Falling Windows RT Tablet Prices Signify Slow Adoption 290
angry tapir writes "Prices of Windows RT devices have started falling, signaling an attempt by PC makers to quickly clear out stock after poor adoption of tablets and convertibles with the operating system. Microsoft released Windows RT for ARM-based devices and Windows 8 for Intel-based devices in October last year. The price drop is an acknowledgment that Windows RT has failed, analysts claim. Though Microsoft has not publicly acknowledged the failure of Windows RT, there is already growing concern about the fate of the OS. IDC earlier this month said that Windows RT tablet shipments have been poor, and that consumers have not bought into 'Windows RT's value proposition.' PC and chip makers have acknowledged poor adoption of the operating system. Nvidia's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, last month said he was disappointed with the poor response to Windows RT, and Acer executives have said that Microsoft needs to improve the usability of RT."
Would I buy one? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not even if it was free as in beer.
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get it. I played with the RT ones, and they're ok... but I kinda want one of the Pro's. They're certainly more appealing to me than an iPad.
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Insightful)
They are ok for what exactly? You can't do too much with them.
Kinda expensive for a portable web browser.
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Informative)
Erm what? Did you mis-read the parent post?
The Surface Pro is a full Win8 x64 machine. It's usable for everything from running Android apps (BlueStacks works pretty well, I'm told) to playing AAA PC games (at lowered settings due to the Intel graphics, but it can run the games). Along the way, there's a few things it's great at; it makes an excellent artistic platform, for example (Wacom digitizer with pressure sensitivity and all that). It's also an acceptable tablet (heavier and thicker and lower battery life than a modern iPad, but still usable - and there are people who used old-school Windows tablets that make Surface Pro look absurdly portable), and an acceptable laptop (assuming you have one of the keyboard covers, which also provides a touchpad) and, while not excelling in either role, it's lightweight and fast and compact and gets good-enough battery life for most use cases.
Surface RT, on the other hand, is definitely more gimped. Even if you use the various unlock/"jailbreak" hacks that are available, there's still only a limited amount of software available for it right now.
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Informative)
I played with the RT ones, and they're ok
You might wan't to read it yourself. I was referring to that.
I know what the Surface Pro's are.
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Re:Would I buy one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your $300 netbook uses solid-state storage, has a Wacom digitizer, weighs 2lbs (under one kilo), has 4GB of RAM and runs a 64-bit OS to be able to use it all, sports a quad-core CPU (not "four hardware threads" dual-core-with-hyperthreading, but actual quad-core i5), has USB3, supports hardware virtualization, supports full-disk encryption using a TPM, has a multi-touch screen, and a 1920x1080 ("1080p" in merketing-speak) resolution, Gorilla Glass, and is durable enough it can be dropped from shoulder hight onto cement with no appreciable damage?
Yeah, didn't think so.
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Insightful)
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How is it advancement if the new thing fullfills no more wants or needs than the old thing but costs 4 times as much? Job's done indeed.
I'm sure there are a few people out there for whom the Surface is actually useful. Fact is that these are only few or it would've been more succesfull.
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Surface Pro can do all that faster and better...
Faster, sure, better? Purely your subjective viewpoint.
If, for example, there is a device that can fill the needs of a user that has longer battery life that would be a "better" device for that user.
Admit that you are 100% wrong on the idea that it is better and I won't write you off as the MS shill that you appear to be. (No buts, full "I was wrong, end.")
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they keep trying to shoehorn Windows into a tablet.
Well to be fair this time they shoehorned some tablet into Windows first...
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Well google came out with android and that is eating windows RT's breakfast lunch and dinner.
Tablets have a place between laptops and phones. Windows RT was MSFT's answer to the high power high battery drain of intel chips. It is failing because it has all the headaches of windows and none of the usefulness(Windows RT can't run standard windows applications.)
As for chasing the masses, it is exactly that allows companies to do things like sell it for less.
Take an android tablet or an ipad and compare it i
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft killed RT in an epic case of one hand not talking to the other, and corporate greed (to force people to go for Pro - which also falls through the cracks as a device without a real market - it's too big and heavy - essentially its a laptop with a shitty keyboard that you can't use without a desk). Enable RT to be domain joined/managed, give it a half decent screen and you'd see corporate sales pick up.
