, flying, but not the product into action. Now you know why… Next Microsoft ad, keep that hint in mind :p
Kochise
Indeed, I’ve seen it used more in product placement advertising (used by characters in TV shows like Arrow and Agents of SHIELD) than in the dancing advertisements.
If all of those millions of Surface RT devices that are collecting dust in a warehouse start going on sale for $100 or less, like the HP Touchpad after it bombed, I’ll pick one up just to round out the devices in my collection. I can’t see it as more than a toy though, considering that’s how I also see Windows 8 proper on a full PC.
Hardware wise, it’s good. The OS that runs on it is another story.
8.0 is buggy. Windows 8.1 is even buggier. Even MetroIE crashes now. Which is pretty sad.
Apps which were very basic and bland now have had functionality removed. What happened to the Photo app? Where is the integration? It’s still a shitty version of Windows Photo Gallery. Why is SkyDrive inferior to the web version? I could go on. Some apps took small steps and some went back a few steps. The only good app to come out great is the email app. And the new Control Panel. The Music app is 50% less shitty now. For some reason it still tries to play stuff from Xbox Music. I can’t play Metallica on my tablet which the music is on my PC through HomeGroup. I have to go fetch manually.
And alas the real disappointment: still no Notification Centre. I use it everyday on Jelly Bean. Even ChromeOS has one. They took the same Balloon Popup from the Windows Taskbar and built upon it. Why can’t Microsoft do that same? What is going on over there in Redmond? How can MS fuck up a Music app?
There’s only 1 camp to blame: Microsoft.
The casualty in all this is Microsoft’s own crown jewel: Windows.
With Windows 8, users finally have a curated store to house “appliance”/plug-and-play/no fuss apps that appeals to the mainstream who just want it to work. This is a very important segment. Unfortunately, there are no apps worth talking about. It would have been fun for it to be a place to buy/play the same games that are on the XBox One. It would have given Lord Gaben some real competition.
The whole situation is baffling. And I am very disappointed.
Microsoft’s crown jewel is Office. And they still have an option of downplaying the whole desktop Metro thing in future Windows releases. Also Windows 7 is still there on shelves… So, really, that’s not all that dramatic at all.
I disagree with Office being MS’ crown jewel. And also disagree with the option of downplaying the whole Metro possibility. There is good money to be made in “App Stores” now. Which is driving iPad/iPhone sales. I can’t even imagine Microsoft calling it quits. While under massive attack from all fronts, the Redmond Boys are relentless.
They surely won’t drop Metro, but they could slow down their push, eg. have desktop returned as the default option for non-touch hardware. Given that they don’t sell desktop apps via their store – they merely provide links – it is indeed quite unlikely, but not completely impossible. They may still be probing desktop market.
In the end they’ll have to offer something to the corporate desktop clients, who are currently not adopting Windows 8 or Metro (simply due to their upgrade cycle and adoption policies) and are not as vocal as home users. If Windows 8 ultimately fails here, there’ll be some response from Microsoft for sure – they shouldn’t want to get users actually depending on expansive Windows-only software in too much of trouble.
Bullshit.
Good luck trying to find a non-uber-expensive laptop with Windows 7 on it. At least here in Israel, my company literally searched the bottom shelves in far too many stores in order to buy old 2012 laptops with Windows 7 pre-installed.
… And at least in my experience, 8.1 is no better.
– Gilboa
Edited 2013-10-24 03:29 UTC
Indeed, it became much better. Still several things remain beyond my understanding. If I have several unread messages in a thread, it automatically selects the newest, as if Microsoft people expect users to read mail in reverse order or skip the conversation entirely. It still doesn’t provide an option of editing mail in plain text, as well as it doesn’t detect URLs in plain text mail. It top-posts. These really should have been configurable, and IIRC people requested these options.
I agree, the hardware is fine it’s the ModernUI apps that let Surface / Win 8.1 down.
If Modern UI is the future, then why do some many apps have less functionality than their browser based counter-parts?
I’ve started tracking the issues at a blog:
http://refiningwindows8.blogspot.com/
Please feel free to submit anything you’ve noticed. The only way this situation will change is by getting users to complain and leave (constructive bad reviews) in the Windows store.
My main frustration with Metro is the swipes gestures to change apps and share the metro view with multiple apps. The view sucks and is un-Windows-like. I want my mini/maximize, full screen, and close options. The real estate for it is there, it’s just NOT there.
