Does anyone own a Microsoft Surface?

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I know, that's kind of like asking if you own a Zune, but bear with me. 

Right now they are on sale everywhere, sans keypad, for around 200 bucks, which is really cheap considering the specs.  I also found a site where someone had created a x86 interpreter/emulator for Windows RT, essentially allowing you to run simple windows apps on the thing.  Couple that with the fact that it has a usb 2.0 port that actually detects most devices (including 360 controllers and third party gamepads, external storage, keyboards, ect)  Bluetooth, two cameras and hdmi out and it doesn't look so stupid anymore.

There also seem to be a fair amount of emulators for the device and apps you've previously written for windows can be recompiled for windows rt fairly easily. 

I know the app store is light, but tbh I find most android apps to be worthless anyway. 

So does anyone have one?  Is there anything to know about it?  What about that touch pad cover?  Is it worth the rather high price tag?

[RayB]

Not quite what you're asking about, but we have a Surface 2 Pro at work and it's sweet. I like that it can turn into a "pc" rather easily (connect your standard mouse, keyboard if you want to do regular stuff, then take it away as a tablet for general media consumption). THe specs are pretty good, screen looks great (sharp and vivid colors). Only complaint is it's a bit thick and heavy (probably due to the SSD drive). I would worry about SSD failure in the future (Google it), but heck, it's WINDOWS based, so you can easily back up to external USB drives, etc.

[wp34]

Not quite what you're asking about, but we have a Surface 2 Pro at work and it's sweet. I like that it can turn into a "pc" rather easily (connect your standard mouse, keyboard if you want to do regular stuff, then take it away as a tablet for general media consumption). THe specs are pretty good, screen looks great (sharp and vivid colors). Only complaint is it's a bit thick and heavy (probably due to the SSD drive). I would worry about SSD failure in the future (Google it), but heck, it's WINDOWS based, so you can easily back up to external USB drives, etc.

Glad to hear it.  I'm planning on getting one for work when my Dell Tablet is up to be replaced. 

[pbj]

I've played around on one.  It's worthless without the keyboard cover, IMO.  Nice device but they were kidding themselves at $600 and it always should have included the keyboard.  Sub $200 with a keyboard gets me interested but it'll never be more than a niche device.  Microsoft deeply discounting hardware so quickly on this made me hold back on the XB1.

[Howard_Casto]

Well ebay apparently had the bright idea of getting rid of their stock of touch covers, so you can get them for 40 bucks, free shipping.

So for 240 bucks you can get the complete set. 

Personally I could care less about the keyboard because I want it more as a toy than anything else.  Because windows rt is windows based, I can write software for it and because it's windows based I can actually hook up various hid-based hardware to it.  I was thinking it might be a good platform for a portable game station. 

I agree that it's a niche product, but the zune was my last niche purchase from Microsoft ( I actually got it for free but whatever) My ipod which I got at the same time is long dead... the "inferior" zune?  Still chugging.  I would argue that any tablet is a niche purchase anyway.  Unlike PCs, which you can get a few years out of, they are almost instantly outdated. 

I would like to point out that the surface pro, from my research, doesn't really bear much resemblance to the original.  The pro is a laptop convertible running Win 8, the original runs win 8 RT, which is the mobile version and makes it decidedly a tablet.  Now windows rt, imho runs circles around android and the apple iOS...... it's practically windows, but I'm just saying... it's not windows, it's arm based.  I really like the pro... saw that one in the store, but if I'm going to pay that much I would probably get a regular laptop and be done with it. 

PBJ:  Traditionally speaking Microsoft reduces their prices rather quickly.  I wouldn't be surprised if the XB1 wasn't a full 100 dollars cheaper by this time next year, maybe more, which is fine by me since they might have some actual GAMES out for it by then.  Now Nintendo on the other hand... wait a full year and they MIGHT drop 50 bucks off... and people wonder why I get their products and launch and wait for the other two.   

Btw... 360's got down to 150 bucks this week at the M$ store.  It looks like it might be the next xbox classic... a throw-away emulator box/media center. 

[EightBySix]

I got one for my daughters Xmas pressie. She wanted a laptop and is forever stealing my iPad. I'm a big fan of the parental controls on win 8 so it seemed like a natural fit.

Couldn't be happier with it. Especially when you put 8.1 on the thing , makes a big improvement.

Most of the games and websites the kids use are flash based is one way or another, so thats covered now and she can do her homework on it, both of which were a downside of the iPad.

Going to buy one for my wife too who needs to travel fairly often. Was thinking of getting her a pro so she can play Warcraft on it, but it's too big of a price increase for that one requirement. The app store is pretty much fine now for me, and everything most of the family do on computers is either web or ms office based anyway.

I don't believe they are niche, I'm hoping they will become standard issue at work one day... They just seem to make more sense than laptops nowadays.