As it is, they disabled all that and gave it a shitty screen compared to the iPad - so no consumer in their right mind will want it. Corporates won't want it either as it is not managable via active directory.
So.... it managed to hit that segment of the market that doesn't exist. Way to go Microsoft!
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:5, Insightful)
i love it how the 'geeks' belittle the windows 64 gb tablet's space, while all I've heard is rave reviews about google's 32 gb laptop.
You won't be so happy when you find out how much space is left over after you install the OS.
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http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/surface-pro-disk-space-to-fall-a-long-way-short-of-what-youd-expect/ [arstechnica.com]
A stock surface 64 pro should only have ~ 23 Gb left
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft strips a small part of the functionality out of Windows, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a vile, loathed RT device that the critics lambast for being dumbed down and failing to run Excel macros.
A small part? I'd say the lack of ability to run anything except RT-specific software is much more than stripping a "small part of the functionality."
Re:Would I buy one? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple strips most of the functionality out of OS X, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a cool, hip, trendy iPad that the critics adore.
You left out the part where Apple spent 4 years building a software infrastructure including apps for handheld devices (phones), and then rolled out the iPad.
Microsoft attempted to birth both (phone, tablet) into a hostile environment (solid competition), at the same time. They may as well have chucked a baby into the deep end of a swimming pool and expected it to survive. After draining the water from the pool first.
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Stuff that's more expensive but less useful? I can't believe they are scratching their head wondering why uptake sucked.
I think MS still can't understand why they aren't Apple... Apple regularly pull that kind of crap - produce a product that's very expensive but less useful than the competition, and the consumers just lap it up. From MS's pricing it seems that they think they have the same influence, and now they've fallen on their faces they probably can't understand why they don't.
What did they think was going to happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even forgoing "backwards compatibility" with x86 apps, maybe, maybe if you could actually compile desktop applications for it it would be a slightly more attractive platform, but being stuck with nothing but Office and what's available in Metro? It just isn't going to live up to many buyers desires or expectations.
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Even forgoing "backwards compatibility" with x86 apps, maybe, maybe if you could actually compile desktop applications for it it would be a slightly more attractive platform, but being stuck with nothing but Office and what's available in Metro? It just isn't going to live up to many buyers desires or expectations.
Oh, I don't know. I figure everyone who were talked into buying a Windows CE laptop back in the day is probably a candidate for Windows RT.
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I figure everyone who were talked into buying a Windows CE laptop back in the day is probably a candidate for Windows RT.
Back then they didn't know any better. CE was better than PalmOS. The market is mature now, and it is ruled by iOS and Android. WinCE and WinRT are in the noise, for very good (and different) reasons.
Microsoft is in a bad position. It has to compete with two excellent and zero-cost OSes that are not encumbered with legacy expectations and are designed specifically to do what they do.
Re:What did they think was going to happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Strictly speaking, this is actually possible. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2096820 [xda-developers.com]
It requires some hacks, though, and RT is missing most of the legacy libraries plus missing any form of OpenGL support. Nonetheless, there are a reasonable handful of programs which have been ported ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348 [xda-developers.com] ) and a few written specifically for (desktop mode) RT ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2095934 [xda-developers.com] ).
Re:What did they think was going to happen? (Score:4, Funny)
If you wanted to run Desktop apps, and wanted x86 compatibility, Surface RT is not the device for you. You need a Surface Pro.
Summary suggests Windows RT is not the device for a lot of folks ;)
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It's not. But I bought a Surface RT to 'hold me over' until the surface pro but actually found it far more useful than anticipated. It's nice to have support for real remote desktop so that I can use our company's web portal for accessing my workstation. Even just downloading a file from box's website onto a USB drive and printing to a real printer without any hassle was an enormous relief.
That being said. It seems like Windows RT shouldn't have ever been a consumer product. I can see why Microsoft w
Re:What did they think was going to happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is the whole reason it failed...
By marketing it as "windows", buyers expected some level of compatibility. The compatibility isn't there, which left buyers feeling misled.
