7 ms·
They're using Windows RT
- Aaronontheweb 13y agoI have a Surface Pro and a Surface RT - can run SC2 and VS2012 on the Surface Pro, but despite that I still use my Surface RT far more frequently. It's an excellent tablet, I love having the keyboard when I need to compose emails or edit spec documents for work when I'm on the go, it has great battery life, the Kindle and Netflix applications are better experiences than their iOS counterparts (on the iPad), and the app selection is actually pretty decent for my use cases.
- girvo 13y agoSC2 runs on the 4000? What settings? That's really good to know!
- shin_lao 13y agoI have a Surface RT as well and I'm super happy with it. I can do serious Office work with it, work on any file, browser, mail, etc. I bring it with me all the time when I go to my customers to take notes. Last time I was in a conference, I talked with a Microsoft guy who was happy to see I had a Surface RT. He told me I was the first person he saw at a conference with that device (or a Pro). I was pretty surprised. So where did Microsoft screw up? Marketing? Maybe they shouldn't say it's a tablet.
- kvb 13y agoOne problem is distribution. They don't have the network of stores that Apple does, and they didn't make Surfaces available in other retailers until quite a while after release. This made it impossible for most people to try before buying. Another problem is messaging - it's very hard to concisely describe Windows RT's role in a way that people can grasp. It doesn't run legacy software, but it does run Office. Is it a laptop, or a tablet, or what?
- girvo 13y agoNot teaching the sales people how to sell it properly. Their online training is shit.
- asveikau 13y agoThey should have allowed people to port old-style Win32 apps to ARM. They were IMO betting too much on the shiny new Windows Runtime which is not mature. If it won't run ported Win32 code there is no compelling reason to get it over an iPad or Android tablet. It's effectively a Windows tablet that doesn't run Windows apps. iPad and Android don't run Windows apps either, but they both have more and better software than the Windows Store and will probably continue to do so for some years to come. OTOH imagine if you could actually use that "Desktop" app to run useful software ported from x86. It might have some of the appeal of the Surface Pro. (Full disclosure: I worked in the Windows division during Win8 development. I left the company in 2011.)
- shin_lao 13y agoTo be honest, there is no application I currently miss on my Windows RT. Except foobar2000 maybe. But where you are spot-on is for old games: the ARM has got enough punch to run them and it would turn the RT into an old game portable console. The other thing that isn't very great is Windows Media Player. It's painful to browse files from a NAS for example. So a couple of rough edges, but overall, really great.
- Aldo_MX 13y agoI'm still baffled at Microsoft's decision to not support desktop apps... They shot themselves in both feet...
- underwater 13y agoI have an RT. And buyer's remorse. A few apps are beautiful and smooth, but most frequently pause and stutter (for example switching between inboxes in the mail app locks up the UI for seconds) and few third-party apps use the modern UI design language well. The actual app selection is abysmal. I really want to like the tablet and held out hope that Windows 8.1 would fix some of the underlying problems but it turned out to be minor update in functionality. My wife's iPad was cheaper, is always smooth and has a great selection of apps.
- jbigelow76 13y agoI;m very happy with my Surface RT purchase. I didn't want the weight of the Surface Pro and am fine with knowing that if I have to do any dev work I'll switch to my full size laptop. As a media consumption device it's great, especially if you have an existing library of purchased Xbox movies.
- josephby 13y agoAlternate title: "Attention Silicon Valley: Office and Windows are Not Quite Dead Yet"
- kevinconroy 13y agoOr "Most Computer Users Don't Care What's Cool, Just What Works"
- workbench 13y agoIt only works because that's the schools dated and closed ecosystem
- girvo 13y agoBecause they run Windows? That's a bit myopic.
- randyrand 13y agoI hate to break it to you but MS Office is here to stay. There are no good alternatives to it for the average user.
- quacker 13y agoAre there actually any schools that don't use Microsoft products? Nearly all the machines at my university are Windows machines. The CS department has Linux machines in the labs (alongside Windows machines). There are a few Macs around, but all the other machines run Windows. My job also provides Windows machines almost exclusively (there are some Macs and tablets for testing).