As for the touch cover... Absolutely, you need one to be productive. Rather than typing on glass, they need pressure to operate, so you can rest your fingers on it without it detecting a key press, and there is a slight texture for each key, so you can feel your way around it.

[pbj]

Go for it, Howard, I look forward to seeing what you can do with it.  I have a feeling there's going to be millions of 'refurbished' ones available in January after parents get tired of listening to the "but it's not an ipad!" bitching.

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks guys. 

Somebody on my shopping list needs a tablet and they are "old" so they don't care about apps... mostly internet access and general productivity.  So I'll get them one.  As for myself, I don't know if I should get one now or wait and see if someone else gets me one for Christmas. 

I seriously doubt the new list price is a black Friday/cyber Monday price... the surface pro 2 is out and these guys are outdated. 

I dunno though, it's only two hundred bucks.  For what it does, that's really cheap, even for an uber tight wad like me. 

[CCM]

I have a Zune!

[kahlid74]

I was looking at getting one and then I decided instead on a Touchscreen laptop.  I wanted the horse power of the Surface Pro but didn't want the extra heat/noise in relation to holding it/using it.

I like the tile design of windows and on the touchscreen laptop it's fantastic.  I'd be interested in hearing about your experience if you do get a surface.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I think it's the curse of this forum... almost immediately after I mentioned it, they sold out of the surface everywhere.  A few places have them back in stock, but they are back up to the ridiculous original price. 

For the person on my list I got an Asus Viva tab... which is a convertible laptop also running on RT.  It was on sale for 260, which is fine for a gift, but a bit pricey for what I want it for, which is a disposable toy.  Then again with the keyboard cover the surface would have been 240, so it wasn't THAT much of a price difference. 

It seems like everyone bought up the things to re-sell on ebay, so I'm sure after the holidays I can get one cheap.  I really wish ebay and similar sites would institute a "no price gouging" policy.  It's getting ridiculous... people are making a living by buying stuff on sale and then re-listing for 100 dollars or more ABOVE the MSRP. 

[knave]

What about the dell venue 8 pro...? $299 regular price for a full win 8 tablet...seems ok. If it ever goes on sale it seems to be a great choice.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah there are a lot of good options out there.  I'm surprised how well the windows tablet has caught on.  Mind you I like the cross compatibility options, but I'm wierd.... you would think people would avoid them due to the lack of the android market/iTunes.   

I'm in no hurry what-so-ever.  I've been throwing this idea around in my head for a while now.  None of the turn key options are really good for a portable emulation rig, so I'll just write software and make hardware add-ons from the ground up. 

[knave]

Yeah there are a lot of good options out there.  I'm surprised how well the windows tablet has caught on.  Mind you I like the cross compatibility options, but I'm wierd.... you would think people would avoid them due to the lack of the android market/iTunes.   

I'm in no hurry what-so-ever.  I've been throwing this idea around in my head for a while now.  None of the turn key options are really good for a portable emulation rig, so I'll just write software and make hardware add-ons from the ground up. 

I like the cross compatibility too. It just would be nice to have more consistency between platforms. For all that I tinker with stuff my needs are pretty simple. I use my tablets for email, reading and on-the-go entertainment. Being able to run full PC apps and games would just add to my options for productivity/entertainment.

To be honest with you I am 100% happy with my old 7" android tablet for what I use it for. But the new toys are looking more interesting each generation.

If I were really going to put emphasis on efficient upgrades I should just skip on some of the toys and get a new computer.

[kahlid74]

It seems like everyone bought up the things to re-sell on ebay, so I'm sure after the holidays I can get one cheap.  I really wish ebay and similar sites would institute a "no price gouging" policy.  It's getting ridiculous... people are making a living by buying stuff on sale and then re-listing for 100 dollars or more ABOVE the MSRP.

But they've been doing that since ebay first came on the scene right?  I mean I could remember back in 2001 going to best buy and seeing a creative sound card for 40 dollars off ($60 instead of $100 regular) and it selling out and then finding it on ebay for $80, which was still a better deal than the $100 BB went back too.  Perhaps there are more of them now but I could swear those hounds existing way back.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah but see that's still below the MSRP.  Now we have people buying game consoles and tech right around the holidays and selling them for waaaay above the MSRP.  I don't think either is right btw, I'm just saying... it was never this bad. 

Capitalism is awesome... unregulated capitalism is a nightmare. 

[JDFan]

Yeah but see that's still below the MSRP.  Now we have people buying game consoles and tech right around the holidays and selling them for waaaay above the MSRP.  I don't think either is right btw, I'm just saying... it was never this bad. 

Capitalism is awesome... unregulated capitalism is a nightmare.

