[NSR] Tech Heads: What's Up With That MS Tablet?

[neotrotsky]

If they get t good reviews, I may consider one, most likely the Pro, if it will do for me everything a laptop does.

Oh, and there are already industry rumors that MS will be building its own WP8 phone. I do hope they get Nokia to build it.

One thing to note is that the "Pro" will probably get lower battery life, since they are promising a Core i5 (Sandy Bridge) in it. The Core i5 is a great chipset, but it can be a bit power hungry. I have one in my Vaio and I get about 5 hours battery life, but doesn't blink at whatever I throw at it. But, lower battery life is to be expected since it will have the horsepower of a full professional laptop/MacBook Pro in tablet form.

My wife has her eye on the "Pro" as well, since she does web design and programming. I'll probably be cool with the RT since I just bought my laptop in March and my recording software is already purchased for Windows 7. The Surface will simply be my mobile/office device.

[cdwise]

FWIW, I've been using Windows tablets since 2004 as my primary computer. I love Win 7 on my i7 slate. Docked to a 24" color calibrated touch screen monitor it is a full fledged desktop replacement. Mobile, I can hot swap batteries and get 12 of battery life running celluar or wifi. Full Photoshop 64bit Extended, Dreamweaver, Outlook, Word and IM as well as IE and Firefox running most of the time. I've got Win 8 running on a smaller 10 ARM based tablet for testing and I prefer Win 7 but then I'm using my tablet as a primary development machine.

Toshiba, Samsung, Lenovo, Motion all of the majors and many of the minors are producing Win 8 tablets. MS is being more specific about hardware requirements than in the past as they did with the Win 7 phones - which I really like even if I'm still using an iPhone (company provided) but my son has had a Win 7 phone for almost 2 years and prefers it to an iPhone.

How Win 8 will play is anyone's guess. I'll probably skip it but those who do less actual development may adore it. As more programs become Metro compliant I may like it better but so far I'm happy with Win 7 64bit and my current Motion J3500 tablet and have no desire to buy a new computer or learn a new OS at this point. Besides our clients are multinational corporations that won't be rolling out Win 8 any time soon. But it wouldn't surprise me that Win 8 tablets are a hit with consumers.

[Edwub]

Microsoft needs to do serious outreach to promote software development. Although sale of XP ended a few years ago, support will continue to 2014.

I use some serious scientific equipment, and software is inevitably always Linux based or "user friendly" WinXP based. Carl Zeiss Inc software, despite costing some $5k per license (and for a $300k microscope) is odd. We have it on WinXP and on 32bit Win7....we'd need to buy a new license for 64bit, which sucks.

But it has some inane requirements. It won't work with an i7 processor, and they recommend sticking to an i5. Part of that oddity is that they've been attempting to maintain 32bit software that is XP compatible, because their primary academic base sticks to XP.

Mostly because a lot of research labs are scared of change. Software licenses cost a TON, and moving to a new operating system is a huge deal. Coupled with constant turnover of graduate students/post docs and data migration is a constant fear.

I use Win7 64bit, and love it. My fiance is an apple fanatic, as are some of my coworkers. Unfortunately for them, a lot of the bioinformatic software is.....Windows based, or Linux based.

I know that industrial startups (in the life sciences at least) mirror academia in atmosphere and usage. I spent time working in biotech in the Bay Area. Safest bet is still typically at least one computer with WinXP. The switch to Win7 was hampered by the bungling of Vista, and a lot of people were hesistant to swap or just starting to. A lot of companies and equipment manufacturers (takes a few years for a trend to end up with a product) are starting to plan OS compatible releases though, as a lot of people swapped that way.

To leapfrog ('Vista never existed, Win7 is great but come over to Win8) seems risky to me, as it might splinter usage and favor OS for stable software development. I use both interchangably at work/home, but people tend to try to coordinate their work+home computer to have similar setups/interchangable data usage/analysis. If more software moves towards OS compatibility, it's less likely people will move to adopt Win8 at home.

I'm not sure about corporate environments, but at least for academia/life science research.

Just a few off-the-cuff, top of my head thoughts.

[Edwub]

Around 2001/2002 my girlfriend had a Fujitsu Lifebook. A tiny, tiny little laptop with a touch screen/stylus.

In 2008, I briefly had an HP convertible tablet pc.
Like this one:


Ideally, it was incredible.
It's the main reason I never became a super fan of the iPad. It had the best of both worlds. I could type up a word document, download a pdf or powerpoint presentation of my lecture (when I was starting grad school), and I could flip the screen over and draw/doodle my notes directly onto it.
Realistically, it ran Vista and was ultimately too buggy, especially in tablet mode, and I returned it.

Side note: In 2008, I decided the money would instead go to a different essential: my first scooter purchase.

