5 ms·

It's not about fashion-conscious style. Pulling out the Surface in a nice cafe to work in feels... awkward. Out of place. It's clearly a business device for off

It's not about fashion-conscious style. Pulling out the Surface in a nice cafe to work in feels... awkward. Out of place. It's clearly a business device for office work, and doing office work in a cafe feels like an imposition. This is not true in Starbucks, but is in the more provincial cafes around here. Word autosave isn't good enough. Here's what happens regularly: I leave Word open without manually saving for days in the background without realizing. Eventually the Surface decides to reboot itself for an update or runs out of power. The next time I open a Word document from an email attachment during a conference call some stupid side bar pops up with a number of revisions of documents that I instincively ignore. Cancel, go away! I'm busy! Oh, now I've lost that work. I've retrained myself always to save the 'recovered' copies now, and then manually check whether it's newer or older than the last 'saved' copy. I shouldn't have to do that. I really, really wanted to like the Surface. Just check my previous posts and tweets about it. I still use it, but I am also disappointed.

KurtMueller 13y ago
| It's not about fashion-conscious style. Pulling out the Surface in a nice cafe to work in feels... awkward. Out of place. This is your own hangup and has nothing to do with the tablet.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- moconnor 13y ago
  Do you remember the Surface teaser advert? The design language of the device is about aggression, dominance, edge. This is socially out of place in some settings. Also, I'm entitles to my social hangups. We live in a social environment, not a vacuum.
  - Breakthrough 13y ago
    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even then, who are you to judge someone or something else? This is the exact problem with the computer ecosystem right now (and more often than not, the Apple cult). I understand that you care how it looks, but to go as far as to care how others might perceive the device you chose to accomplish your work? Why would you care - let alone let it influence your decision - on what to buy, what to wear, or what to use? Be your own person, because half of your "critiques" are based on how you think other people perceive you.
- javajosh 13y ago
  >This is your own hangup and has nothing to do with the tablet. A few things. First, that's rude, especially to someone who's taken the time to express an honest view. Second, he never claimed to be speaking on behalf of some objective viewpoint. This is clearly an opinion piece, and it's redundant to say, "Well, that's your opinion." Of course it is! Third, and this bears repeating: his opinion is valid and useful in-and-of itself. It doesn't need to be "correct", and you don't need to agree with it for that to be so. What you did there was attempt to invalidate his viewpoint, his reaction. It is a form of control, of bullying, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying it.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    What on earth are you ranting about ? It IS his own hangup if he feels uncomfortable using a laptop in a cafe. Millions of people do it every single day and see no issue.
300bps 13y ago
Word autosave isn't good enough...some stupid side bar pops up with a number of revisions of documents that I instincively ignore. You are mixing up Auto Save with Auto Recover. In Word, your first line of defense is explicitly saving the document. Perhaps if clicking the button is too difficult you could hit Ctrl-S? That's what I do. Failing explicitly saving your document, you could program Word to Auto Save your document every minute if you wanted to. This doesn't bring up (or even create) different revisions of the document. It literally is just as if you clicked the Save button (or hit Ctrl-S). Failing the Auto Save - maybe you have it set to 10 minutes and you typed for 9 minutes when your computer crashed? You have Auto Recover. That's where Word automatically detects that Something Bad happened and shows you the last few times it made a copy of your Word environment for you (which includes your document). So, three levels of protection that work pretty well for most people. some stupid side bar pops up with a number of revisions of documents that I instincively ignore. Cancel, go away! I'm busy! Oh, now I've lost that work. Perhaps you would be less busy if you weren't ignoring popups that were attempting to help you save your work. My honest assessment is that you want your real work on Surface to be as easy and fun as your Subway Surfers on iPad.
- moconnor 13y ago
  I think you summed up exactly what's wrong with the Microsoft approach to documents here. In Pages, or Google Docs, it's just a document. It's always saved, always up to date, it just works. That's the future.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    In Pages, or Google Docs, it's just a document. It's always saved, always up to date, it just works I have a friend that uses Google Docs. He once sent me a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet. I got lost in the user interface at one point and ended up seeing the list of all of his documents. I clicked on one thinking it was the correct one and loaded what appeared to be on quick notice a journal of various medical problems he's been having. That's the future. You're right. The future is people using technology that they don't want to be bothered to learn and thereby having it do things that nobody (especially them) intended. I'm sorry you lost a document but you fell through 3 failsafe levels and did it to yourself. Pretending things like that don't happen to Google Docs is ridiculous and shows your true bias.
FireBeyond 13y ago
"It's clearly a business device for office work, and doing office work in a cafe feels like an imposition." Better tell my girlfriend. She's a nanny. I just knew she should have bought an iPad.