And being able to compile desktop apps wouldn't be much use, 99% of windows desktop apps don't come with source code so most of the apps you could recompile for it would be cross platform open source apps. And if you want to compile cross platform open source apps for ARM you have been able to do that in Linux for many years already.
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If you could target Windows RT with win32 desktop code, I'm sure many of the proprietary vendors would happily release arm versions of their products. /Modern) for apps on the Windows Store / WinRT makes the barriers to entry significantly higher for the proprietary vendors.
But the need to target a whole new set of platform APIs (Metro
Access to the source code is only required if the end users need to do the build themselves. Obviously a big advantage of FLOODS is that you're not as dependant on a vendor's
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Floods = floss, by the way. Yay autocorrect.
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Maybe this is part of the reason Sinofsky was fired?
Re:What did they think was going to happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole thing is insane really. At the start MS had 90% of the desktop market. Windows Mobile had about 10-20% of the mobile market. Most importantly they had a load of ISVs producing software, the old stuff run on Win32 and the new stuff on .Net.
MS introduce the Kin and Zune. These were spectacular failures - based on .Net and C#
Then MS decide to replace Windows Mobile with Windows Phone 7. It is based on C#/.Net and is locked to prevent Win32 code. It share a lot with Kin and Zune. It is a failure. They replace it with WP8. WP8 is locked to prevent Win32 code except for Microsoft's code - IE and Office are still Win32. Everyone else is supposed to use the WinRT API in C++. Then they move the WP8 API to Windows 8 and release an ARM version which is locked to prevent Win32 code. Windows Phone is now down to a few percent market share. Most of the ISVs defected to Android and iOS and show no sign of coming back.
So you've got a UI which they used on their phone project which is not selling on their desktop OS which is. At that point it seems like people stopped buying machines with Windows 8 - if you look at what happened Windows 7 is still outselling it.
Now if you look at Vista it sold poorly and they rushed out Windows 7. So you'd expect them to rush out a Windows 9 which had the start menu restored. But if you look at Windows Blue the biggest change is apparently "an improved charms menu".
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"an improved charms menu"
They added blue diamonds?
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That is the crux of the issue. Apparently a LOT of people want more than Office and a few metro apps.
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Heretic!
~But you aren't far from the truth :)
Let me guess... (Score:5, Interesting)
Redmond is gonna blame OEMs for this one too eh?
(Reference: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/24/windows_8_blame_game/ [theregister.co.uk])
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Yes. If those candy ass OEMs would have just used rope and a rubber hose in their marketing campaigns it would have been just fine.
Who is the core audience for Windows? (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't understand who the core audience for windows is any more. Who are they trying to sell to?
Office workers? Great, Windows is a pretty good system for that usage since office workers have admins that can unf*ck their system when they pick up a virus off browser exploits.
What about the 90% of home users who aren't computer professionals? Are they better off with a Windows operating system that comes preloaded with so much bloatware it can make in Intel i7 chip work hard just to boot? What about when good old Mom or Dad accidentally downloads that trojan horse "anti-virus" that takes over her system to the point where it is unusable? Is Windows still a good value for them then? Wouldn't they have been better off buying a mac with it's easier to use interface, bloatware free on day 1, and far fewer viruses circulating?
Gamers of course are stuck with windows since so many games use Direct X instead of OpenGL.
What about programmers? Windows is SH!T for programming (unless of course you are developing windows applications.) Mac OSX and Linux are both far superior for programming. (OSX after all is a posix compliant Unix Operating System under the hood.) Considering how limited DOS was (and, apparently no longer even present in the current windows) programming from the command line in a Unix/Linux machine is a far far superior option.
So if you're an office drone, or a gamer you're really the only two people who still have a reason to have Windows.
Re:Who is the core audience for Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind who Windows is "good for", let's look at what Windows has going for it:
1 - A ton of users familiar with its desktop UI
2 - The mother-load of desktop software
3 - A ton of games compiled for native x86/x64
4 - Office
With Windows RT Microsoft basically said "Screw #1. Screw #2. Screw #3." That leaves a tablet for .. people who want to use Office on.. a tablet? Oh and they also added Metro. Except that the market for portable devices is already full of app platforms that are far more established.
