Nokia's Windows tablet goes head to head against new owner

[Permalink]

1 Like

I suspect that Microsoft doesn’t want to replay the 'Hey, let’s write off nearly a billion dollars worth of Surface RT tablets!" fiasco; but the fact that they went back for another round of Surface RT after doing that (and the fact that they licensed Windows RT to Nokia) suggests that they would rather have more Windows RT units in the wild, at the expense of selling fewer of them personally, than they would have 100% of a potentially-doomed market. (which is not out of character, given that nobody is going to play in the ‘Windows store’ if there aren’t any customers, and Microsoft is no stranger to bleeding cash in exchange for marketshare, see Xbox 1…)

And, given that Nokia has shown a fairly robust capability to design hardware, they probably aren’t a bad party to give it a go.

2 Likes

I’m waiting for the day we see weaponized operating systems, optimized to seek and destroy the competitor’s product. Woops - plugged your phone into your new iPad Dominator? Pity Nokia didn’t buy the Apple antivirus, isn’t it?

1 Like

Not a new owner yet.

As mentioned yesterday, I is properly tempted, since I’m a proper Nokia fanboy, although the Surface 2 looks to be better specced.

The more I think about, the more I think the RT versions make more sense than full Windows for these machines. I think if I buy the Pro, I’m paying an awful lot for an overpowered tablet I won’t see full benefit from.

Since Intel’s new Bay Trail atoms don’t suck for the first time, ever, they are actually better choices as full x86 boxes.

You know, so you can run your beloved copy of Broderbund Home Landscape Designer '97 on 'em.

1 Like

I recently received an old Barnes and Noble Nook Color, a Nexus Seven tablet, and a Microsoft Surface.

The Nook, reflashed to cyanogenmod and bluetoothed into my car’s ODBII and smartphone interfaces, has become a pretty good special-purpose carputer for my plug-in hybrid.

The Nexus 7 is a really superb e-reader, in my opinion. Stock software.

I haven’t found any real use for the Surface yet. Too unwieldy to replace a tablet or phone, but not really a comfortable replacement for a laptop either. Nice display though… anyone kind enough to share their suggestions for uses?

A Surface Pro 2 is just going to be expensive overkill for 98% of what I use a computer for, and the screen will be too small to be great for the other 2%. I think I will get a Surface 2 or this shiny new Nokia and save myself a small forture, then keep running my MBP until it gives up the ghost.

I was referring more to this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7428/asus-transformer-book-t100-review

Nexus 7 (2012) with latest Google software (it auto-updates) is solid. They had some TRIM I/O problems with earlier Android that made performance degrade a lot over time… like… a lot a lot. But with the latest Android installed it’s much better.

The Surface 1 is the exact same hardware as the Nexus 7 you have under the hood – Tegra 3. Kind of anemic for Windows 8, honestly, perf was never great even at launch and now it’s really pokey.

However. It has an SD card slot on the back, so you can drop in a 64GB SD XC card in there no problem, then it becomes a pretty nice media playback tablet, about the same size and weight as an iPad 4, nice screen, and most importantly you can easily copy large media files over to it – even via USB!

1 Like

I’m as likely to buy an Asus as I am to buy another Dell, i.e. never.

I’m just not sure I can see myself running x86 software on a 10" tablet.

I’d rather have a Surface 2 Pro.

Even better, a MacBook similar to the Surface 2 Pro, including the Wacom digitizer.

The value of Broderbund Home Landscape Designer '97 is low. Not being cryptographically locked into the dystopian future of being able to install and run software only at the power and mere pleasure of Microsoft is a considerably bigger issue.

If Redmond wants to put out a version of Windows that runs on ARM and doesn’t enforce minimum code integrity level 8, we’ll talk. Otherwise, No Deal.

“It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it.”
-S. Jobs, of sacred memory.

Now, this wouldn’t be the first time that Apple has consistently rubbished a competitor’s idea until they decided that it was time, and then reversed so fast that you’d think inertia didn’t apply to them(Amazon releases Kindle. “Nobody reads”. A short time later, Apple is unveiling iBooks and getting antitrust-lawsuited for bending the entire publishing industry to their whim…); but Apple has shown surprising distaste for styli, which is odd in light of the massive 3rd-party sales of not-terribly-good capacitive ones for iDevices, as well as their major sales to Wacom-wielding creative types.

By strange contrast, Microsoft, of drab office-drone and shooter-game fame, has been (almost entirely futilely) pushing “pen computing” like it’s Bill’s baby since Win3.1, all the way through to the present.

Were I a naive observer, I would have assumed that Microsoft would be staunchly insisting that Mice and Keyboards are what the gods intended, while Apple would have absorbed Wacom. Far from it, however.

1 Like

Thanks, Jeff. The box says “Surface” and “64GB” and “windows 8 pro” and model number 1514, which makes me think it is a Surface 1 Pro, if there is such a thing. I can’t find a model#/name cross-reference on the intartubes, my google-fu is weak today.

I wouldn’t want to watch movies on it. I have kids so I don’t have much opportunity or desire to watch movies alone, and we have a hacktacular home media center that would work far better for watching movies in company.

The Surface might be good for reading comics, though. Code Monkey Saves World is somewhat disappointing on the Nexus 7, but it’s not the fault of Coulton or Pak - it’s the fundamental inadequacy of a 7" screen for comic art exacerbated by the crappiness of the comixology android app.

Oh, I assumed you meant the non pro, which is ARM. The pro you have is a regular x86 windows box, so whatever you would do with a typical, albeit touch enabled, Wintel box running Windows 8. I would update it to Windows 8.1 which is a free update via the store app tile.

I appreciate the info on the ARM model, too. Thanks.

And a crappy keyboard ;). That’s exactly what I’m having trouble with. The touch feature is very nice for the Win8 interface and the screen’s beautiful, but the keyboard isn’t good enough to replace a real laptop. The only other use I can think of for windows 8 is in the media center… but that already has a bigger, better screen.

Currently I use it to RAS into Server 2012 boxes and hack about with Powershell. But a regular laptop would actually work better.

1 Like

Anti-competitive, corporate consolidation run rampant leads to these ridiculous situations more and more. A libertarian nightmare come true.

This might make the case for the LTE Nokia more compelling…200MB ain’t much but for free?

http://m.cnet.com/news/t-mobile-offers-200mb-free-data-with-every-ipad/57608958

Doesn’t come off so bad in this comparison, but the weight is kind of a big deal. iPads are definitely getting to the “expensive” end of the spectrum because Apple keeps resisting moving the minimum storage from 16gb (which is kind of comical on a retina device with all the huge hi-res assets) to 32gb.

You should never ever buy a new iPad with 16gb of storage, it’s barely enough to do anything unless you literally only browse the web with the device.

1 Like