So how about that Microsoft Surface?

[unfnknblvbl]

$1100 for a crippled laptop with shitty battery life. Fucking LOL!

[Madmya]

4hrs shit? Maybe compared to an ARM device... but considering what it's packing it seems reasonable.

I'm missing something? I see this as a bridge between laptops and tablets. It has the hardware of a laptop but the usability of a tablet.

Edit again, sorry: It seems like most people are either seeing this as a tablet and people are going 'PFFFTTT can get something way cheaper and has double battery life' or people are viewing it as a laptop and saying 'PFFFFTTT for that price can get something more powerful'. When bringing the two together, you get the advantages of both but also the negatives.

[Mavy]

The way I look at it is that I think it has shit battery life for an ultrabook. Unless the guts are more powerful than what I'm assuming?

Will wait to see what others do.

[Twit]

I'm typing this here message on my Surface RT tablet with a Type cover, so if anyone has any questions about it then let me know. I'll answer when I'm fewer drunk. I was going to write up a massively detailed 50+ page in-depth review for you all but then I got distracted by a cat or something.

[Madmya]

I'm typing this here message on my Surface RT tablet with a Type cover, so if anyone has any questions about it then let me know. I'll answer when I'm fewer drunk. I was going to write up a massively detailed 50+ page in-depth review for you all but then I got distracted by a cat or something.

Don't worry mate, I'm drunkeder too. I had to stop myself from editing that previous post three more times GAMEhed style.

I just want to know your overall view of it. How's the touchpad and overall usefulness of the thing?

In response to Mavy's post: I googled Asus Ivy Bridge Battery Life and found the battery life to be a little less than a Pro. Again, am I missing something? I honestly don't know, I've been out of the hardware game for a while.

[Twit]

Overall view I'll leave for when I'm more coherent...

The fact that I'm writing this without too many spelling errors (I hope) should show that the Type keyboard is pretty good. It's not comparable to my MacBook Air's keyboard though. Nor is the touchpad, which is a bit shit if I'm honest. However, I can quickly pick the thing up and flip the keyboard cover around to the back and start using it like a tablet whenever I want so having that option is actually quite neat. The arrow keys bug me.

Super duper summary of initial impressions:

Solid hardware - almost Apple like.
Ooh look - new stuff!
I can get down and dirty with this thing unlike the iPad.
Fucken shit fuken integration of the microSD fucken work cunt FUCK FUCK ARGH FUCK CUNT FUCK!!!]
This thing is fucken shit.
Fucken stupid thing.
Actually, it's maybe not that bad.
Come to think of it, it's kinda neat.
I can do stuff with this.
Some of these apps, and the way the OS integrates, and the general flow of things can be quite nice...and unlike what I could do on the iPad.

I like it. Jump on board this thing though and you're an early adopter and will have to put up with some shit, but I see potential in this concept. It combines some of the neatness and consumption-ability of a tablet with a bit of productivity and do-what-you-want. Metro / Modern / Windows 8 interface makes sense in this space (and is utterly beautiful at times) but it has a long way to go before the concept is properly realised. It sits in some weird niche between a regular tablet and a laptop.

There.

[Mavy]

Yeah. I'm probably thinking based on the best available. The smaller the screen, the smaller the casing, the smaller the battery. So for its size 4 hours is probably normal.

This review has a list of battery life's for a number of ultrabooks. Longest is a 15" but its also the thinnest. Maybe Samsung is the one to watch in this space.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/acer ... s7-review/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Madmya]

Overall view I'll leave for when I'm more coherent...

The fact that I'm writing this without too many spelling errors (I hope) should show that the Type keyboard is pretty good. It's not comparable to my MacBook Air's keyboard though. Nor is the touchpad, which is a bit shit if I'm honest. However, I can quickly pick the thing up and flip the keyboard cover around to the back and start using it like a tablet whenever I want so having that option is actually quite neat. The arrow keys bug me.

Super duper summary of initial impressions:

Solid hardware - almost Apple like.
Ooh look - new stuff!
I can get down and dirty with this thing unlike the iPad.
Fucken shit fuken integration of the microSD fucken work cunt FUCK FUCK ARGH FUCK CUNT FUCK!!!]
This thing is fucken shit.
Fucken stupid thing.
Actually, it's maybe not that bad.
Come to think of it, it's kinda neat.
I can do stuff with this.
Some of these apps, and the way the OS integrates, and the general flow of things can be quite nice...and unlike what I could do on the iPad.

I like it. Jump on board this thing though and you're an early adopter and will have to put up with some shit, but I see potential in this concept. It combines some of the neatness and consumption-ability of a tablet with a bit of productivity and do-what-you-want. Metro / Modern / Windows 8 interface makes sense in this space (and is utterly beautiful at times) but it has a long way to go before the concept is properly realised. It sits in some weird niche between a regular tablet and a laptop.