Why would you buy a Windows RT tablet? Beats me. Clearly someone thought they could toss their core value propositions but win in the app space because... because something?
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Re:Who is the core audience for Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of broken shit in Windows 8 and i'm not just talking about the start menu - that's actually the least of the problems (even if it is a step backwards). Try to actually install/configure a printer, customize the non-luser wifi settings, etc. You're constantly switching between Metro and classic, as teh settings aren't even all reachable from within a single UI.
It's a clusterfuck.
Branding Branding Branding (Score:3)
Microsoft seems to be tied to the Windows brand when it is not appropriate and even harmful to the prospects of a product. Would you buy a Microsoft Windows Xbox?
Windows RT brought to mind all the negatives of the Windows brand: viruses, instability, insecurity.
Yet the Windows RT name here, as DigitAl56K noted above, did not include the brand positives: Familiar UI, existing software and games.
Coming up with a new product name is difficult, especially for a global company. Using the existing brand plus tw
Re:Branding Branding Branding (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst problem is that the brand name *implies* a familiar interface and existing software, leaving users extremely disappointed and frustrated when they find those two factors lacking.
MS seems to have an obsession with putting the windows brand everywhere, they are seemingly too arrogant to realise that their brand is viewed extremely negatively by many and only tolerated because in its core markets users are stuck with it or even completely unaware that alternatives exist.
They are like the east german trabant, a car almost universally derided and yet people still queue up to get one because nothing better is available to them.
In the phone and tablet markets, users are not locked in to windows, non windows systems are well known and widely available.
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RT isn't bad.. and for new development it's decent.. MS's problem is both screwing over their vendors, their customers, pricing themselves out of the market and to top it all off, using the "Windows" name where it clearly shouldn't b
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1. Users are NOT familiar with the Windows UI. The UI changes every damn release, in substantial ways, requiring retraining or lots of trial and error. Ironically, Windows 7 with its new large task bar and large icons, looks almost exactly like my GNOME 0.9x desktop on Slackware Linux 3.x, circa 1996.
2. Windows has a lot of software to fill in missing pieces and fix broken-ness of the OS, which are entirely unnecessary in other OSes. You bet, Windows has a lot of disk defragmenter programs, and Linux h
Re:Who is the core audience for Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
1. Users are NOT familiar with the Windows UI. The UI changes every damn release, in substantial ways, requiring retraining or lots of trial and error. Ironically, Windows 7 with its new large task bar and large icons, looks almost exactly like my GNOME 0.9x desktop on Slackware Linux 3.x, circa 1996.
No, the theme changes. The UI design itself has stood relatively untouched since its inception. Most major UI changes up until Windows 8 were purely cosmetic and almost universally had a means to revert to older forms.
It wasn't until Windows 8 when achieving any of the older functionality was pretty much universally removed.
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Users are NOT familiar with the Windows UI. The UI changes every damn release, in substantial ways, requiring retraining or lots of trial and error.
Win 95 and 8 are the only ones where it really changed, actually; the last version I used before installing Linux was XP, yet I had no trouble working with my mother's Windows 7 PC on a consumer level when introduced to it a year or two ago. It's also important to note that there was little-to-no "trial and error" for most users in the transition to Windows 95 -- MS pretty clearly designed the ad campaign in the months leading up to 95's release (including the choice of theme song) so it would double as us
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Thanks to Unity3D now there is a ton of games for every OS.
Sure, they are not spectacular as the high end PC games, but we are not talking about this type of games now.
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Windows is a terrible system for office workers, it is expensive, unreliable, insecure... Sure the admins can fix the system once the users have screwed it, but thats a classic case of treating the symptoms... Far better would be to have a system that didn't break in the first place.
Windows is also a terrible platform for gaming, the overhead of the os plus any third party cruft has a significant impact on the performance of games...
Home users are actually better off with a walled garden system like an ipad
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Every OS comes with bloatware when bought in a store. Even the phone, there is so much crap on it it's unbelievable.
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Everybody knows exactly who is the core audience for M$ Windows, it's the major shareholders. Those justifying the position of Uncle Fester Balmer being of Uncle Fester Balmer must shoot out new products in the hopes of convincing the major shareholders the keeping Uncle Fester Balmer in that position is sane no matter how many insane failures M$ has fired out under Uncle Fester Balmer's directions.