I don't mind the Ebay resellers that much as you have the ability to just wait for the new stock and let them keep their overpriced items -- the ones I hate lately are the APPLES, Sprints, AT&Ts , etc. that don't have any where near an adequate supply of items when they launch(ie. Iphone 5s) that then charge you for the item promising to get it to you in a few days and 3 months later are still blaming it on supplier issues all the while sitting with your $ in their bank account. (It's almost as bad as those stupid MIR companies  )

[RayB]

Just tested HP's Omni 10. Nice Windows 8 tablet for under $400. Lighter and not as performant as Surface Pro 2, but still good.

http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/hp-omni-10/4505-3126_7-35827840.html

[ChadTower]

Just tested HP's Omni 10. Nice Windows 8 tablet for under $400. Lighter and not as performant as Surface Pro 2, but still good.

I think the word you are looking for is cromulent.   

[ark_ader]

Microsoft was/is selling the Dell tablet for $199 or $99 for the first 20 people visiting the store each day.  Not as much foot traffic as the Apple Store further along the mall where the gear was selling like hotcakes.  Lots of Xbox One demos, and the staff looked as oddball and nerdy as the Apple staff.

I like a Microsoft tablet down the road, but I have invested too much money on Android to spend any serious cash on it. 

Maybe for development and training purposes at a later date when the uptake is greater.

[Cynicaster]

I’m late to this thread, but I got a Surface RT back in November.  Loved it so much, I went back and bought a second one for my girlfriend’s Christmas present.  She loves it too. 

The funny thing is, I went into the store that day intending to buy an Android tablet with a price tag a few hundred dollars higher.  I hadn’t even considered the Windows tablet because I guess I’d let all the moron tech-pundits and bloggers influence my decision.  But then I picked up the Surface in the store and screwed around with it for 20 minutes or so.  That was it—told the sales guy, “ring ‘er up, I’ll take it”.

The reason I originally wanted the Android was because I was sick and tired of fighting against the glass-ceiling limitations of the iPad.  The Surface addresses just about every complaint I had about the iPad, and more.  After a few months of use, I’m absolutely baffled that more people aren’t using these things.  I think Microsoft needs to fire their marketing department. 

I’ve got all of the console emulators I want (Atari 2600/7800, NES, TurboGrafx, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, GBA) and can play them using an XBOX 360 controller plugged into the USB port (LOVE that USB port!).  Now, if only there were a version of MAME on Windows RT, it would be perfect!   

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I haven't gotten one yet... low on "ah screw it, I'll buy one" funds. 

Microsoft has a huge marketing problem.  I still swear to this day that the Zunes were superior in every way to the ipod and the newer windows phones, particularly the nokia ones, are better in most ways than the iphone, including being several hundred dollars cheaper.

They just constantly do stupid stuff like "here's this great music player, let's only release it in brown and puke green for the first year of it's life" all the time. 

Now that I've played with all three, android devices don't even rate.  Unless you buy tablets so expensive that you might as well buy a laptop/convertible, android is a slow, unstable OS, and even when you DO buy those high end devices, 90% of your apps are designed for the crappy tablets, or worse, cell phones, so they don't take advantage of the hardware.  Heck they STILL don't have a universal gamepad solution.... a lot of hardware now supports it, but the software usually doesn't without some kind of program stub that gimps analog stick functionality.

[Cynicaster]

I have almost zero experience with Android, so it would be unfair for me to claim to be “in the know” on what it’s all about, but my initial impression of it from briefly dabbling with friends’ devices is that I don’t like it at all.  I can’t put my finger on exactly why.  It doesn’t help that every time I pick it up I see a complete mess of 6000 icons scattered about with no rhyme or reason, which is off-putting, but also probably more the fault of the device owner than the OS. 

When I was in the market to buy an Android tablet, it wasn’t because I was set on Android, it was simply that I absolutely had to try something that offered more flexibility than iOS.  In the meantime, somewhat paradoxically, I’ve actually started using my first ever iPhone because they became the new standard issue phone at work.  I will say that I think it’s a brilliant product, and iOS just feels so much more…. what’s the word…  appropriate…   on a phone than it does on a tablet.  I realize that tablets are not meant to replace PC’s or laptops, but to me, the limitations that Apple wittingly imposes on the iPad are just as frustrating as they are unacceptable.  It almost seems like they don’t want you doing anything beyond Angry Birds and Facebook.

The Surface addresses all of those problems for me, and I got two of them for the price of an iPad Mini.  There is a bit more of a learning curve for Win8.1 than there is for iOS, but if you take half a day to fiddle around with the device and learn how it works, that additional complexity rewards you with, IMO, a much more rich experience and a much more useful device.   

The Windows app store admittedly can’t hold a candle to the Apple app store, but I’m starting to think apps are overrated, because it just hasn’t been a problem for me at all.  Once you have all the main bases covered—mail, internet, social networks, media players, etc.—it’s hard to get too upset over missing apps, as the vast majority of them are just answers looking for questions anyway. 