- smacktoward 13y agoOr "Here's An Anecdote Completely Unsupported By Any Data"
- arjie 13y agoThat's correct, and probably why Windows RT has such a small portion of the tablet market.
- qdpb 13y agoThe article concludes that Windows RT meets students needs perfectly, but it's hardly surprising since the college's workflow is so heavily skewed towards Microsoft applications. It's equivalent to saying Mac OS X is an excellent development environment for iOS apps.
- isaacwaller 13y agoBut there are many more students than iOS developers.
- cbhl 13y agoTrue, but someone at the institution probably made the decision to adopt (and/or keep) Microsoft/Citrix around for the department the author's kid is in.
- edtechdev 13y agoYeah it's partly a byproduct of some schools being slow to change, which is partly from wanting tight centralized control (like at a business), partly from budget cuts, and partly from just being slow to learn new things and not wanting to have to do more work. Our university still uses Windows XP, just like at some businesses. Our students were still in elementary school when XP was released. And we still use Blackboard since before even XP was released. They don't support Apple or Google stuff at all, even when it's completely free (like Google Apps for Education).
- sliverstorm 13y agoBah, in the big picture I don't think it is any of those things. "Slow to change" was not the reason I used Powerpoint, Word, and OneNote in college. I used them because they were the best I could find at what they did, and I could afford them because they offered attractive pricing to students. As much as Office might irritate people on occasion, let's be honest here- Office is pretty good, and I'm not aware of any honest competitor. The only other applications I used specifically for college were remote computing clients, Matlab, and a fairly slick PDF annotator.
- girvo 13y agoI work at a large consumer electronics retailer as a salesperson in the computer and tablet section. You would be blown away by how many Surface RT's I've sold, simply by demoing Metro on the touch screen, the Touch Cover, and the fact that you can plug in USB devices and has Office included. People who's netbooks are dying now, and want to replace it with something for their normal light usage love it. The best bits of both worlds. The problems arise when someone expects it to be as useful as a $1000 ultra book. That's where the Pro comes in, but I've sold them mostly to business owners who are using it for sales and other on-the-floor purposes
- harrytuttle 13y agoI do the opposite thing when someone asks what to buy. I sort them out an older Lenovo T-series with windows 7 x64, security essentials and open office for around 150GBP. Never a single complaint. Sure it ain't pretty but they work and are cheap and way more functional than an RT device. Not sure I could live with the inevitable brick wall when someone takes their RT and tries to install some obscure bit of software they've been relying on for years on it (or open university materials for example). That's instant end game for them, resulting in "why did I buy this piece of shit"
- untog 13y agoNot sure I could live with the inevitable brick wall when someone takes their RT and tries to install some obscure bit of software they've been relying on for years on it (or open university materials for example). Like when someone tries to do the same with their iPad? As long as you don't sell the RT as being able to run everything, I don't think people will expect it to.
- harrytuttle 13y agoI wouldn't sell them an ipad either, or an android tablet. RT is a bit of a con as it has the appearance of windows but isn't totally compatible. Most users, despite your best intentions probably have no idea what you are talking about.
- 13y ago
- captainmuon 13y agoGive me the option to run desktop apps on it (just a few, a terminal, recompiled open source stuff, self-compiled stuff for my work), and I'll seriously consider buying one.
- cbhl 13y agoYou sound like you want the Ubuntu Edge. The Windows RT is supposed to be competitive with iPads; i.e. they expect developers to re-tool their apps to work well with touch in WPF and/or Silverlight.
- bpicolo 13y agoSurface Pro does it, but at a higher price point for certain.
- acqq 13y agoDoesn't Surface Pro even have a fan? For me, it's a PC then.
- freehunter 13y agoSurface Pro is a PC. An old school tablet PC, same as we've had since since Windows XP Tablet Edition.
- astrodust 13y agoIt's like a PC with a really crappy keyboard, unless you buy one that increases the price to the point where you should've bought a tablet notebook in the first place.
