Windows Surface 8 RT

[wodin]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

2-cell battery? Now that seems awfully small, the 4-cell is another $79. And you should get at least 4GB of RAM but there seems to be no such option. And the stylus capability is extra, Office is not included. I would wait to see what others bring to the table.

I nearly ordered the 4 cell battery, but decided that I’d see how the 2 cell performed, and if it was adequate. If I need more I can always buy either another 2 cell or a 4 cell. That's the beauty of replaceable batteries.

This is a 32 bit Atom processor; the 32 bit OS can only access 3 GB. I’m not sure if the Clovertrail chip can address more than 2 GB, but all of the Clovertrail tabs that I’ve researched max out there. Some of the i5 Core based systems have 4 GB and 64 bit OS, but typically run $300 to $400 more and I haven’t seen any shipping yet.

[Anabran]

To be honest these surface tablets look impressive.
However for me personally I have no need for a full Modern OS
( Apple or windows )on a Device that does not have the hardware power to run Full versions of my professional 3D/CG animation & Visual Effects software
such as Autodesk Maya or Adobe after effects or SideFX Houdini

That is why I am staying with a "mobile OS" like android/IOS.
for my tablets and keeping my real production work on a "real" Computers or Laptops

[kennyc]

These guys don't seem to like Win 8/surface much:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...?taxonomyId=15

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/i-g...i-dont-get-it/

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Anabran

To be honest these surface tablets look impressive.
However for me personally I have no need for a full Modern OS
( Apple or windows )on a Device that does not have the hardware power to run Full versions of my professional 3D/CG animation & Visual Effects software
such as Autodesk Maya or Adobe after effects or SideFX Houdini

That is why I am staying with a "mobile OS" like android/IOS.
for my tablets and keeping my real production work on a "real" Computers or Laptops

Yep, for me it's like people buying phones based on the camera. If you are serious about photography or video, you're not going to do it on a phone or a tablet.

and even though I've seen some pretty amazing digital paintings on iPad and others, I still don't think a serious digital artist would consider it much.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kennyc

and even though I've seen some pretty amazing digital paintings on iPad and others, I still don't think a serious digital artist would consider it much.

The serious digital artists I know run scary desktop rigs with 32GB RAM, terabytes of HDD, top-grade Wacom tablets and Corel Painter. Anything less and it's just doodling.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by kennyc

These guys don't seem to like Win 8/surface much:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...?taxonomyId=15

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/i-g...i-dont-get-it/

I only can agree to one issue of the techcrunch "review": Lack of apps.
Neither can I confirm the described bugs, nor flickering of the screen or other problems described...

[markbot]

The Modern UI is great and Microsoft did a wonderful job. If mobile computing is the future, then you have to admit that touch is the future....and Windows 8 and RT have awesome touch interfaces. The professional reviewers have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and are just used to hating Microsoft. When Microsoft actually does something better than or different from Apple, they get confused. I think the iPhone is great but I wouldn't want the same OS on a tablet.

There are so many of these reviewers who are "confused" by the Surface and Windows 8 or they believe "regular" consumers will be "confused". Admit that they are only confused because MSFT did something unexpected, innovative, and different, and ultimately better than Apple and Google.

MSFT had to require the Modern UI and get rid of the start menu in order to jump start the Modern UI app market. I have used the Modern UI with a mouse and the experience is fine...no negatives, despite a little bit of learning involved. Instead of a vertical list of icons you have a horizontal arrangment of live tiles. You can easily get to the list of icons also if you want it.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I only can agree to one issue of the techcrunch "review": Lack of apps.
Neither can I confirm the described bugs, nor flickering of the screen or other problems described...

Oh, I can agree with one other issue... "BIASED"! Mr. Siegler's statement on the first page of the review "May a thousand “BIASED!!!” comments bloom in the cesspit below this post" tells it all.

But then I should have known better just from the title.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The serious digital artists I know run scary desktop rigs with 32GB RAM, terabytes of HDD, top-grade Wacom tablets and Corel Painter. Anything less and it's just doodling.

Yep, that's what I got. (well not that much Ram - only 6GB )....

But the rest.

As well as photoshop and the top end Canon DSLR camera and lenses.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by markbot

The Modern UI is great and Microsoft did a wonderful job. If mobile computing is the future, then you have to admit that touch is the future....and Windows 8 and RT have awesome touch interfaces. The professional reviewers have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and are just used to hating Microsoft. When Microsoft actually does something better than or different from Apple, they get confused. I think the iPhone is great but I wouldn't want the same OS on a tablet.

There are so many of these reviewers who are "confused" by the Surface and Windows 8 or they believe "regular" consumers will be "confused". Admit that they are only confused because MSFT did something unexpected, innovative, and different, and ultimately better than Apple and Google.

MSFT had to require the Modern UI and get rid of the start menu in order to jump start the Modern UI app market. I have used the Modern UI with a mouse and the experience is fine...no negatives, despite a little bit of learning involved. Instead of a vertical list of icons you have a horizontal arrangment of live tiles. You can easily get to the list of icons also if you want it.