MS Office comes free with the Surface, so I can even create content with it if need be, and I have.  For example, I created a nice Excel spreadsheet that automates scorekeeping and ranking for MAME tourneys I have at my place, and the ability to just stroll around with the tablet to enter the data is pretty darn handy.  I’ve also been screwing around with the beta release of Project Siena, which is an app that allows you to create your own apps.  It’s early in development, but it does work, and shows all kinds of potential for those who like to tinker.     

I still think the iPad is the better product for, say, my mother who has traditionally been absolutely clueless about how to use a computer.  But anybody who has used the iPad and has at least once been baffled by the question “why can’t I do this simple and obvious task with this thing?” should definitely take a hard look at a Windows tablet.   

[Howard_Casto]

Android's just got issues.  The tablets/phones traditionally don't have very good touch screens and yet the default UI of android insists on the tiny icons you were mentioning.  Android has a HUGE app store, it even blows apple's out of the water, but most of the apps are pointless, poorly executed, or geared towards the lowest common denominator (a budget phone/tablet) and not the high end tablet you are using. 

It's also unstable due to the wildly diverse hardware configurations.  Windows OSes have experience with multiple hardware configurations,  but Google is new at this so some incompatibly issues remind me of the DOS days or a really crappy Linux build.  It's also difficult to write (complex) apps for barring these exact same reasons.

Most modern programming languages (the microsoft made ones anyway) offer an option to compile for RT, as it's essentially windows 8 on an ARM processor.  So that's a huge plus.  In addition the stuff you mentioned... an ungimped IE ungimped office, ect.  You can do computer things on it... I think it just about eliminates the need for a laptop as far as most businesses are concerned. 

In terms of Apple, the hardware is very nice, but I've NEVER been a fan of apple operating systems.  Yes they are stable.. your OS would be stable too if it only had to run on one or two hardware configurations.  But they are locked down.  I don't like the idea of an OS that won't let me do what I want with it, and the ipad OS is particularly oppressive.  The expense is a huge deal as well.  You typically pay a minimum for 2-300 hundred bucks more for an ipad than a similar tablet with another OS on it.  That's just ridiculous.

[knave]

I think you guys are giving Android a little bit of a bad rap. I agree that it has its quirks, and I don't develop apps so I can't comment there. But for pure cost-effective convenience it can be a great tool.

That said I am really interested in the new generations of windows tablets. I liket the dell Venue 8. The seemless integration of stuff I want to do on a PC with stuff I want to do on a tablet is great.

I hope in the upcoming tech gives us even better options, more storage and longer battery life.

[Howard_Casto]

Well here's the thing... if you are buying a 100 dollar tablet/phone/whatever then it's fine.  If you are running a 300-500 dollar tablet it's crap, mostly because android was originally designed with the (now) 100 dollar devices in mind and it hasn't been significantly upgraded since it's introduction a few years back.

My mom has a very nice galaxy tab... too bad it's running android because I'd guestimate 75% of the apps are crap and the other 25% don't take advantage of the high res screen and other niceties.  The OS itself is quite snappy and stable on her tablet, but there just aren't any worthwhile apps to run on it, at least not considering the cost of the tablet itself.

[EightBySix]

I've got a cheap android tab, a kindle fire, an iPad and a Surface. The surface to me seems better to use as the user interface has been carefully designed for the form factor. ios and android seem to be the same as the phone o/s, but stretched

[Cynicaster]

In terms of Apple, the hardware is very nice, but I've NEVER been a fan of apple operating systems.  Yes they are stable.. your OS would be stable too if it only had to run on one or two hardware configurations.  But they are locked down.  I don't like the idea of an OS that won't let me do what I want with it, and the ipad OS is particularly oppressive.  The expense is a huge deal as well.  You typically pay a minimum for 2-300 hundred bucks more for an ipad than a similar tablet with another OS on it.  That's just ridiculous.

Exactly what I think as well.  Apple definitely puts a lot of "vision" into their products and they know how to buff them to a glossy sheen, but the flip-side is you're forced to do so many things either their way or not at all.  Them forcing iTunes on you, for example, is clearly just a way to ensure you're never more than a few mouse clicks away from their store.  That's great for them, but screw them--what about me as the end user who just spent a ridiculous pile of cash on their product?  Why can't I just drag and drop media to the device like I can for every other media player, camera, or external storage device I've ever owned?  That's how I'm used to operating, so why are they trying to change that? 

As for the stability of the platform, maybe I just had a lemon iPad, but in my experience it was not very stable at all.  I used that iPad more or less daily for 2 years before making the switch, and stuff crashed on there all the freakin' time.  As in, at least once every 1-2 days.  And get this--the biggest culprit was their own store app.  I'd be browsing for podcasts and music and poof, back to the desktop.  Very frustrating.