Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

ignorethecode.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 162 posts

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#21

Post by wmnwmn »

I bought a Surface for three reasons mainly. First, it supports Flash, and when I tested tablets out in the showroom, I was able to watch online lectures on the Surface and not on the iPad. Second, it gives access to the file system, so I can organize my large collection of scientific pdfs on disk the way I want to. Third, it has a USB port. I was rather astounded that the iPad did not, and perhaps Apple has changed this, but that alone was a showstopper for me.

What it all adds up to is that Apple created their usual walled garden for the iPad, and in this instance the walls eliminated much of the value of the product, even for such elementary uses as reading scientific pdf's, and watching scientific lectures online.

I will say that the Surface also had some restrictions on Flash originally, which I quickly discovered when I got it home, leading to a rather testy email from myself to Steve Ballmer. This was very quickly answered by the head of the appropriate department, and they have changed their Flash site approval model in IE to be much more open.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#24

Post by moron4hire »

fumar wrote: post #15
nextstep wrote: post #4

"There are artists who draw on iPads, and musicians who make music on iPads, and writers who write novels on iPads, and movie makers who cut their movies on iPads. But the fact that you have to point to these people, the fact that there are articles about these people, shows that they’re unusual." Unusual in a relative sense, the same way artists and musicians and movie makers are unusual in any segment of society. T…

Last summer I participated in a startup accelerator in Chicago. My Macbook died in the first week! At the time, I didn't have the funds to purchase another Apple machine. Luckily, my girlfriend had recently purchased a Surface RT with the keyboard cover. I did not think that the tablet would be able to replace a laptop for "serious" work, but it did. There are a couple of things that allowed me to do this. First, a U…

I recently bought a Lenovo Helix, very similar to the Surface Pro with the Power cover. With WiFi on (i.e., at a coffee shop), I get about 6 or 7 hours of battery life out of it. With WiFi off (i.e., in the car when my wife is driving, or on an airplane), I get more like 10.

It is a little heavier than the Surface Pro (though I've never seen the Surface Pro with the Power cover, so I don't know what the weight is like on that), but I don't mind, it's still lighter than my regular laptop.

It lets me work without compromise. On my Android tablet or iPad, I can only do certain types of work, and it all basically boils down to "can I make an SSH connection?" With a Windows 8 convertible tablet, I can even have a copy of my database locally and be working completely disconnected from the internet. It's pretty amazing.

Though, after this particular project is done, I might install a Linux OS on it, perhaps Ubunutu (though I'm not too keen on vanilla Ubuntu). I need to do some Visual Studio-centric work right now, but after this particular push I'll be able to move things over to Mono/SharpDevelop/etc., then get off Windows permanently.

And that's the important thing. It's not so much that "my tablet runs Windows and the iPad does not". It's "my tablet runs a full operating system that doesn't pigeon-hole me into a 'curated experience' and iOS never will be such."

EDIT: I should say "iOS and Android never will be such".

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#25

Post by veeti »

dangrossman wrote: post #5
bunderbunder wrote: post #2

's funny; one of the screenshots is used to call out the Charms bar as an example of great UI. For me - as a user of Windows 8 on a desktop - it has become something of an icon of just how poor Windows 8's UI is. On a tablet, you swipe it out from the left edge of the screen. Makes sense - so much sense that Apple copied the idea in iOS 7. On a PC, you bring out the charms bar by frustratedly wiggling your mouse agai…

Shooting the mouse into a corner is actually one of those gestures that is hardest to get wrong, which is why we've placed the window's close button up there for decades. Your mistake is aiming for the side instead of the top right corner of the screen; you can't overshoot it, so it never takes more than one physical gesture. You can also swipe from the right edge of your touchpad as if it were the screen.

This doesn't work so well when you have two monitors.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#26

Post by dangrossman »

tomphoolery wrote: post #22

An interesting take on the Surface...until you started talking about Spyware. That's when I stopped reading. Dealbreaker.

The spyware tidbit was commentary on the PC software distribution ecosystem; it's not something from Microsoft or Surface -- that was his experience in going out to find a disc copying app on the web. You end up at sites that bundle installers for other apps into the one you want to make extra money. Why would reading this cause you to stop reading the article?

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#27

Post by higherpurpose »

> It’s not an accident that the best selling, highest grossing iPad apps are almost exclusively games.

Yes, it's not an accident, but not because of the reason you give. Gaming is one of the most popular, if not the most popular and highest grossing category on any popular consumer platform. That's just the way it works. Some of these platform vendors (like Apple), and unlike others (like Google) realized this is true from early days, and they have actively encouraged gaming on the platform, by promoting the use of high-performance GPUs, partnering with game companies, and so on.

> As Joanna Stern puts it, «if I’m writing long emails or working on office documents, I want a larger screen, a roomy keyboard and the ability to easily juggle programs.»

A larger screen, which the Surface doesn't really have either. That's why I can't seriously consider the Surface a "productivity" device. I've used 10" netbooks before, and I know just how cramped they feel.

Metro is "so easy to use", that you used almost half of your article to describe how to use it.

One OS to rule them all - I'm tired of this stupidity and brainless parroting of one line made popular years ago in comments. By definition, you can't "optimize" something for everything.

Yes, it is an execution problem, because it will never work. It's like trying to build the perpetual motion machine. Sounds great in theory, "if you could do it". Will never work.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#28

Post by dangrossman »

veeti wrote: post #25
dangrossman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shooting the mouse into a corner is actually one of those gestures that is hardest to get wrong, which is why we've placed the window's close button up there for decades. Your mistake is aiming for the side instead of the top right corner of the screen; you can't overshoot it, so it never takes more than one physical gesture. You can also swipe from the right edge of your touchpad as if it were the screen.

This doesn't work so well when you have two monitors.

It works as well as any other corner interaction on multiple monitors; closing a window on the rightmost screen isn't a novel movement. The charms bar can be on the right screen as well, so it's still a corner gesture you can't overshoot.

Opening the charms bar on a desktop computer is a rare event anyway. The buttons it exposes are primarily touch interactions used when holding a tablet running a Metro app. In a classic application, you wouldn't be using its search/share/device buttons, and it's faster to just press the Windows key to do a system/web search.

Re: Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

#30

Post by winfred »

Typing this from my T100, That incidentally quite meets my needs for around 1/4th of the cost of a Surface Pro 2.

Some of the criticism is just plain wrong, like the "install software for USB booting install media." Yeah, I can write quite a bit too, about how hard it is to use the operating system, when I'm the one who randomly downloads crapware and tries to install it, instead of just doing a search and using the build in commands to make a bootable usb stick.

Then the whole thing about how the disk manager looked? I mean really? I'm a sysadmin and I probably stare at that UI likely more than any of you here (even when I have 90% of repeating work scripted with diskpart - do you notice the difference in usage scenarios here?) and it never even occurred to me there was something wrong with it? What do you want, a couple of flowers along the edges or something?

Post reply on HN