Yeah, it repels me too...

iOS is less than 2 GB. Add productivity software, you may be around 2 GB or so.

Are you sure? Office 2010 Pro Plus (the most complete version) 64 bit, with included SP1, is sitting on 1.4GB ISO image.

Above mentioned MS Office folder in Program Files, once installed, is 0.99GB. Additional one in Common Files is additional 145MB. There might be some other smaller folders scattered around, but I wouldn't expect Office to take more than 2GB all together. RT Office is not going to have all the features of 2010 Pro Plus, and even those that it will have... I'd expect them to be a bit simplified and compacted version of desktop counterparts.

As of Windows 8 RT and is it going to be embedded in ROM or will it take part of user available storage (and what part), I haven't seen any info yet.

They officially go on sale October 26th midnight through the MS online or MS Retail stores.  So I take it you're lining up for one? /s

In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices.  The beauty of the Surface (and related) products, I have one device for both work and play - meaning I save money. In this crummy economy, that's a plus.  Look, I love Apple products as much as the next person, but I give MS credit where they deserve it.

 

What is your role at Microsoft?  Your assumption is the Surface can do it all, I'd guess doing real "work" on it (or any tablet) is difficult.  If an external keyboard is needed, and work / play are important with one device then the Macbook Air would likely be the best option.  Even in today's economy most folks in the education and enterprise space are happily carrying 2 devices, and in some cases 3-4.  I know if I had to pick one device to do everything then it would NOT be a tablet from any manufacturer.  The answer is the Air.

That article is from July. Version included with RT tablets on release day will still be preview release. Update to final version will happen automatically, on undisclosed date... whenever that is.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-home-student-rt-preview-FX103210361.aspx

Beside that, I have very little doubt that Office RT will be more cumbersome (or less elegant) than slimmer tablet/phone editions, but that's the thing; if one wants all the features of desktop Office on a tablet, well... you cannot have all those features while keeping only handful of buttons on screen.

I have no role at, or any emotional attachment to, or a fanboy of, any major tech company, be it MS, Apple, Google, Facebook, you name it.  I love cool technology & doesn't matter to me who makes it. If it's MS then it's MS.  If it's Apple then it's Apple. I realize there's folks out there carrying 2 or more devices. I wasn't born yesterday.  If that's what floats their boat then great, more power to them. There are some of us that don't enjoy lugging around so many devices. And the Surface can potentially help solve that problem. Thank goodness for choice.

It has neither been released nor has it been tested and reviewed. Maybe MS will deserve credit maybe they won't. All will be revealed soonish.

It is somewhat ironic would you not agree that in the Surface ads, the device always emerged from a briefcase in two separate pieces. It never emerged as a single device with already attached cover which is in itself  strange.

Of course! Perceived resolution is always better than actual resolution.

 

Cleartype is sub-pixel rendering. It has nothing to do with "boldness" or "shadows." It is a technology that Apple already uses in OSX. And MS was saying that their product is superior because it has LESS reflections than the iPad.

 

I suggest you learn what the hell you're talking about before making statements like that.

 

You make it a bit too obvious.

 

J.

So in what world does antialiasing (basically what cleartype does) provide a better image than the retina display on the iPad?

The retina display lets you easily read minute text as it is rendered incredibly clearly on the display. I find it hard to believe that the same is al all possible on surface. It will make an interesting experiment once I get my hands on one.

 

Or I could just clip a keyboard onto the iPad.

 

 

I have two concerns with the Surface:

 

1. I haven't seen any indication that it works well in portrait mode
2. The kickstand seems to be fixed at one position.

 

Again, it's hard to judge how good or bad it is because MS doesn't seem very keen on letting people review it.

 

Ah. This might explain why I've only seen the Surface photographed in landscape mode.

ClearType = makes fonts appear smoother on lower resolution screens.
iPad Display = pretty much everything including a respectable sRGB colour spectrum.

Maybe we should put padding on the walls at Microsoft and not allow the employees to use anything sharper than a crayon.

768p on a tablet is a fail.  Microsoft should have gone 1080p - it's sharp enough, and a standard resolution is good for media consumption. 
 

That's funny. My understanding is Apple invented Cleartype and MS paid them a licensing fee for every copy of Windows sold.
 

No need to be surprised about the Surface's lack of free space. I would bet money on finding plenty of legacy junk under the hood, from DLLs to ancient network stacks, and strings like 'A:\ not responding. Abort, Retry, Fail?'

"It's a wireless tablet! Why are there all these references to ethernet support?"

 

I doubt too many people who have experienced iWork are itching to go backwards. Let's face it, usability is not one of Microsoft's core strengths. For all their posts lately about user testing, they still seem to miss the forest for the trees. "Which ribbon buttons get the most clicks?" doesn't solve the ribbon's fundamental flaws.

