4 ms·

Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. My initial take too. But having played with several Surface Pros, i found the device so lackluster I opt

Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. My initial take too. But having played with several Surface Pros, i found the device so lackluster I opted to buy a Yiynova display/tablet for half as much money, i don't need to mess with Windows 8 or buy new software. The real problem with Surface is that it's a crappy overall device. The two keyboard options both suck. Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate so the serious applications such as office are weak. Yes, it's a great portable sketchpad, so Gabe is sold.

DigitalJack 13y ago
How long have you had the yiynova? Can you give a quick review?
- Tloewald 13y ago
  About a month. I got it because of Mischief. I posted a blog entry on it: http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 Nutshell is the tablet is good but the software kind of sucks. I can only use the tablet in mirrored mode because the tablet driver maps the surface to the combined screen, and I need to use a third party app to run the tablet at native resolution. If I were a pro, I'd probably spring for a Cintiq, but for a hobbyist it's wonderful value.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. Well, visual artists at least. No existing audio software runs on it, and it doesn't even support playback of MIDI files. I remain somewhat interested in a Surface Pro, but (like Google, and like MS themselves on Windows for years) the Surface is only useful to musicians for checking email.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  They're talking about the Pro which presumably runs tons of audio software.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Oh, blind spot on my part - I was so fixated on the RT context that I didn't read the article properly. Thanks for pointing that out.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
The main thing I want a tablet for is as a good sketchpad, ideally one that is fine with using a wood stylus so I can easily cut a stick to different nib shapes when I'm working.
ximeng 13y ago
"Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate" - not sure where this blanket statement is coming from, but the desktop option on Windows 8 works perfectly well for me on the Pro. Keyboard could be better, but works well enough (type keyboard at least, I didn't like the touch keyboard). Screen is high res and looks nice, stylus works well. For me it's been more happy than crappy overall.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  Years ago I did a comparison of how Word uses screen real estate compated to Pages (their feature sets are remarkably similar). Pages simply wastes fat less screen real estate that Word does giving you more room to see your actual document, and this is a recurring issue with Microsoft's UI design. The contrast is particularly marked with the iPad, where you get more pixels for your document on the iPad's 10" screen than in Microsoft Word on a 15" laptop screen. Just look at the ribbon, toolbar, status bar, etc. Not only does this waste screen real estate, it wastes vertical space which is at a premium on widescreen displays. On a widescreen monitor, Pages minimizes this cruft or puts it in palettes and sidebars.
  - Gormo 13y ago
    The show-the-content-and-hide-the-chrome trend in UI design isn't as presumptively valid as a lot of people try to make it out to be. When you've got a document loaded up in a word processor, you're not just trying to read static content; you're working on that content, and the application you're using is a tool for editing and manipulating it. Hiding the chrome in order to show more of the document emphasises the document content as it is in the immediate instant, rather than the potential things you can do with that content, and makes it harder to locate the tools and functions for manipulating the document. Minimal chrome might make sense in a web browser or PDF reader (at least to the extent that there's a smaller set of functionality necessary for reading documents, but hiding searching/bookmarking/referencing tools is just as bad) but in a word processor, it's much more necessary to have the application's own functional interface exposed.
    - 13y ago

DigitalJack 13y ago

How long have you had the yiynova? Can you give a quick review?

Tloewald 13y ago
About a month. I got it because of Mischief. I posted a blog entry on it: http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274 Nutshell is the tablet is good but the software kind of sucks. I can only use the tablet in mirrored mode because the tablet driver maps the surface to the combined screen, and I need to use a third party app to run the tablet at native resolution. If I were a pro, I'd probably spring for a Cintiq, but for a hobbyist it's wonderful value.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. Well, visual artists at least. No existing audio software runs on it, and it doesn't even support playback of MIDI files. I remain somewhat interested in a Surface Pro, but (like Google, and like MS themselves on Windows for years) the Surface is only useful to musicians for checking email.

Tloewald 13y ago
They're talking about the Pro which presumably runs tons of audio software.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Oh, blind spot on my part - I was so fixated on the RT context that I didn't read the article properly. Thanks for pointing that out.

moocowduckquack 13y ago

The main thing I want a tablet for is as a good sketchpad, ideally one that is fine with using a wood stylus so I can easily cut a stick to different nib shapes when I'm working.

ximeng 13y ago

"Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate" - not sure where this blanket statement is coming from, but the desktop option on Windows 8 works perfectly well for me on the Pro. Keyboard could be better, but works well enough (type keyboard at least, I didn't like the touch keyboard). Screen is high res and looks nice, stylus works well. For me it's been more happy than crappy overall.

Tloewald 13y ago
Years ago I did a comparison of how Word uses screen real estate compated to Pages (their feature sets are remarkably similar). Pages simply wastes fat less screen real estate that Word does giving you more room to see your actual document, and this is a recurring issue with Microsoft's UI design. The contrast is particularly marked with the iPad, where you get more pixels for your document on the iPad's 10" screen than in Microsoft Word on a 15" laptop screen. Just look at the ribbon, toolbar, status bar, etc. Not only does this waste screen real estate, it wastes vertical space which is at a premium on widescreen displays. On a widescreen monitor, Pages minimizes this cruft or puts it in palettes and sidebars.
- Gormo 13y ago
  The show-the-content-and-hide-the-chrome trend in UI design isn't as presumptively valid as a lot of people try to make it out to be. When you've got a document loaded up in a word processor, you're not just trying to read static content; you're working on that content, and the application you're using is a tool for editing and manipulating it. Hiding the chrome in order to show more of the document emphasises the document content as it is in the immediate instant, rather than the potential things you can do with that content, and makes it harder to locate the tools and functions for manipulating the document. Minimal chrome might make sense in a web browser or PDF reader (at least to the extent that there's a smaller set of functionality necessary for reading documents, but hiding searching/bookmarking/referencing tools is just as bad) but in a word processor, it's much more necessary to have the application's own functional interface exposed.
  - 13y ago