KurtMueller 13y ago

| It's not about fashion-conscious style. Pulling out the Surface in a nice cafe to work in feels... awkward. Out of place. This is your own hangup and has nothing to do with the tablet.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
moconnor 13y ago
Do you remember the Surface teaser advert? The design language of the device is about aggression, dominance, edge. This is socially out of place in some settings. Also, I'm entitles to my social hangups. We live in a social environment, not a vacuum.
- Breakthrough 13y ago
  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but even then, who are you to judge someone or something else? This is the exact problem with the computer ecosystem right now (and more often than not, the Apple cult). I understand that you care how it looks, but to go as far as to care how others might perceive the device you chose to accomplish your work? Why would you care - let alone let it influence your decision - on what to buy, what to wear, or what to use? Be your own person, because half of your "critiques" are based on how you think other people perceive you.
javajosh 13y ago
>This is your own hangup and has nothing to do with the tablet. A few things. First, that's rude, especially to someone who's taken the time to express an honest view. Second, he never claimed to be speaking on behalf of some objective viewpoint. This is clearly an opinion piece, and it's redundant to say, "Well, that's your opinion." Of course it is! Third, and this bears repeating: his opinion is valid and useful in-and-of itself. It doesn't need to be "correct", and you don't need to agree with it for that to be so. What you did there was attempt to invalidate his viewpoint, his reaction. It is a form of control, of bullying, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying it.
- threeseed 13y ago
  What on earth are you ranting about ? It IS his own hangup if he feels uncomfortable using a laptop in a cafe. Millions of people do it every single day and see no issue.

300bps 13y ago

Word autosave isn't good enough...some stupid side bar pops up with a number of revisions of documents that I instincively ignore. You are mixing up Auto Save with Auto Recover. In Word, your first line of defense is explicitly saving the document. Perhaps if clicking the button is too difficult you could hit Ctrl-S? That's what I do. Failing explicitly saving your document, you could program Word to Auto Save your document every minute if you wanted to. This doesn't bring up (or even create) different revisions of the document. It literally is just as if you clicked the Save button (or hit Ctrl-S). Failing the Auto Save - maybe you have it set to 10 minutes and you typed for 9 minutes when your computer crashed? You have Auto Recover. That's where Word automatically detects that Something Bad happened and shows you the last few times it made a copy of your Word environment for you (which includes your document). So, three levels of protection that work pretty well for most people. some stupid side bar pops up with a number of revisions of documents that I instincively ignore. Cancel, go away! I'm busy! Oh, now I've lost that work. Perhaps you would be less busy if you weren't ignoring popups that were attempting to help you save your work. My honest assessment is that you want your real work on Surface to be as easy and fun as your Subway Surfers on iPad.

moconnor 13y ago
I think you summed up exactly what's wrong with the Microsoft approach to documents here. In Pages, or Google Docs, it's just a document. It's always saved, always up to date, it just works. That's the future.
- 300bps 13y ago
  In Pages, or Google Docs, it's just a document. It's always saved, always up to date, it just works I have a friend that uses Google Docs. He once sent me a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet. I got lost in the user interface at one point and ended up seeing the list of all of his documents. I clicked on one thinking it was the correct one and loaded what appeared to be on quick notice a journal of various medical problems he's been having. That's the future. You're right. The future is people using technology that they don't want to be bothered to learn and thereby having it do things that nobody (especially them) intended. I'm sorry you lost a document but you fell through 3 failsafe levels and did it to yourself. Pretending things like that don't happen to Google Docs is ridiculous and shows your true bias.

FireBeyond 13y ago

"It's clearly a business device for office work, and doing office work in a cafe feels like an imposition." Better tell my girlfriend. She's a nanny. I just knew she should have bought an iPad.