That convertible tablet was a great idea (not a new one, but a good one) but suffered from poor execution (curse you, Vista).

So because of that, I am intrigued by the Surface...

[Southerner]

I like Linux well enough. I had Lubuntu on an older laptop and since my current one is more of a heavyweight, my brother loaded it with Mint. If I had the time to delve into it, I could probably be satisfied with it. But there's stuff I haven't conquered yet, like ripping and transferring my music.

It's the portability that intrigues me. I can always get another laptop but to have a more carry-able device that is a full-bore computer would be great.

[jmer1234]

I am going to start by stating that I am a died in the wool "rotten fruit" man. I work in a Windows based governmental IT department and oversee web development and administration on Linux servers. I touch it all.

I downloaded the release candidate of W8 a couple months ago, installed it on a virtual machine, played with it, and threw the entire thing away within 15 minutes. The interface was not inherently intuitive. Sure there were big buttons to click on to launch applications, but once that app was fired up, there was no visual que to help you get out of that application. I actually had to get on another machine, and do a google search on how to go back to the desk top.

Given Microsoft's track record of basically every other OS release being a flop, I am not going to hold my breath on this one.

The promise of full pc functionality on a tablet: intriguing, but that has been the golden fleece to date.

I use the full suite of hardware from apple, and in doing so you have an incredible amount of integration out of the box. I can walk outside, take a picture with my iOS phone, go to a meeting and take notes on my iPad or phone, and come back to the office and have them waiting for me on the mac desktop. At the same time, I have a macbook air that has largely replaced the iPad and desktop. The only thing it is missing is a touch screen. It is only a little larger than a standard tablet, about the same weight as a tablet, and has the screen resolution of a standard 17" laptop. Throw in an apple tv with the next release of OS X (usually around $29), and I will be able to wirelessly use any hdmi ready display for presentations. I can already do that with my iPad.

Is the apple solution expensive? Sure. Is there a long haul cost benefit? My Mac desktop has lasted through 2 of the agency's standard 3 year roll over periods for user computers, and is still going strong. Does it fit every need? No, CAD and GIS are still wholly in the realm of Windows.

But is it cool? You betcha.

[neotrotsky]

I am going to start by stating that I am a died in the wool "rotten fruit" man. I work in a Windows based governmental IT department and oversee web development and administration on Linux servers. I touch it all.

I downloaded the release candidate of W8 a couple months ago, installed it on a virtual machine, played with it, and threw the entire thing away within 15 minutes. The interface was not inherently intuitive. Sure there were big buttons to click on to launch applications, but once that app was fired up, there was no visual que to help you get out of that application. I actually had to get on another machine, and do a google search on how to go back to the desk top.

Given Microsoft's track record of basically every other OS release being a flop, I am not going to hold my breath on this one.

The promise of full pc functionality on a tablet: intriguing, but that has been the golden fleece to date.

I use the full suite of hardware from apple, and in doing so you have an incredible amount of integration out of the box. I can walk outside, take a picture with my iOS phone, go to a meeting and take notes on my iPad or phone, and come back to the office and have them waiting for me on the mac desktop. At the same time, I have a macbook air that has largely replaced the iPad and desktop. The only thing it is missing is a touch screen. It is only a little larger than a standard tablet, about the same weight as a tablet, and has the screen resolution of a standard 17" laptop. Throw in an apple tv with the next release of OS X (usually around $29), and I will be able to wirelessly use any hdmi ready display for presentations. I can already do that with my iPad.

Is the apple solution expensive? Sure. Is there a long haul cost benefit? My Mac desktop has lasted through 2 of the agency's standard 3 year roll over periods for user computers, and is still going strong. Does it fit every need? No, CAD and GIS are still wholly in the realm of Windows.

But is it cool? You betcha.

Funny: The interface on Windows 8 preview that I put on my Vaio ran really well. It was a bit of a change in thinking, but definitely got used to it and dug where it was going. And, you don't "lose" the traditional desktop like many tech blogs insist. That's mis-information.

I think it really comes down to what you prefer to use. I think people should definitely try the OS before committing either way. The University I work for uses Macs in all administrative capacities while our theater division uses Windows, and I can honestly say I want to just chuck OSX out the window when it comes to usability. It just is far more clunky to me and it does not seem as integrated with everything like Apple wants to claim. To do so you really need to build an OS from the ground up, and have EVERY device use that same OS. It seems that Apple is moving towards using iOS for everything, which seems sad considering that it's a dumbed down phone OS, and they're happy to make that the key point of integration with everything.

It really comes down to personal preference. That and I found out that 3 of my major audio recording and MIDI programs will work on Windows 8 That's a huge plus when changing stuff up like this, to support legacy software