I don’t mind the option of a hidden systray and taskbar of metro, but when my finger touches the bottom of the screen I expect to see it. The clock needs to stay and I miss the pop up box.
I still don’t understand how Windows doesn’t have something akin to Yz Toolbar opposite the taskbar.
Edited 2013-10-25 11:11 UTC
I only feel sorry for the hardware. Something useful with no hope. Much like most of the WinCE stuff I have had over the years.
Maybe the handful (OK sorry, 2 handfuls) of WinRT owners can donate their hardware to Firefox or Ubuntu or any other devs to make useful.
Unfortunately MS requires all Windows RT hardware to be locked down to prevent other OSes from being installed (UEFI secure boot). As if RT wasn’t bad enough on its own, to rub salt in the wound MS makes sure you’re stuck with it forever.
Haven’t MS marketing determined that the only problem with Surface RT is having “RT” as a part of the product name? And once they remove that “RT”, it will be flying off the shelves like hot cakes?
Well, Surface 2 has lost the “RT” moniker. There’s now only Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro. I doubt that will make any difference in the end, though.
Yeah, I laughed out loud when they had the press release about that! Like the NAME is what is confusing customers! No, it COULDNT be the crappy OS! Nor the poor user experience, the confusing design (a desktop mode with no desktop apps!), piss poor Office program that isn’t really designed with a touchscreen in mind, or the pathetic selection of apps. No, it’s gotta be the NAME that is the problem!
Now, uneducated customers are going to be even MORE confused, with it just being called “Surface 2”! They will have no idea about the limitations on this POS, nor what makes a “Pro” a “Pro”! Can’t wait to see the financial results of this mess next year…someone get me popcorn!
The lack of progress on Windows phone is completely mystifying to me. How is it that a company with those kind of resources simply cannot do anything interesting in all that time? I just don’t get it. Are they just too big to move quickly anymore?
As for Windows RT, if it wasn’t dead already, Haswell and the new Atoms would have put the final nail in its coffin. RT was useful when the RT hardware could have twice the battery life and less weight than the x86 hardware. Now the gap is much smaller and you can get decent intel-based mobiles with low power usage the argument is much weaker why you should give up 20 years of application compatibility for a few less ounces.
I don’t live far from the main Microsoft campus. Yes, the place is big — enormous. I know several people who work there at all different levels. The best stuff Microsoft has to offer goes to the military, or gets shelved for no apparent reason other than internal politics and plain stupidity. They have a lot of really cool stuff behind the curtain but why they don’t do anything with it is bewildering.
WHy should you buy a Windows tablet with x86 CPU? There aren’t enough good Metro apps. You can run x86 desktop apps, but them a netbook or small laptop would be more suitable. If you want a tablet, an Android tablet would be better.
I for one would like a dual-booting Android-Windows (not RT) tablet. With a proper dual boot, not Android in a VM. Because sometimes I want to be able to get some work done where it’s not feasible with a laptop due to the size or position, AND I want a tablet with good touch apps.
So, why did Microsoft not improve win32 touch and input in all these years but had come up with a highly incompatible new stack and UI concept? Aborting your whole lockin, the ecosystem, and start a new one from scratch at a time you are already under heavy competative pressure is not a wise decision but a panic reaction. It is more worse. The new stack is not only incompatible to the old large ecosystem but even incompatible to itself between devices and versions. Add the horrible UI concept on top, the CE aborting, the WP7 abortion, burn your own platform again and again, end like Nokia.
Why is that that after a decade of unique success with a productline once real competition shows up a panic attack goes through upper management that leads to aborting the productline rather then improving it?
Edited 2013-10-24 15:54 UTC
Touch is old news at Microsoft. They’ve been developing touch stuff for a long time and have come up with some amazing stuff. The military gets to play with some of it but for some reason average consumers have been left in the cold. I swear to god it’s like they horde their best stuff & lock it away in a vault. The closest thing I can compare it to is filming a great movie, sticking the final version in storage, and only giving people whatever was left on the cutting room floor.
If I want a tablet I would buy an iPad, but that’s not the point. The point is given the choice between Windows RT on an ARM tablet and Windows 8.1 on an x86 tablet, the x86 tablet is not as far behind in battery life and power usage as it used to be. I have an Asus tablet with Windows 8 at work that is approximately the same size and weight as an iPad, runs an Atom processor that is relatively speedy, and gets about 8 hours of battery life.