There.

bloody hell! Excellent impressions,thanks.

[Twit]

My pinned Games Ranch link looks shit. Someone who has the necessary access to this site should read the following and add the couple meta tags it takes to make it look good:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012 ... ows-8.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Edit - jizz you should make a 144px square image of the leaning dude for this purpose. And choose a browny orangey color for the tile. And have it done by COB Friday please.

Sent from my Surface which has a god damn shitty looking Games Ranch link on the start screen.

[Madmya]

I second this motion.

Get on it Jizz and lestat.

[pilonv1]

Yes I want one for my phone when I get it.

In 2014

[GeneraL CyberFunK]

I wonder if Microsoft are disappointed with the sales for it?

They should be. But then again how many do they expect to sell WHEN YOU CAN'T FUCKING BUY ANYWHERE OTHER THAN ONLINE.

If I had the chance to have a proper play with it.. I'd seriously consider buying one.. but call me old fashioned - I'm not buying something like this unless I can have some hands on time.

[Twit]

I was pretty much in the same boat but eventually decided to just order one because there was no chance of getting my hands on it any other way, and with my version 1 iPad no longer able to receive OS upgrades I thought it was time for something new. I brought mine in to work the other day and a few people who had been derisive of it in the past were quite impressed once they got to play around with it.

It’s a tricky one to recommend though. If you want a tablet that just does basic consumption, games, and general fluff very well then there’s no way I’d recommend it over an iPad. But you can go deeper with this – it can be far more productive. It’s weird being able to use a tablet like I normally would on my lap for general couch slacking, and then when the need arises just flip the keyboard around and instantly be able to really get stuck in with writing something or managing stuff with good speed and fluency. It doesn’t feel as compromised as a normal tablet when it comes to that sort of task, and although the RT desktop is limited and somewhere that I don’t normally want to be on a tablet, it’s nice for it to still be there with all its down and dirty functionality that I can get at when I need to.

That doesn’t mean it’s a shit tablet though. It’s comfortable on my lap, mostly feels slick and easy to get around, and I find the wide screen and OS excellent for general media consumption. Metro IE10 is very fast and responsive, though it has some quirks compared to Safari on iOS that I’d like them to sort out (I have trouble panning and zooming at the same time for example). Portrait mode is a bit of a joke with this sort of aspect ratio but I rarely ever used my iPad in portrait mode anyway. The OS especially makes others look a tad stupid in some ways with its simple multitasking and single access point for common and cross application tasks such as sharing and searching.

Anyway, more blabber sorry. I struggle to define this thing. If anyone has any specific questions about apps or processes or something then let me know – that might be more useful than generic spew like the above.

[GeneraL CyberFunK]

Oh no... what you're saying is great.

I've always felt that the ipad is good for your basic fluff but when it comes to doing specific and focused tasks, it always seemed to just not quite hit the mark for me. It felt very general and you couldn't really hone in on exactly what you wanted to do.

1. What is office like? Excel to be exact?

2. touch lag - My ipad 1 seriously struggles now and has since the get go really. What is it like on Surface?

3. The much complained about lack of apps - How accurate is this and what is the impact to you? I personally like having useful and defined apps... not a market of various useless shit that the android and apple app store has. It will fill out obviously but is the lack of apps now that much of a big deal?

4. Have you found any major bugs/flaws with the OS?

5. Connectivity - I must say I'm keen about being able to just plug in USB sticks and a mouse if I want... is it as seamless and wonderful as it touts?

6. Storage - what size did you get and do you feel the storage limitations (the OS taking up a huge chunk from what I remember) are going to cause you drama?

7. For someone who wants to use more powerful spreadsheeting... browse the net.. use the tablet to connect to various web based packages (Xero for example) and just overall speed of completing tasks (let's say I just used excel and then a client wanted to pay me online by going to their bank's online banking webpage.. how does it handle the flicking between apps/programs and speed of the process (any lag) and also the ease of completing?

[Twit]

I’ll expand on this when I get home, but a TLDR version:

1. Dunno, haven’t used it much yet.
2. Can’t say I’ve noticed, but it does sometimes fail to register what I thought were perfectly cromulent taps (I think some UI targets are too small). For fast work I flip the keyboard out and use those many lovely keyboard shortcuts and the trackpad.
3. This will depend on you. It’s definitely early days – no denying it. Some apps feel beta and crap, many big names haven’t released Metro apps at all yet, and some are quite nice already and show the promise of the platform.
4. Most significant for me is the use of the microSD. I wanted to put my music on there, but I tried 50 different methods of accomplishing this and they all failed in some way so I gave up and plonked it on the main drive. Now I’m down to about 9GB already! I can probably list some others later…
5. Yep. Quite impressive in that regard.
6. See #4. I got a 32GB but I also have a 32GB microSD. It comes with 4GB taken up with a recovery partition which you can easily move off to a USB drive to free up space, but the OS still takes a huge chunk.
7. More time needed to answer. In general, switching has seemed faster than I expected so far and everything has felt fairly smooth and responsive but I probably haven’t really taxed it. Might put it more to the test tonight and let you know, but I guess it’s worth remembering that the RT is geared more for portability & battery life whereas the Pro would be more geared for oomph, so there's trade-offs to be made.