So Windows RT a blind loony shot in the dark with no real targeted market in mind just a crazily imagined.
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You can use WINE to play DirectX games on a Linux or Mac, however it is a subpar experience.
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And you obviously haven't used Linux in a long time. One install DVD and you're good to go for development. You can choose your favorite approach from the good old command line and make on up to eclipse. No need to count seats, plan a software budget, or store funky holograms in a fireproof safe. If you want/need it, just install and be happy.
Meanwhile, I'd love to know how you manage to program in windows with no text...
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considering MS dos has not been a part of windows since windows 2000, I assume you are also unaware of how modern windows works? .
You mean Windows ME. Windows 2000 was NT-based- no DOS in there.
System Restore is not a fool-proof way of removing viruses. Often to remove viruses, you need to hunt around in the file tree and muck with the registry. That's pretty damned user-unfriendly. Anything that constitutes "complex computing" is always difficult, on all platforms; that's just the way of the world.
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Fire sale? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Since its locked down so it can only run Windows RT, and the App Store would probably be shut down, what are you going to do with it?
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To quote from the referenced article:
"The specific value can't be permanently altered on devices enabled with Secure Boot"
So not much use really.
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To make it really useful, you'd need to flash a proper bootloader on it and install a proper OS on it. That procedure might or might not involve a soldering iron.
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To make it really useful, you'd need to flash a proper bootloader on it and install a proper OS on it. That procedure might or might not involve a soldering iron.
I might be technically capable of this work, but what financial or other reasons would I have to bother? It is not trivial to open a tablet that is glued together and is not designed to be opened. It is not trivial to solder a JTAG connector, or to make a needle probe jig for connecting to onboard test points. It is not trivial to develop the ne
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What kind of support you expect to have on an opened and hacked WinRT tablet, with some parts missing and other replaced, and with wires soldered to test points? On a product that is officially discontinued?
Once you start soldering, all support and warranties fly out of the window. You are on your own. Those who are not comfortable with that should buy a finished product, or R-Pi - at least that one is *intended* for hacking. Not that you will get far with support if you burn the I/O with 120V AC.
With r
Landfill (Score:2)
The only way these could have succeeded was to price them below Android and recover the losses from the App Store.
The way these are heading, we will see Microsoft soon abandon them and because of their locked down nature they will be consigned to landfill.
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I just checked Amazon - (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't say these things are priced into the dangerously low zone. They're still more expensive than the equivalent Android tablets and right around iProduct pricing. Even if I could put Android on one there wouldn't be a reason to buy one for that reason, a native Android tablet would still be the better dollar based choice.
windows RT experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:windows RT experience (Score:5, Funny)
When you mentioned "the bad", you forgot to include the apparent inability to format Slashdot posts.
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When you mentioned "the bad", you forgot to include the apparent inability to format Slashdot posts.
Or that RT disables mandatory previews, for that matter.
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The problem there is that windows applications are primarily closed source, so even if you can recompile existing applications and run them many apps don't come with source code, and the majority of those that do are cross platform and probably already worked on arm based linux long before windows rt existed.
Did you post this from your RT POS machine? (Score:2)
Line breaks, and paragraph marks, or even emoticons of a face sticking a tongue out at you, help break a document into logical parts and make it easier for people to read. Oh, wait, I get it. You were trying to demonstrate another f
Improve usability? (Score:2)
Isn't Windows RT pretty much Windows 8 without the normal Desktop mode?
That would pretty make it a statement that Metro itself is a failure, and what's more we're talking about a tablet device, the very thing the Metro interface was created for.
Forget trying to make it work for a desktop OS, Microsoft. Your creation can't even cut it on its home turf.
