Microsoft Surface Win RT
 

FedEx dropped off the Surface RT this AM and I've been messing a bit with it. We got it to test as a possible app deployment platform, and I have a colleague who lives on OneNote so I figured I'd use the opportunity to play with that as well (the web client is a bit clunky).

Setup was pretty painless. UI is interesting. Usability is...umm...interesting. One would think that since MS is either late to the party and had a chance to learn from the iPad or has been doing this for years (depending on how you view their previous tablet forays), the experience would be decent. But maybe not.

Maybe I haven't figured out the ins and outs yet, so some of this might be user error. Wouldn't be the first time. But I'm not exactly a novice device user so if I can't figure out quickly how to do something then there might be an issue.

Font sizes - not everything will scale up with a pinch zoom. And the only accessibility options are "high contrast" which changes to white text on black background, and the "make everything on your screen bigger" option isn't supported.

I have a little over a thousand people in my contacts (between work and personal). Who thought that side scrolling through that was a good idea with no quick way to get to a letter?

Pinch zoom is slow in the browser and not very smart. Double taps in iOS and Android will often zoom a section to fill the screen. Double tap in RT brings up a highlight for copy/paste. Pinch has no smart zoom, at least that I can find.

The news feed has no pinch zoom at all - either in the preview or the full story. So if you can't read 9pt text you're out of luck.

With the calendar you can't adjust how many hours you see in the window - you have to scroll to see early or late items.

Oh wait, I think I found a global text change. You have to go into the main control panel (which I only found with a sideswipe while running onenote), then you get the typical windows control panel. And to change the text from smaller (100%) to medium (125%) you have to log out to apply the changes.

Will be interesting to start getting more real world feedback on this as it hits the streets. Early reports have been mixed at best. Since I don't use windows daily I don't have a lot of baggage from that side of the street. But this is definitely a "two-tiered" system. There is the win8 (and RT) veneer, then you scratch the surface and are back to a more typical windows under the hood.

On the plus side, the keyboard cover is pretty cool and I can type ok on it.

Does it come with a free Zune?

enzo :rolleyes:

keyboard cover - is that the Touch cover or the Type Cover?

You were smart to order one.

I went by the local store this AM

This was line one of two....

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1351282164.jpg


The lines where for those buying.

In Bellevue, 50 yards from a Microsoft building? :rolleyes:

I have the touch cover. It is a nice piece of engineering and easier to type on than glass. So far that is about the only good thing I can say about it. The UI and software is pretty half-baked imho. Perhaps comparable to the first iteration of iOS but that was a long time ago. In addition the live.com site is another mess. Wrt to the surface, the whole break between the new UI and the desktop is odd. When you go to use office you are thrown back into the old Win. Maybe the 2nd or 3rd generation will be better, but at this point (to me) it is a curiosity rather than the "no compromise" holy grail as promised by Redmond designers.

HD, Those wouldn't be Microsoft employees (or family). ...they would go to the employee store in Redmond.

Knowing that the device could be ordered for delivery today I was surprised to see the huge lines.

Have you used the Surface RT yet? I'm a few hours into it and I have to say that much of that article correlates with my experience. I give the touch keyboard higher marks, but beyond that it is a disjointed experience and I'm not seeing the productivity side of things better relative to other tablets. Maybe the full win8 version will be a different story.

Not that I have much experience with these contraptions :D

http://nostatic.com/photos/desk.jpg

That store really sucks. The windows phone challenge a few months ago had the same line out the door. They are simply not set up to handle large volumes of customers.
I was ready to walk in, sign up for their phone and service, and walk out, but they insisted I wait in line for several hours to do the challenge. Consequently they failed my "shut up and take my money" test.

It has a better tactile response than I was expecting. The Type-cover is better yet.

I'll note that I was happy to see other hardware offerings as well.

This was looking good for the price/size/performance. (testing Pelican on RT ;) )

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1351283801.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1351283816.jpg


This with a 1080 screen, i5 processor ... thin, light..
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1351284068.jpg

Lots of devices. I didn't care for the glossy screen treatments (horrible outside/daylight)

Microsoft offers $100 giveaway to line up for Surface | Brier Dudley's Blog | The Seattle Times

I just find it hard to believe that anyone would stand in line for ANY electronic device, no matter how "cool" it is.

Having been a victim of Microsoft bloat/crapware since 1987, I doubt I'll be investing in a tablet with an MSFT logo on it.

That said, I'm getting pretty fed up with Android--both my phone and my Acer A500 tablet. Web browsing is really unpleasant, and things seem to get laggy on both devices for no discernable reason. The tablet is worse, to be honest. It's amazing how simple apps can cause the thing to be totally unresponsive for several seconds at a stretch.

And finally, Apple...no way am I going to buy buy buy into that iOS thing.

From a usability standpoint I'm not seeing many differences from Win8 ...which I tested a year-ish ago (Dev preview). For my purposes, I also find the Metro overlay a disjointed experience. (as I've posted way back) But I can see where MSFT is going with this.

interesting. I took that photo @~10AM --That store opened at 9:30
...I doubt that most were there for a chance at $100 credit toward a full year of Xbox Music Pass. But, who knows. I wasn't going to stand in that line.

I've lived with the various Eco systems. Say what you will, but if you can live with apple's limitations, iOS will give you the most cohesive and consistent experience.