There’s no way I would chose Windows RT over that. On the intel tablet I can run any of my windows software, on the RT tablet I can’t. Yes I would prefer a windows laptop to either of them but between the tablets I would definitely go intel.
I have used a WP7 and a WP8 phones. Both run smoothly. I have the impression that this is what people who haven’t used windows phone before usually observe first. Regarding application updates, as I don’t use mobile phone to connect internet that often, it’s not an important thing for me. I have never used a surface product, but I am thinking to buy a surface pro later this year (my purpose is to learn windows 8 and write some programs). Does anyone know how is the performance on surface pro? Can I use it as a laptop in daily work? (I also plan to install ubuntu, because it’s more convenient to use it for work. I’ll probably use Wubi installation).
I have never seen a single Surface-device in real life let alone actually used one, but according to various reviews and whatnot the Surface Pro is a perfectly useable device and actually quite good. Surface 2 Pro apparently is even better, with full-HD display and all.
You should have no problems using the Surface Pro for software development. It supports hardware virtualization, so you can enable Hyper-V so you may use the Windows Phone 8 emulator as well, if needed, or run Ubuntu concurrently in a guest VM, if desired, rather than dual-booting. I’d advise getting the Surface Pro 2 due to its greater available storage/memory options and battery life.
I have an original Surface Pro, and have used VS/SQL Management Studio, Blender, SONAR, Paint.NET, GameMaker Studio, MyPaint, Inkscape, Unity, Audacity, Reaper, Office 365 Small Business suite, and various other Win32 and WinRT apps (all currently installed), and the only time I’ve had an issue with performance is in some higher-end games. IIRC, Microsoft Flight, Gears of War, Batman:AC perform well, as has any WinRT game I’ve played. However, Star Citizen’s current builds (Win32, latest CryEngine) probably have framerates in the teens at the native 1080p resolution and default quality settings). The Pro 2’s GPU should be better for such needs.
My Pro gets used daily, and is my main PC. I feel no urgency to upgrade to the Pro 2, but the 512GB SSD would be my main interest in doing so, not any perf problems with my Pro. Since the new accessories are compatible with my Pro, I’ll probably get some of those eventually (battery cover or a dock at some point). New purchasers should go for the Pro 2 however.
If you do many large network file transfers, or have need for multiple USB devices to be connected, you may be interested in a USB network adapter, the docking station, or a combo USB3 hub/network adapter such as the one I use:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Gigabit-Ethernet-Network-Adapter…
Cause of secure boot its maybe harder then expected to install Ubuntu on it. Better stick with hardware from a 3th party like Dell, HP or Lenovo.
Edited 2013-10-24 15:59 UTC
Ubuntu supports secure boot as of 12.10.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/206950/how-to-understand-ubuntu-uefi…
However, it can also be run in a VM such as Hyper-V.
Surface Pro/Pro 2 also support disabling secure boot for those who have the need to do so, however, the prior options are generally better.
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-US/support/warranty-service-and…
Edited 2013-10-24 20:59 UTC
Never give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. You’ll only end up hurting yourself.
You think the last generation Nexus 7 is good? Wait till you get the 2nd generation Nexus 7. It’s infinitely better.
You got that right. I grabbed one a few days ago finally. The thing is mind-blowingly fast. A better processor, superior NAND, and Android 4.3 all combine into an experience that can even blow my iPad 4 away. The only thing that’s a bit disappointing is the audio quality; the audio hardware seems to have some distortion and the microphone input has some forced equalization I haven’t figured out how to get rid of yet.
Accidentally I have been to the states recently (living in Germany). There is a nice Microsoft store in the Florida Mall in Orlando (quite close to the always crowded Apple store).
And they had Surface 2 devices on display. A lady gave me neat demo and I could play with it. But they could not sell me one because they had none in stock. An nobody knew when they would receive the first batch of devices.
Compare this with the iPad Air: Introduced this week, available next week downtown in the Apple store.
For another experience visit the Microsoft Digital Eatery here in Berlin. I have been there about a month ago. The clerks outnumbered the visitors: one or two lurkers and an elderly couple who got a personal Windows 8 presentation. I approached one employee and he told me that they only showcase the technology but they won’t sell anything… WTF?
Sorry but I have to ask, how do you accidentally go to a country? Did you get on the wrong plane?
