Microsoft Surface for Windows 8: Something else to want
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 09:49AM I love my iPad. But I don’t find it useful as such. It is great for playing games or consuming data, and should I ever feel the need to paint a portrait or compose some music it might prove useful I suppose. But I like to spend my time creating programs and documents and stuff like that, which the iPad just won’t let me do. But the new Microsoft Surface should.
At the moment I’m loving my Samsung Series 7 Slate, which gets pretty close to the larger of the two new Surface devices. I’ve got my slate running Windows 8 Release Preview and it is a properly useful device. In fact at the moment it is my main computer. I’ve got two docking stations, one at home and one at work, and I now carry my desktop around with me. The machine has more than enough power to do what I want, which is use Office, Visual Studio, Photoshop, play a bit of media and browse the interwebs. It is a bit restricted in terms of built in storage, but I’ve got around 20G free at the moment and a 32G SD card plugged in the side which has got a whole bunch of movies and other stuff on there. Battery life is fine too, with at least 5 hours if I work the machine hard, and up to 8 if I take it a bit easier.
The Surface should be rather like this, but better. It has a case that turns into a touch keyboard, and another that turns into a keyboard with moving keys. It also has a kickstand to make it easy to stand on the desk. The two words that come to mind for me are “want” and “one”. The only snag with the Surface is that it isn’t in the shops yet. But when it is, I’ll be there, queuing up for a blue one.
Reader Comments (7)
Will they let you have a preview device like when you had the phone?
A few people have already mentioned on Twitter, but I think many people underestimate the pull of MS Office on a tablet.
John
Thanks for such a nice post. I was wondering if the screen of the tablet does have the power of Microsoft Surface technology. I mean those amazing stuff that we saw in that expensive device from Microsoft called Surface 1.0. Please enlighten us a bit.
I'm not sure I can see the Surface catching on in ARM form if it's the same price as the iPad as there's precious little software on the Windows 8 Market Place at the moment while Apple have many thousands. The HTML5/Javascript apps might be their salvation for porting web apps.
If the Intel version is similar in price to a Mac Book Air it should go down a storm as an ultra portable PC.
I'm really looking forward to having a Windows 8 tablet
The Back stand looks a bit flimsy, looks like it will snp off. And I would have preferred a Hard Ba\ck button (and perhaps a hard Search Button) just like on Windows phones. Seems a waste of Bezel Real estate, and waste of screen space in the Metro style to have lots Soft Back Buttons littererd aross all top left corners of my Metro Apps., I have yet to See what Office will look like in MetroApp, on the ARM version,as MS Office still not being shown in Metro, and yet I have flimsy little Office Hub on my Phone. But then I also have an XNA runtime on my Phone :(
Neverless Windows 8 Metro is looking really great on Tablets, so we need to see compelling, but competitvely priced Tablets by xmas. Certainly a Windows 8 Tablet is on my xmas list.