Those idiots have to write something to justify the big checks they get from the iMaker. How stupid do these reviewers think the average user must be not to get the hang of the new interface? And the search function is phenomenal, much easier to get to every hidden function than ever before. Even unusual functions like connecting via SSTP protocol are right there. My guess is that for most people Surface would be a wonderful laptop substitute. And as for entertainment, even Hulu and Slingplayer work for free. Yes, not for everybody -- but much better than iOS or Android if you use it for both work and play. And easy to use it definitely is. Would I like to have the choice of more apps --- of course. Now, if this thing had a full range of apps then the competition would be dead.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Those idiots have to write something to justify the big checks they get from the iMaker......

and unfortunately "controversy" sells.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Would I like to have the choice of more apps --- of course.

The thing's been out for, what?, a month?
Give it a year. The apps will come.

For that matter, this is what next year's Win8Pro tablets will have available:
http://www.zdnet.com/leaked-intel-at...97/?s_cid=e539

Bay Trail-T is the follow-on for Intel's Clover Trail platform, but with a number of improvements. First, it is based on 22-nanometer architecture as opposed to Clover Trail's 32-nanometer architecture, which, according to the roadmap, means half the power consumption.

The leaked Intel documents suggest that video battery life is up, from about 9 hours for Clover Trail to more than 11 hours for Bay Trail-T hardware.

The number of cores have also been bumped from two to four, though since Intel has ditched Hyper-Threading the number of threads stays at four. Despite this, the core increases, combined with a clock speed boost from 1.5GHz to a far more respectable 2.1GHz, offer a 50 to 60 percent performance improvement.

Bay Trail-T also offers support for 3D cameras and USB 3.0. The processor is also fully compatible with Windows 8.

Powering the graphics side of the SoC is the HD 4000 chip found inside the Ivy Bridge processors, which offers DirectX 11 support, display resolutions up to 2,560 by 1,600 pixels, and boosts performance by at least three-fold. This puts Bay Trail-T well ahead of both Clover Trail and ARM's Cortex-A15 platform

I expect we'll hear a lot about Bay Trail-T at CES 2013.
The ball is in ARM's court, now.

[fjtorres]

To the usability critics, CNET has an answer:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57...hool-thinking/

Microsoft, a company often tarred for its lack of innovation, wasn't shooting for incremental improvements with Windows 8. The software giant embraced its new tile-based user interface for Windows to leverage its operating system hegemony to compete in new world of tablet computing where Apple's iPad is dominant.

"For Microsoft to support incremental change around a new paradigm would be suicide," Hobbs said.

For its part, Microsoft said it conducted usability tests in more than 127 countries, refining the operating system to one where users can find the information most relevant to them. And in a recent video reported by longtime Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott, Jensen Harris, director of program management for the Windows User Experience Team, acknowledged the need for a significant shift.

"Resting on familiar is the way to mediocrity," Harris said in an August presentation to user experience designers.

Nielsen told me he's not advocating modest product evolution. That has its own set of problems.

"Every time you do incremental change, you acquire crud," Nielsen said.

Former Sun Microsystems chief executive Scott McNealy famously labeled Windows as a "hairball" for all the code it amassed over the years in the name of modest improvement.

"At some point in time, you've got to make a break from the past," Nielsen said. "But you can't do it very often. That's why it's so important to make sure you get it right."

His research and analysis tells him that Microsoft didn't get it right this time, and that Microsoft should have put out one operating system for tablets and a separate one for PCs. Then again, Nielsen's research and analysis led him to pan the iPad's usability when it debuted two years ago, noting inconsistencies in the way different apps work. Of course, that didn't stop consumers from snapping up the device in eye-popping numbers.

None of this is to say that Microsoft has created the perfect operating system. Windows 8 has its flaws. Teague's Hobbs agrees with Nielsen's criticism of the potential for errors when using gestures with the tablet version of the operating system. And he thinks that the animation that announces new information, such as a news story in a specific app, can be overly distracting. Indeed, some analysts have already soured on Windows 8's prospects.

"I don't think they've got it all right by any sense," Hobbs said. "But I'd argue that Microsoft is doing some of the most interesting user interface work on the planet."

First the big, clean break--then the refinement.
Win95 --> Win98
Win2000 --> WinXP
Give it time guys.

It'll take time to absorb the big changes and distinguish between things they really got wrong and things that are merely unfamiliar.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The thing's been out for, what?, a month?
Give it a year. The apps will come.

For that matter, this is what next year's Win8Pro tablets will have available:
http://www.zdnet.com/leaked-intel-at...97/?s_cid=e539



I expect we'll hear a lot about Bay Trail-T at CES 2013.
The ball is in ARM's court, now.

Just in time for me to hand off that RT tablet to my wife.....

[Gunnerp245]

Not to hijack, but it appears this tablet is in the last episode of Hawaii Five-O. Kona was attaching the keyboad and you could see the kickstand.