I always loved the scene where Indiana Jones climbs out of a manhole, looks around and remarks: “Ah, Venice!”
I just wanted to say that my visit and the announcement of new Surface models were totally unrelated.
He wanted to say “I happened to be in …”.
A typical German mistake.
or possibly incidently not accidentely, amazing what can get lost in translation!
Why was is Surface and Windows 8 so bad. And I don’t mean that in a technical sense.
It^aEURTMs interesting to think about why Microsoft got it so wrong with Surface and with Windows 8. Blaming some sort of internal departmental/managerial cock up would be easy but mistaken because the problems at Microsoft are strategic and they are deep.
The rise of mobile touch based computing devices is the biggest change in the world of computing since the PC and one that will generate far more users and commercial activity than the PC, and Microsoft^aEURTMs strategic response to that rise of mobile devices has been very deeply flawed.
Microsoft^aEURTMs strategy for close to three decades has been to build and extend the Window^aEURTMs empire. There have been some large non-Windows initiatives such as XBox but those did not relate to the area of generalised computing devices and so were not viewed by Microsoft as impinging on it^aEURTMs core Windows strategy. Microsoft^aEURTMs instant gut reaction to anything that might move personal computing to anything other than a variant of Windows has always been to see such developments as a threat. The one thing built deep into Microsoft, it^aEURTMs culture and it^aEURTMs business strategy is to to do nothing that could disrupt it^aEURTMs Windows product.
Now that we are several years into the touch and mobile revolution it is absolutely clear that the old PC GUI interface of windows, mouse/trackpad and an exposed and complex user land of files, folders and directories is just not suitable for use in a touch based device. Entirely new user interface systems are needed by touch devices and in Windows Phone, iOS and Android that^aEURTMs what you have. None of those operating systems depend in any way on the old desktop GUI interface, they are a break with that past and they are solving the problems of how to design a truly functional and easy to use touch based UI through new ways of doing things. Those new ways are continuing to evolve.
The problem for Microsoft was that doing something new on touch based devices, particularly tablets, was seen and experienced as a threat to it^aEURTMs Windows product. So it^aEURTMs first response was to just do nothing (and in the case of it^aEURTMs Courier project kill any inhouse attempt to rethink a non-Windows based touch interface), then it dithered for far too long about moving beyond Windows Mobile, paralysed by it^aEURTMs instinctive response of not disrupting Windows, so that Windows Phone came far too late and now looks like it will never catch up with iOS and Android. But when it came to too tablets, clearly a product category in direct competition to traditional laptops and PCs, Microsoft, even after a 100 million iPads had been sold, could not bring itself to do anything that might disrupt Windows. So what it ended up with is the bizarre dysfunctional hybrid that is Windows 8, an OS that simultaneously degrades the user experience on the PC/desktop, whilst delivery a sub-standard experience on a touch device.
Microsoft could not contemplate disrupting it^aEURTMs own business and is now paying the price. Interestingly by comparison the one PC era company that has managed to not just transition to a mobile device company but to thrive, Apple, did decide to disrupt it^aEURTM^aEURTMs own PC business by breaking with MacOSX and selling products that directly cannibalised Mac sales. As Tim Cook said ^aEUR~If you don^aEURTMt disrupt your own business then someone else will^aEURTM.
There are other problems that Microsoft faces other than Windows being disrupted. It is now becoming clearer that the value of software in the era of the mobile device is becoming almost zero and for a business built as a giant software company that it is very deeply challenging to say the least. Partly as a response to that trend towards zero value software the one lesson that Microsoft seemed to draw from the mobile device revolution, and Apple^aEURTMs successful transition, was that it^aEURTMs old licensed OEM model was inadequate and so it decided to go into competition with it^aEURTMs own OEMs and build it^aEURTMs own hardware. But it turns out doing great hardware is harder than it looks and selling hardware outside of it’s old OEM network is a whole new ball game.
It will be very interesting to watch how Microsoft^aEURTMs new CEO deals with all this.
If ypu disrupt your own business it means you trade sales of product A for sales of product B. If somebody else does you still have your product A. But what Microsoft did was to tansform product A into B and now they have neither of both.
You say this on the same day Microsoft reports a record quarter. LOL.
Good observation. The really pertinent question though is why almost none of that profit was made in the mobile device market, the biggest, fastest growing and most lucrative market in the tech sector. Especially after Microsoft has clearly made such efforts to get somewhere in those markets, it’s that failure to progress despit huge effort that requires analysis.