[jizzlobber]

Shit, I think the gr logo stuff it on my old laptop, I'll find it and do something

[Twit]

Okay, so I'm going to expand on some of what I wrote earlier. I'll be using the Surface for this, mostly with Evernote snapped to the left third of the page so I can browse / do other stuff on the right third.

I'll write more about apps (points 1 & 3) later...

First, some more of the little niggles that I've noticed (point 4):

• I've had WiFi drop out briefly at times for no apparent reason. I think they'll be releasing a patch soon for that. It also failed to connect to an iPhone at work that was being a hotspot, which turned out to be because by default the WAP name was Someone's iPhone (the apostrophe threw it off).
• I would like to have something on the start screen to show me the battery level.
• Having links on the start screen for very frequently used sites is okay but I'd like something a bit better, plus the ability to modify them a bit. FIX THE IMAGE JIZZ!!
• It would be nice to have groups that expand when you tap on a tile, but that's not too big of a deal when you can easily search for everything.
• I sometimes get frustrated moving tiles around when it decides to move other tiles around when I don't want it to.

The major flaw for me was the microSD issue, and that was mostly to do with indexing. I just couldn't find a way to make it work adequately. That needs to be addressed if they are going to sell it on having expandable storage (to compensate for how much space the OS takes up).

Now let me try opening Excel and some other garbage and see what happens...

Okay, as you can see I'm not exactly stressing Excel out here, but I've deliberately left a bunch of stuff running including multiple tabs open in IE plus Minesweeper and some other apps and it all still seems to be responding okay to application switches. No dramas there.


Excuse the flames - thought I'd best obscure name info quickly using that photo app.

On the issue of plug 'n play, I'm afraid I just tried my 360 controller and the stupid thing just blinks at me, so maybe it's not that flawless. I think that might be more to do with the controller or something though.
...

This is becoming a GameHED post but fuckit - on to the subject of apps. I won't bore you with my impressions of the entire MS apps suite - suffice to say that they are all pretty neat but also lacking in some way. I'd say they show promise.

I like the concept of the Xbox Music app but it desperately needs some basic functionality improvements. News and sport apps are nice too but not customisable to my liking (particular the sports app with no ability to choose Australian teams). I like using the People app for basic Facebook checking just because it makes everything nice and readable without fluff, but I'm not a heavy social slut so my needs are basic. I haven't bothered with an InstaFaceTwitPin app or anything for the same reason, and because the browser is good enough and sizeable enough to make normal websites quite okay.

OneNote MX
...is an example of an app done right for the Surface. It's quite useable in lounge mode, a good target for sharing services, and when you need to use it in anger it's nicely driveable with keyboard and trackpad.

Nextgen Reader
...is a damn fine Google Reader client with in-built mobility view rendering and easy switching between traditional news reader style and a metro article tiles style. Really like this app.

Evernote
...is an example of the sort of app that's going to be brilliant to use on the Surface once they expand on it some more in the upcoming versions. At the moment it lacks some basic editing functionality (rich text) but it's nice to use and again is a good sharing target for stuff to come back to.

PhotoStudio Free
...is a pretty decent photo editing app.

If there are any other sorts of app you're interested in then let me know.

[jizzlobber]

something like this?



or this



or something more metro



thoughts?
is the name added automatically to the tile?

[Twit]

I think it pads it out and then adds the text. They recommend using a transparent background and then setting the tile colour as the second meta tag. I reckon any of those would be great. I maybe prefer the middle one? But any of 'em would be better that what it is now.

[jizzlobber]

ok I could probably make it transparent, but it'd have to be a png file or something?

i'll go with #2 and attempt to contact Lestat

edit- not even sure if this is transparent, so i'll post it here


edit2- yup... so orangy brown still the best tile colour?

[pilonv1]

Looks awesome

[Madmya]

Cheers for the detailed impressions Twit, is Office for RT designed specifically for Surface/Win8? Just that Office 2013 comes out in a month or so, design changes may be incoming.

[Hercy]

Twit doesn't even come here any more.

[cloud]

GameHED

[Madmya]

A mate of mine said Garden City (Brisbane shopping centre) had a Surface stall set up in the food court where you could get hands on with it. I went one weekend later and it had gone. Now according to the Surface site there is no more of these stalls in Australia.

Pretty useless.