 

That's a big if. In my experience, Microsoft software skews heavily toward the 'nearest neighbor' camp. Desktop office, file browser thumbnails; my own websites have html flags solely for telling IE to use bicubic instead of its default. Does Surface, Office Touch, or desktop IE10 improve on this?

 

Windows RT and Windows 8 preserved the ugly WinSXS (Windows Side-by-side) system. On Windows 7 this folder alone weight over 9GB and keeps growing out of control after services pack updates. I expect many slow down and disk saturation problems for early Surface's owners.

Edited by BigMac2 - 10/18/12 at 10:53am

Not to mention antivirus. 

Android is a relatively young OS, and it has plenty of malware issues. Now think about how many damn patches come out for desktop Windows every month.

 

"Surface patch KB891396: A remote exploit can enable malicious code execution."

"Surface has pending updates and will automatically restart in 2 hours. Tap here for details..."

"Surface has pending updates and will automatically restart in 1 hour. Tap here for details..."

 

I was going to add defrag, but flash memory performance is mainly handled at the controller level, far below software's reach.

I'm well aware of the many keyboard accessories for the iPad but to me they don't look anywhere as elegant, clean and integrated looking as the Surface with Touch Cover.  If only Apple's Smart Cover had a built-in keyboard.

 

The reason there's no indication that Surface works well in portrait mode is because it doesn't work well in portrait mode.  The Metro UI is optimized for landscape mode and 16:9 aspect ratio. That's why when you see the ads there's a lot of side-to-side scrolling.  Even the multitasking Snap feature of Metro is optimized for landscape.  That is also why the kickstand is fixed in landscape position.

The claim that the Surface display is better than a Retina display assumes that font smoothing is part of the display firmware. 

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet:

 

NO ONE is going to buy a Surface now that the A6X exists in the real iPad. I mean BOOM. I don't like that Apple did this, but there's no arguing that the word "competition" can't even be put into the same sentence as "iPad" anymore.

A couple things come to mind:

1) Who was going to buy the Surface RT anyway when the iPad (3) kills it and has 275k apps for it?

2) There is still the Surface x86 which no iDevice can compete with for the reasons people would want the Surface x86. That said, I doubt these are too many or a decade of Win tablets would have faired better.

3) The iPad mini comparison to the 7" tablets and the update to the 10" iPad imply that Apple was very much ont eh defensive to keep any competitor from gaining a foothold in this market. As I said in 2010 I think Apple will want to make this an iPod-like market, not an iPhone or Mac-like market where they dominate in profit marketshare but not in unit marketshare.

4a) What comes in the Spring? Another iPad? I don't think so. First of all, they could do an A7 that could be closer to the A15 chip (i.e.: better than the A6) but they are surely on 32nm and 22nm won't come for a couple years and the Rogue 6 GPU is unlikely be ready until next Summer or Fall. I think it's to suck the oxygen out of the tablet room this holiday season -and- because the Rogue 6 GPU won't be ready that we have this update.

4b) But surely there must be something coming in the Spring, right? So new AEBS/TC with 802.11ac and more MIMO, etc? I hope so. But that also needs new Macs to show it off. So the new Mac "tower" and updated 15" RMBP with 802.11ac. Might be a good time to introduce the updated 17" RMBP... if that's even on the table. Even then it's not enough for an event and some apps aren't going to cut it so I'm guessing a new product category. The Apple digibox, perhaps?

 

Microsoft Sells Out of $500 Surface RT Pre-Orders in One Day

 

 

We are all fans of Apple products, but the above statements are far enough from reality to be near fanboy territory.

 

There are always plenty of people who don't buy based on specs (a trait Apple markets to when they don't have the best specs), uninformed consumers, and people who buy against Apple for wholly unrelated reasons. I agree that the new iPad is impressive, but let's be realistic; it won't cause Surface sales to be zero, especially in the business world. Even netbooks have a trickle of sales to this day. It shouldn't blow anyone's mind that an individual's tablet selection criteria doesn't always align with Apple's focus areas. Maybe step out of the bubble more often, and not speak in absolutes.

1) The Zune sold out, too, and MS issued a statement that the Zune was the best selling PMP during a timeframe.

2) No one expected the Surface not to do well with initial sales. At $500 it's throwaway for many people. Even businesses will buy one to test out. Then you people that will test it out and decide if they want to keep it or return it (as we see with a lot of Android phones).

3) The question is how will sales be months from now. A year from now. I don't think they'll do well if they can't get an ecosystem thriving but they haven't done well with that so far despite that being a good mobile OS.

4) Did you not remember the articles of the Lumia and Palm Pre selling out?

5) How many did they sell?

 

Aww… I looked up the Kin to see if they ever said that it had sold out. 

They didn't.

 

I guess when you sell 503 phones on launch day, you can't say that. 

But how fast will the Surface be after three months and 100 security updates?