Personally I think that Microsoft should give up on trying to be a player in the mobile OS market and concentrate on the areas of it’s business, mostly enterprise, which can survive and grow relatively comfortably in a world where consumer software and consumer OSs have zero commercial value.
I’d say its because Microsoft up until very recently was not in the business of selling mobile hardware which is where the big money is.
With devices of these margins its simple to reap a lot of money off of a modest volume. Specifically the markup on tablets. Low end tablets chew into this a little bit, but if they can convert tablet purchasing desire to Ultrabook specced tablets (Surface Pro) the potential for profit is very nice indeed.
Consider the possibility that convertibles do take off in the future, Microsoft is pretty well set up to take advantage of that. Stranger things have happened, after all people seem to have an unexplainable obsession with ridiculous 6 inch phones.
People often complain about the Metro apps being too simple and lacking too many features. In my opinion, it is a problem in the design language itself. If you put too many elements and features in a Metro app, it very quickly becomes messy. Shadows, gradients, depth etc. have a function…
MS may prove me wrong if/when they release a Metro version of Office. I fear that they have to “hide” many features (requiring more clicks) to not make it messy.
What this guy has done looks sooo much better than what MS has done:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/24/2822891/windows-desktop-ui-concep…
Has he proved me wrong? I don’t know. If you take a closer look at it, for example the file explorer, you’ll see that today’s exporer has many, many more features.
MS should definately do what this guy proposes, adapt Metro apps for both keyboard/mouse & touch, give them responsive design (adapt to window size, both width and height), and make it possible to run them in windows (you know, the name of the OS…).
Edited 2013-10-24 11:45 UTC
I agree. They took a design which seems to work well for mobile environments and tried to extend it to the desktop. These are two different use cases. Android laptops haven’t really materialized because Android is a good mobile operating system. Apple didn’t just shrink down OSX to get it on the iPhones/iPads or scale up iOS when mobile devices eclipsed their desktop sales. I’ll give MS props for trying to think out of the box but every time I boot my Windows 8 (no 8.1) vm I get the feeling they didn’t really think it through.
Exactly!
My biggest problems with windows 8.X is the design language of Metro. It feels like simplistic widgets with giant stock photos and that just makes for an empty experience.
This style of software as no depth to it at all. On top of that horizontal scrolling on a desktop is just downright awful.
Thom, may I ask how many phones and tablets you bought, how much you paid for, and why they were replaced, in the last ten years?
I can (more or less) recall every Phone, Notebook and Tablet I purchased for daily use:
1999 – P – Panasonic GD90, 350 ^a`not – dead in 2004
2003 – N – Compaq Presario, 1300 ^a`not – sold by frustation after it broke seven times in a year
2004 – P – Sony Ericcson T630, 300 ^a`not – dead in 2007
2004 – N – Apple iBook G4, 1100 ^a`not – became unuseable in 2008 ’cause of Intel, sold
2007 – P – Nokia 6680, 300 ^a`not – somewhat dead in 2009
2008 – N – Apple MacBook, 800 ^a`not used – sold in 2009 to get one with discrete GPU
2009 – P – Eten Glofiish X800, 200 ^a`not – TOTAL AND UTTER RUBBISH, replaced by frustation in 2011
2009 – N – Apple MacBook, 800 ^a`not – stolen in 2013 :*(
2010 – T – Apple iPod Touch 2G, 200 ^a`not – stolen in 2013 :*(
2011 – P – LG Optimus One P500, 230 ^a`not – somewhat dead in 2013, still used for development
2013 – T – Asus Nexus 7, 250 ^a`not – stolen one month after :*(
2013 – N – Apple MacBook Pro, 2300 ^a`not
2013 – T – Asus Nexus 7, 250 ^a`not
2013 – P – Apple iPhone 4, 200 ^a`not
I believe I paid a lot less than you, but ended up much better satisfied
Wit my current setup, I don’t plan to replace anything until they get very unuseable. Or they break or someone take them without my permission.
