Has anyone had a chance to actual hold and "play" with the Microsoft Surface Tablet? What are your impressions about it? I was excited with all the buzz about it during the pre-launch. It's not sold in any of the stores close to me. I will have to travel to the Microsoft Store. I have had a chance to play with other Windows 8 tablets. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with Windows 8.
I really like the idea, and the design of the tablet. Coupled with the fact that you can use it as a normal PC is amazing, and the keyboards you can purchase are apparently really good to type on, unlike a touch screen. The biggest problem you've got at the moment is they're running Windows 8 RT. The RT meaning Windows is running on an Arm processor. The big disadvantage for consumers is that you'll only be able to download and install software from the Microsoft Store. Again, the success of this is dependant on how well MS's store works and if developers get the store nice and full of applications to install.
Lucky you! I still haven't even tried Windows 8. It seems visually great but I want to know if it's really as "blazing fast" as Microsoft promised it to be. It must work great on a tablet. I've been saying it for months, but I think Windows 8 tablets are going to be the next big hit.
I also have read some rviews about surface and I believe its really good to have since the office suite can be use in this tablet. Hope this will be available in our country later. This could be the reason why nexus drop their price
I really liked the Galaxy tablet. Windows 8 on a tablet is visually stunning. It's also super, super fast. I went into the store to looking for the Surface Tablet, but the store didn't plan on carrying it. The salesperson tried to talk me into buying the Galaxy tablet because he said that Windows 8 (not RT) and cheaper even if I buy a separate keyboard for it. I had to USB ports too. It was quite beautiful.
The betas of I that I tested out were unfortunately not fast at all. One of the main criticisms I've heard about Windows 8 is that unless you have a touch screen computer or laptop, it's more inconvenient to use. The interface is designed more for touch screen use. This may be fine for tablets, but for home computing or trying to get work done, I don't see any benefit of having to flick across your screen and use a mouse at the same time. Besides, I really don't want to be staring at smudges and fingerprints all day while I am trying to read and type stuff. The learning curve on the UI in general is also pretty steep I've heard. Personally, I got frustrated when I couldn't even bring up a start menu to open an app, and got stuck in the desktop mode. When you're not using it on a touch screen device, the tiles really serve no functional purpose, they are just a wasted use of space forcing you to scroll across multiple screens to get to what you're looking for.
I agree that Windows 8 should be strictly for tablets or mobile devices. I would never put it on my laptop.
