There are a ton of useful (both creative and productivity) apps for ios and android that are nowhere on windows rt/8
On the long tail yes, but most major apps are at least represented in metro these days. The problem is the quality of those apps. Android is getting better by leaps and bounds, particularly now that it has a much larger market share, but there’s still a large difference between iOS and android apps in the same category. The iOS market leader is often not only superior but downright delightful to use.
For example, RSS readers are a major component of my phone and tablet use. Android has no equivalent of Reeder or certainly Mr. Reeder. Press isn’t bad, but it’s simply not comparable. Same deal with Marvin on iOS-- there is no real equivalent on android. Moon Reader isn’t bad, but…
Metro app quality is analagous to android in the gingerbread era. There are a couple bright spots, but the vast majority are fuhterrible. The only fix for that is time and market share.
Yeah wp7/wp8 apps get past the challenge of existing in the first place and then often stay neglected sitting at v1.0.
Android “tablet” apps and selection is still quite dismal. Phone apps probably have reasonable parity by now.
Surface reviews are out just visit your favorite tech site for one. Gave a quick look but didn’t see anything unexpected, the performance enhancement are significant especially on the RT that has good performance now. The ergonomics continue to play a huge role on the criticism, but is kind of expected especially for the Pro when every reviewer is usually a person that has a laptop has the perfect working form factor, there are tradeoff to be made that work for some but no for all.
The other factor is the app store is growing but is still pales in comparison specially with IOs. I think that is a valid criticism, but when they bring that up lots of the examples are of apps that have very usable website and no one criticizes Windows or MAcOX for not having a dedicated desktop app. Of course I’m of the camp that we should use the web for as much as possible and make touch friendly sites instead of making apps, apps are reserved for things that need native access.
I actually was close to buying a Surface on one of there promotions because it suited me an my wife use cases on lots of occasions as a secondary device but the performance was a big problem, this time around that is fixed but I think by the time we get to promotion season there will be lots of quality baytrail tablets for a similar price.
I’m trying to use a mini sandisk in my surface, but it won’t work. I used it previously in my win7 phone, and I think the phone has it formatted somehow that the surface can’t recognize it or doesn’t know what to do with it. The surface won’t let me format it to FAT/NTFS.
Do I have any options to erase the disk besides Windows? It’s messed up because at this point the only hardware I have available that will even recognize it as a card is my little RT. My surface pro just ignores it now. :(
EDIT: lol, there’s no c in sandisk
I was scratching my head for a moment until I realized you meant sandisk, not scandisk. :)
I’ve read this has worked where Windows has failed:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/hdd_low_level_format_tool.html
LOl, I’ve been saying it with an “c” for a long time now. No wonder people always look at me funny. :)
Thanks for the pointer, but I couldn’t get it to work. It’s frustrating because the Surface Pro won’t recognize the flash card anymore. The RT will still see it, but that program doesn’t run on RT.
It’s crazy because my surface did see the card the first time I put it in the slot, but now it just ignores it. No amount of slipping it in and out will make the pro care. :(
Maybe try to put it in a USB adapter and see if it can be recognized/re-partitioned/formatted?
I went to the AT&T store where I bought it and they comp’ed me a new one. Yay! Really cool manager. I was pleased.
They told me my old phone was designed to take the card as an upgrade, but then it formatted it in such a way that it could never be used again, which is why I was having trouble. I was like huh? It just sounds crazy. I mean, it’s flash memory right? If we really wanted to erase it, I’m sure we could find a way.
SD cards were formatted in a very peculiar way by windows phone 7, because they were intended to never be removed, and the only device people found that could reliably format those cards again and make it usable were Nokia symbian phone
Heh. It beats using a junk yard crane! Thanks for the note pyjamarama. That was an interesting read and probably accounts for why the manager was so ready to make peace with me.
I am thinking about getting a Pro 2 next week. I just bought a super fast computer for gaming but I really need to spend my time doing TONS of other things so thinking if I can get this and use it as my main computer…for WOW, DOM4, a few wargames, and then some photo and video stuff, excel, etc…it seems it would work for those applications.
Then, since I just sold my retina ipad because I can not justify it for the price and what I use it for (it was my 5th ipad…just sell them after not really using them but wanting to use them but never do!) I still want something that size to have by my bed for reading magazines, PDF’s, stuff like that…AND if I can used a wireless mouse and play DOM4 in bed or at work or anywhere I can, that’s more of a bonus.
I can then give my super fast computer to my son who will definitely appreciate it.
Does this sound feasible for what I want one for?
For most productivity stuff, it’s awesome. What kind of photo and video stuff? It can get pretty cramped on the surface screen.
Man, the Win8 RT/Metro store is full of knockoff/IP theft/crap.
I would only do the photo and video stuff and all other productivity stuff on the big monitor…only really use it as a media consumption device on the couch, at lunch, etc.
Yep, that’s the ticket then. I love mine, especially for road trips where I like to occasionally set aside some time to write.
Surface RT gets a cousin from Nokia Lumia 2520. The price is 500$ but is 10inch, 32GB and LTE, so with that specs is actually a very competitive price, but there is no WiFi only lower cost version, I guess that makes the differentiation with the Surface, that doesn’t have a LTE version, easy.
Yeah, the $500 price made me roll my eyes at first, but then I remembered that Apple charges a $130 premium just for the honor of letting you spend more money on LTE data. I wonder if that will change today. And if the 32GB iPad will now start at $500 instead of $600.