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It actually has the normal desktop mode. Office, the legacy Control Panel, Windows Explorer, all the old admin tools (from Task Manager to Registry Editor and Local Security Policy editor), all the command-line or scripting environments (CMD and PowerShell, plus WSH scripts), the built-in Remote Desktop (there's another one in the store), and one of the two Internet Explorer modes (the one that looks like, and includes all the features of, IE9 on Win7) all must run in the Desktop. It's definitely still ther
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Windows advantages (Score:5, Insightful)
In the enterprise market, iPads and iPhones are everywhere. The reason Microsoft could in theory have won back that enterprise market was providing a device that:
1. Could join a domain and be managed by Microsoft tools
2. Run existing Windows legacy apps
So Microsoft provided
1. An OS/tablet that can't join a domain to be managed by Microsoft tools
2. Can't run Windows legacy apps
So is arguably worse than existing Android/iOS tablets on price and hardware. The software provides less value. And the OS eats up all your storage space.
Honestly, I can't see anyone making an argument for buying a Windows RT tablet.
Bingo. MS still owns the enterprise, but... (Score:2)
I'm sure this won't matter to the haters (Score:5, Insightful)
but my surface RT is the best travel computer I've ever owned. When I'm on the road I don't need to compile apps or do heavy lifting. I need to check email, use word / excel and browse the web. So why is it better than any regular tablet? It's as light as a tablet when I want tablet mode but has support for a real mouse / keyboard when I don't.
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but my surface RT is the best travel computer I've ever owned. When I'm on the road I don't need to compile apps or do heavy lifting. I need to check email, use word / excel and browse the web. So why is it better than any regular tablet? It's as light as a tablet when I want tablet mode but has support for a real mouse / keyboard when I don't.
This is a trick question. A portable computer with a keyboard and mouse is called a laptop not a tablet.
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Don't most tablets support a real mouse & keyboard via Bluetooth/USB?
Microsoft should have asked me (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft: You keep doing it wrong.
You want to compete in the tablet market? GREAT! I say WELCOME even. There is/was room for Microsoft in the market. Create your own snazzy tablet interface? Well, what I saw of it was kinda cool but I'm already used to small icons and stuff but the dynamic favorites looking main screen thing seems fine with me too. And I loved that you started out by getting Angry Birds ported over to your new platform. But here's where you screwed up.
You decided that everything sho
Re: hi (Score:5, Funny)
What - to buy a Windows RT tablet? ;)
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2007: Windows VISTA, Vastly Improved Subpar Total Ass_shit
2012: Windows RT, Royal Trash
2013: Windows BLUE, ?
Fill in the blank!
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BLUE = Bill Loses Ubuntu Encounter ?
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Re:hi (Score:5, Informative)
Well they didn't really drop that much, but what little they did is easily explainable: Inexpensive but good tablets hit the market hard and fast around that time. Namely, the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7. Naturally the competition needed to do just that - compete.
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Note to Windows RT hardware suppliers: Unlock the boot ROM, so we can run linux on the fire sale devices - I've got several netbooks running linux from Microsoft's last attempt. I'd buy unlocked Windows RT Tablets at the prices that Netbooks got dumped at.
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I recently bought a W7 tablet. Jesus fucking christ, what a piece of shit. It's like a Cyrus Cybernetics Corporation product. And I LOATHE apple products, so don't call me a shill. But W7 could never be considered usable by touch by anyone sane who is not a shill.
All tablets are useless pieces of shit.
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This is exactly the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the millions of comments and reviews like this that are killing Microsoft's hardware partners on WinRT. "Loved WinRT - intuitive, responsive, loved the hell out of the OS. Returned this (VivoTab RT, Dell XPS 10, Lenovo Yoga 11) to the vendor because I also bought the Surface RT and prefer it because x,y,z. Four stars for this though, as you might like it." And where do these comments and articles come from? Microsoft's own marketing campaigns, fed by the billions in profits their partners funnel them, amplified by their Bing search engine. With friends like this Microsoft's hardware partners don't need enemies.
If you want to survive as a manufacturer never ever ever screw your distributors. Word gets around.
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Now clusty there was a decent search engine but sadly it's gone
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IMHO, Windows ME is way better than any other ME operating system om the market.
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I favor the old theory that spending a large sum on a device causes a lot of people to become defensive about its merits; agreeing that it has really serious faults would mean admitting to themselves that they were fooled into paying several times what the item is worth.
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yes, if they had only leveraged their success with Windows Phone...