- edtechdev 13y agoChromebook with Chrubuntu might work
- randyrand 13y agoCheck out the XDA forums - a very simple bit flip allows installation of any (unsigned) ARM binaries and most open source projects have already been ported/recompiled. Edit: Links: "Jail break" tool: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158 Ported apps: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348
- jackbravo 13y agoSo, universities using proprietary formats (Power Point instead of Libre/Open Office) encourage students to buy Microsoft products. Times have not changed as much as we'd like to think.
- kvb 13y agoWhich tablet/device in this price range is best for editing Libre/Open Office documents?
- jmduke 13y agoFor Windows, the Office software suite is far and away superior to open-source alternatives. If you're using them heavily, the amount of effort/time you'd lose wrangling with Libre is not worth it (I know, I tried.)
- bluedino 13y agoIt's also what they're going to use when they are done with college and working for most companies.
- rbanffy 13y agoAnd those who start companies, will be more likely to mandate Office because it's all they ever knew.
- speeder 13y agoI don't get why people say that. I am using Libre Office for about 10 years already without issue, except to open proprietary formats...
- Joeri 13y agoHave you used ms office? I've used both extensively and ms office is clearly and obviously superior in my opinion. Superior in usability, not in functionality (you can do everything with LO, it just takes more work).
- mtgx 13y agoSeems like a case of that school being already heavily invested in Microsoft programs, and being very hard to use anything else there. This is why institutions and organizations need to open up to alternatives, otherwise they'll always be stuck with using stuff from the same vendor over and over again.
- mixmastamyk 13y agoForced to use Office and only Office, eh? When there are plenty of free alternatives? What a racket. Perhaps they can be sued.
- jetru 13y agoMy mom bought a Windows Tablet. I had just dismissed it before. However, I started using it. The UI was great - fast, responsive and clean. Sure, the app choice is nothing like in it is iOS. But it had all the most common apps and did everything it was supposed to. Who thought so? Face palm moment In other news, my Windows machines crashes much lesser than my Mountain Lion machine. Go figure.
- rwolf 13y ago4.5% tablet marketshare (http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-and-windows-rt-account-45-global-tablet-market-share-q2-2013 http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-and-windows-rt-account...) is tiny, but big enough to account for anecdotes like this.
- mtgx 13y agoAsus has just announced it's abandoning Windows RT. http://allthingsd.com/20130730/asus-pulling-back-on-windows-rt-chairman-says/ http://allthingsd.com/20130730/asus-pulling-back-on-windows-... Samsung and Acer has said so earlier, too. And Microsoft took almost a billion dollar hit on it (and probably more losses to come). Windows RT is dead. I've noticed many of the "old PC companies" are starting to aggressively support Android, and there's also a rumored massive wave of Chromebooks in the second half of this year, from most of the big PC OEM's.
- michaelwww 13y ago> Windows RT is dead. I doubt it. I like to remind people that Microsoft historically takes 3 tries to get something right.
- astrodust 13y agoThree tries later, it's dead. Zune. Windows Live. PlaysForSure. Spot watches...
- criley2 13y agoZune ideas became Windows Phone. Windows Live was rebranded. As far as Spot watches... I think I speak for many people here, "what"? Some random minor product line from a decade ago?
- pedalpete 13y agoWell, actually, they had a few kicks at Zune (2, I still love my HD) before launching Windows Phone, which would have been the 3rd kick, which is normally when they get it right. At this point, they're at kick 2 on the Phone, and making progress, but still have a long way to go.
- astrodust 13y agoSpot was Microsoft's attempt to kick-start the "internet of things": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_watch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_watch Once again another thing where Microsoft was in the right place at the wrong time, and didn't follow-through on their initial work, instead leaving it in the ditch so that years later the press can be worked into a frothy fever over this very thing. Apple did this with the Newton, it's true, but lately they've shown a lot more discipline in only launching things they're absolutely committed to. There hasn't been a Mac Cube in a long time.
- Tobias42 13y agoThe author fails to mention tablets with an Atom CPU as an alternative. They cost pratically the same as similar ARM tablets and give you the option of running x86 software.
- forgotAgain 13y agoTo date RT has been a failure. You can't rewrite history.