Well, I figured out how to navigate people a bit better. If you pinch it'll turn into a periodic table of the alphabet so you can navigate that way.

Ah, but I'm not after cohesive/consistent.

I'm after speed and flexibility. And a much better multitasking model than anyone is providing.

I guess when it comes right down to it I want a full-bore Linux box in a tablet, with a stable, usable interface (nothing in the Linux UI world is there, yet) and a workable text-entry system (both standard Apple and Android ones suck).

Anandtech had one and said the Clovertrail based unit is better in the performance arena. We are getting one to try with our clinicals software to see how they work. Our clinicals requires IE (had it before I started there).

I'm waiting for the Regular Windows 8 version.

Looks interesting but I've gone over to Apple and ain't coming back. Microsoft has been a humongous ship without a rudder for far too long.

Typed on my iPhone 4S running iOS 6 and Tapatalk. :)

Thanks for the update!

I am really interested in how they are, for business. I am waiting on the full Win8 surface next year, but in playing with Win 8 on a pc i find it a pain in the rear, jumping around from Metro to desktop several times just to do simple stuff.

Keep updating this thread Todd as I'm sure a few people here will want to know longer term how the Surface is to deal with.

Wold you give up a ipad for it? :)

In a word - no. Not even close. My iPad3 is totally ingrained into my music life at this point. All of my charts are there, iRealB has not only the charts but a player app for practice. I can record directly to the iPad, have soft sythns, etc. Plus I can get email, calendar (iCal, exchange, google, etc), web, etc. Right now on the Surface I can't do most of that. It may get better, but by then where will the iPad/iOS be? The response and display on my iPad3 are better than the Surface, and I'm not even on the latest iPad.

I gave it to my wife to mess with. She does not use an iPad, and only recently got an iPhone. I showed her the basic way to use the Surface and she did not find it intuitive.

It will be interesting to watch this. I think RT is pretty bad right now compared to the competition. They will need to get more apps available and fix the OS and user experience (the bouncing back between Metro and desktop is fail). But this isn't 15 years ago when Apple was a minor player and they had the luxury of time. They are chasing now, and I don't know how agile Microsoft is as a company.

I'll have the iPad Mini here on Fri to mess with. We'll have a 3D viewer mocked up soon afterwards and be running some of our apps. We can't do that on RT because Unity isn't on Win8 yet (and may never be on RT).

lol, I had to add an application to get my start button back! Metro needs to die a horrible death. When you RDP to a Windows 8 machine you have to map a special key on "non-Microsoft" keyboards to enable you to flip between metro and the desktop. *grrrrr*

Thanks article about sums up what I thought it would be like...

Just looking at win8 looks like it was geared for a two year old. I guess they can not think up new things for us to waste our time on so it`s time to target our young ones.

Apple has shown how deep the market is for Playschool type touch GUI.

Microsoft is following.

Sounds like innovation to me! :rolleyes:

So I gotta ask....what do you say is an adult UI for touch screen?

Just read an article on SurfCast suing MS over the "tiles" interface, Surfcast claims they invented it in 2000 and got the patent in 2004. Reading the patent they nailed it and MS totally stole it.

What I don't understand is it is so clearly the same thing how MS was granted a patent on their UI?

MS is going to be paying up...

Microsoft has had that for nearly a decade. --Pen based tablets.

Pen based tablets allow:
-- precision of selection (you know those tiny little page number field on this site? - a pen based UI selects those w/ ease)

-- Pressure sensitivity (like writing on paper, great for artists and graphic designers.)

-- Palm rejection (users can rest their palm on the screen w/o confusing the multi-touch system.)

Microsoft pushed expensive precision tablet tech. What Apple did is push cheap playschoolish tablet tech. Both exist, but Microsoft wants a piece of the cheapo market. (it's wide)

Back then Amazon, IIRC tried (did?) patent "one touch purchase" . . .as if patents should apply to such obvious outcomes. :-/

Would you say that the clock on your phone also stole their idea? ...you know, a dynamic info field ("tile" if you will) which when touched, takes the user into more information and/or settings.

So many of these tech patents are just cyber-squatting on what is inevitable extrapolation of code.

You decide:

http://www.surfcast.com/images/pdfs/US6724403.pdf

Summary:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1351794079.jpg

And US courts have held up the "rectangle with rounded corners" IP for Apple. So don't count your chickens just yet.

uhoh . .. the labels on my product are rectangular w/ rounded corners. --iScrewed?

Seriously tho' design patents are different. And, there are plenty examples of absurd patent awards . .. doesn't mean that absurd is the new norm. ...even if it is. ;)

Wouldn't this website be in violation of that?

Uh, you do have to read the whole thing, I just put a clip in to make my point. MS should never have been able to get their patent as this is exactly what tiles/metro/newname is.

I get your point, but think that you are not getting mine.

Design patents are one thing . . and very narrowly defined.

Utility patents on trivial appearances are not in keeping with the idea of utility patent protection.

Who cares how absurd they are? If the courts uphold them you're SOL. The fact that the courts are stupid enough to uphold a design patent that was previously seen in a 1987 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation shows how broken our patent (design & otherwise) system is.

No I hear you, I'm sick of all the patent crap.
That being said I also think there is a lot of big companies with big bankrolls ready to take on any developer because they think they won't fight back.