Edited 2013-10-24 13:38 UTC
Uh… I don’t have any dates or pricing for every device, but this is more or less it:
Phones:
Libertel MN1 (1998, my first phone)
Alcatel OneTouch 511
Sharp TM100 (one of my favourites)
Siemens xxxx (no clue)
Nokia 8801
HTC Artemis (PocketPC smartphone – still have it, love it)
Nokia E72
iPhone 3GS
HTC HD7
Samsung Galaxy SII
LG Prada (for the lulz)
HTC 8X
Nokia E7 (for the lulz)
OPPO Find 5
iPhone 5S (ordering tomorrow morning when it becomes available)
Tablets:
iPad 2
Nexus 7 (2012)
Surface RT
PDAs:
More than my fingers and toes can count. Loads of Palms, PocketPCs, a Newton, Zaurus, etc.
Does that answer your question?
Yes
Man you guys buy a lot of stuff..
The real question is, why, in 2013 did you buy an iPhone 4? I have one and it works well but it is from 2010, so it has served as my primary phone for over 3 years. Definitely getting time to upgrade.
My history is very simple but this is a fun exercise. Leaving out the computers I had before uni:
2001: Compaq Presario Laptop. AMD 1400 for ~$1600. Sold for ~$200 in 2008 or so.
~2009: Self-built PC with quad core Q series chip. Still operating on a new SSD drive. $1000
2009: iMac Core 2 Duo. Got as partial payment for a consulting job, ~$1600. Still my main machine with SSD and upgraded RAM.
2009: iPhone 4 provided by work.
2013: iPhone 5s soon to be on order through work.
Through work I get to play with basically every device under the sun so that satisfies my “new gadget” drive.
Edited 2013-10-24 21:33 UTC
As you can see, most of my stuff has been replaced when it died or became unuseable. Or was stolen
The price was good
With iOS 7 it’s a bit slow, but far from being unuseable. In fact, it’s still a very good phone, I hope it will last two or three years.
I didn’t list my desktop PCs. In fact, I’m still using my Pentium 60 from 1994 – which of course has been upgraded multiple times, now it sports a Q9550
Leftover parts were used to build other computers, which I sold or gave to familiars and friends, and one of them is serving as my server and mule.
Also I didn’t list consoles, TVs, other non-mobile tech stuff, or stuff I bought for collection.
I didn’t list “work” gadgets too
I noticed! Man that is bad luck! My motorbike was stolen once, and not insured. Not fun.
Well generally Apple does well with supporting hardware, but more towards the beginning of the release of that hardware rather than the end. My iPhone is fine and almost 3.5 years after I got it still runs the latest OS. However I suspect at this point iOS 7 is the last major release that will support the iPhone 4. In another 3 years you will likely have trouble running current software. Although Apple has just announced that developers can continue to make their old versions of apps (that run on previous iOS versions) available, so the situation should improve going forward.
Haha. Any original parts?
It would be a very long list!
Copying everyone else cool for 30 years leads you to nowhere in the vision department. They have profit, a strong company, and wide range of entrenched products, but no vision.
I can imagine the iPad, the iPod, even the iPhone being dreamed about, even sketched out, at Apple in the 90’s, if not 80’s. Look at the newton project. But so many component tech parts needed to be refined (or invented first) for the i-devices to take over.
It’s a known fact that the iPod development quickly led to initial proposals for an iPad and iPhone. This would have been around 2000. Us Apple nerds were talking about how the iPod (then firewire) could be your mobile HD will a full OSX user account and just plug into various OSX machines wherever you may be. I don’t think we imagined that the on-board OS would be so advanced and powerful, or so cool and touch-y.
If Microsoft would have layed out an actual vision for mobile computing and then took the multiple-year steps needed to set up the environment, they might have made it work.
But instead it’s reported that the Surface project was launched 4 months after the iPad1 SHIPPED because it became clear to MS’s “braintrust” that the iPad would cut into their PC market.
4 months after it was launched you decide to compete? This is 3 years and 4 months after the first iPhone, since the iPad is nothing more than a larger iPhone.
This shows how far Apple is ahead sometimes. People on this site pull up single products by single makers as examples of being ahead of Apple, but no one designs, builds, markets, and iterates as much cool tech as Apple. And no one comes close to the profit margin either. I’m not business major but I think that’s why you bother being in business, right?
CNet wrote an an article about the Surface 2 sales start on midnight of 21 October. The whole event was pretty embarrassing for Microsoft.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57608576-75/microsofts-surface-2-…
Haha. I never understood midnight launches (games, hardware, etc.). You stay up late to get something that you could have just bought the next morning at a sensible time.