I suspect that Microsoft doesnât want to replay the 'Hey, letâs 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 âWindows storeâ if there arenât any customers, and Microsoft is no stranger to bleeding cash in exchange for marketshare, see Xbox 1âŚ)
And, given that Nokia has shown a fairly robust capability to design hardware, they probably arenât a bad party to give it a go.
Iâm waiting for the day we see weaponized operating systems, optimized to seek and destroy the competitorâs product. Woops - plugged your phone into your new iPad Dominator? Pity Nokia didnât buy the Apple antivirus, isnât it?
Not a new owner yet.
As mentioned yesterday, I is properly tempted, since Iâm 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, Iâm paying an awful lot for an overpowered tablet I wonât see full benefit from.
Since Intelâs new Bay Trail atoms donât 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.
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 carâs 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 havenât 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 itâs much better.
The Surface 1 is the exact same hardware as the Nexus 7 you have under the hood â Tegra 3. Kind of anemic for Windows 8, honestly, perf was never great even at launch and now itâs 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 â even via USB!
Iâm as likely to buy an Asus as I am to buy another Dell, i.e. never.
Iâm just not sure I can see myself running x86 software on a 10" tablet.
Iâd 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 doesnât enforce minimum code integrity level 8, weâll talk. Otherwise, No Deal.
âItâs like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it.â
-S. Jobs, of sacred memory.
Now, this wouldnât be the first time that Apple has consistently rubbished a competitorâs idea until they decided that it was time, and then reversed so fast that youâd think inertia didnât apply to them(Amazon releases Kindle. âNobody readsâ. A short time later, Apple is unveiling iBooks and getting antitrust-lawsuited for bending the entire publishing industry to their whimâŚ); 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 âpen computingâ like itâs Billâs 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.
Thanks, Jeff. The box says âSurfaceâ and â64GBâ and âwindows 8 proâ and model number 1514, which makes me think it is a Surface 1 Pro, if there is such a thing. I canât find a model#/name cross-reference on the intartubes, my google-fu is weak today.
I wouldnât want to watch movies on it. I have kids so I donât 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 itâs not the fault of Coulton or Pak - itâs 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 ;). Thatâs exactly what Iâm having trouble with. The touch feature is very nice for the Win8 interface and the screenâs beautiful, but the keyboard isnât 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.
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 compellingâŚ200MB ainât much but for free?
http://m.cnet.com/news/t-mobile-offers-200mb-free-data-with-every-ipad/57608958
Doesnât come off so bad in this comparison, but the weight is kind of a big deal. iPads are definitely getting to the âexpensiveâ 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, itâs barely enough to do anything unless you literally only browse the web with the device.
