Saturday, December 29, 2012

Microsoft Surface RT

Every Microsoft employee got a Surface RT right before the holidays this year.  And my wife and I were no exceptions.  We've been using them for a few weeks now, and I figured I'd post a few of my thoughts.  Obviously I got the Surface RT for free and I am a Microsoft employee so my opinion is biased in some ways, though possibly not as much as one might think.

My wife and I were going to take our 2 year old son on a trip to Hawaii in October, but we greatly feared what would happen when we did.  Our son's attention span rarely lasts very long with anything, and we were talking about a 5 hour flight.  In order to alleviate the boredom, my wife got me an iPad 3 for Father's day, with an eye towards using it to occupy our son on the flight. 

It was and is a beautiful device with a fantastic screen and a very responsive, usable, OS.  There are of course a lot of apps and games for the iPad, but most of them weren't that useful, with the exception of a bunch of kids apps and some videos on iTunes.  Virtually the only game I played on the iPad was Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers which felt really good with touch controls.  It ended up working fairly well at distracting my son during the flight. 

Unexpectedly I ended up continuing on to New York by myself for work and rather than drag a laptop all over the country, I decided to just bring my iPad.  It was a reasonable device for my needs but I found it frustrating to use the keyboard for restaurant searches and the like. I also missed having a real IM with a keyboard.  Overall it was workable, and I really enjoyed the iPad for a while.

All of this is to present the context of my Surface experience.  I had used what was basically the best device in the tablet space and enjoyed it.  The Surface had something to live up to for sure.  I also happened to own an older Tablet PC that I installed windows 8 on, so it did have a touchscreen, but didn't support all the windows 8 multitasking functionality because the screen resolution was too low.

The week before I got my surface I was taking some time off from work and I was bumming around Seattle coffee shops with my tablet PC.  The tablet PC was a full core 2 duo machine and it weighs about 3 or 4 lbs.  Possibly more. It's not exactly huge but it lacks the svelte profile of a modern tablet. I had already found myself wishing for a surface.  I brought my iPad along on these jaunts, but the kind of thing I was doing.  Chatting on IM, posting on Facebook, replying to emails, and writing my Windows Phone 8 thoughts, were all better on my PC than the Surface. 

Enter the Surface.  I finally got my Surface RT and I was able to take it around an do all the stuff I'd wanted to do with my iPad but ended up needing a laptop for. 

At first, I was a little disappointed.  There were a bunch of obvious bugs and very odd behavior.  Then I was able to update the OS and apps and the experience improved considerably.  I felt I had a real sense for what the developers of Surface and Windows RT were gong for.

Let me say that, unfortunately, everything feels very version 1.0.  There are niggling little bugs, and missing features all over the place.  Some of the touch controls are startlingly worse than similar controls on Windows Phone which is pretty disappointing.  Let me say this, though, I think it feels a lot more like an Apple version 1.0 than a Microsoft version 1.0.  Microsoft is generally quite a bit worse at version 1.0s than anyone else and the Surface still feels like a good product.

In fact, it has virtually replaced the iPad in our house, with a few exceptions.  The only thing it really lacks at this point is apps. And there are a plethora of apps for kids for iPad, which is why my son is now the main user of the iPad in our house.

How has it replaced the iPad otherwise?

The web browser is fast, fluid, and fantastic.  It loads pages with ease and even displays flash on some pages. I don't think Safari is is a bad browser by any means, but IE 10 on surface blows it away in my estimation.  The browser is so good I can even use it for Facebook and some of the other "missing" apps.

But that's also because of the Touch cover.  The Touch Cover is a huge upgrade in my eyes.  I know there are Bluetooth keyboards for iPad, but The touch cover also has a track pad and this makes all the difference in the world to me.  I can use it for desktop apps and having the cursor is vey helpful for some websites.  Plus it takes up basically the same amount of space as my "smart cover" on my iPad and is considerably more functional.   The typing is a bit weird, but you get used to it.  I still type faster on a normal keyboard, but I'm typing up these thoughts on my surface with my Touch Cover and it's actually not going too badly, though using shift keys can make things sketchy.  The spacebar has also taken a bit of getting used to.  This basically completes the device and turns it into a functioning PC (for me) with a form factor basically the same as the iPad.  I used it for Christmas shopping and reading and watching videos and it's great for all of that.  One reason for that is the kickstand.

The kickstand is also, to me, a huge upgrade to the iPad design.  I've used it when using the surface like a laptop, I've used it just while reading or watching videos.   It even helps when using the camera for some things.  The Smart Cover just doesn't work well enough at standing up the iPad, the kickstand is a huge improvement.  Just having it in the kitchen with my One Note with my pancake recipe up was very nice when making Christmas breakfast.

For me the Surface RT is not quite a full PC replacement, but it's damn close.   I need a compiler and a stylus for any device I'd want, and coding on a Touch Cover seems like an exercise in frustration.  But if I just wanted to use Office, email, surf the web, and do social networking, the Surface would be a pretty complete solution in my opinion.

It is a touch slow at some things, and sometimes in surprising ways.  I'd still like more apps, and more particularly games, but since this stuff runs on windows 8 also, I have a feeling that stuff is coming, particularly with 35,000 apps in only  3 months.  It's also improved considerably in the short time I've owned it, which I find to be pretty hopeful. I realize it's a little pricey, but it feels like a high end device. Highly recommended to anyone who needs a device for light pc work.