It's all well and good to convey our impressions of the Surface's responsiveness (very good, in case you're wondering). But we also recorded video from a high-speed camera demonstrating how quickly the Surface responds to touch input compared to Apple's third-gen iPad. The typing is a little tough to make out, but you should see Microsoft's tablet reacting faster.
Windows RT is a bonus for anyone already making the move to Windows 8. By enabling a mobile operating system that nearly clones the desktop version, switching between a Surface and your desktop should be more natural than learning the ins and outs of Mac OS and Android, or Windows 7 and iOS.
Microsoft seems to have learned a lot from its competition in terms of usability. We don't need a separate file browser for Windows RT like we do under Android. On the Surface, you simply open My Computer. It's a much more Windows-like experience and you aren't constantly reminded that, oh yeah, I'm using a pared-down mobile device.
Of course, you can't escape the fact that you are, in fact, still using a pared-down mobile device. If you try to tab around in IE10 like you would on the desktop, you're going to find yourself frustrated. Just try opening three tabs, one of them a Flash- or JavaScript-heavy site. Switching between them is going to be downright sluggish, and it's common to see windows that don't respond. Your only solution is to wait for the tablet to catch up or close IE10 altogether and start over.
On the bright side, you can watch streaming YouTube videos at 1080p, either giving you higher-bitrate video on the Surface's display or higher resolution on an external display. Compare that to the 720p cap imposed on Android and iOS. The only limitation we ran across is an inability to play back 4K video, rare though they may be.
We're really like to see Microsoft open up the Windows RT ecosystem to competing Web browsers, though. Although IE10 is an impressive step forward from IE9 (just wait for our upcoming Web Browser Grand Prix comparing Windows 7 and 8), we like the utility offered by some of the other options out there. For instance, Chrome and Firefox benefit from AdBlock. IE10 lacks an extension as robust, which sucks because blocking Flash-based advertisements would go a long way to improving performance on popular websites.
Just as we're able to bog the Surface down with aggressive Web browsing, so too can we slow the system down with Office Home & Student RT Preview. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are very potent tools, and they run similarly on Microsoft's tablet as they do on the desktop. Surely an enthusiast is going to find the threshold where even a complex Word document or Excel spreadsheet overwhelms the Surface's hardware. But we got to that point extra fast in OneNote.
The software is intended to be used like a virtual notebook for organizing ideas, thoughts, and agendas. If you're a student, we can see how the Surface and OneNote would be a great combination. Indeed, the software lends itself to multiple sections for each class, with a page dedicated to every lecture. Unfortunately, once you have two or three sections, OneNote slows down substantially (especially if you drop in images and diagrams). In a classroom, where you're typing like mad to keep up with the professor, a Tegra 3-powered Surface simply can't keep up the way we're hoping the Surface Pro will.
- Microsoft Surface: Battery Life Analysis
- Windows RT And Office: Fully-Featured, To A Fault?
- No More Cloning: The Surface Supports An Extended Display!
- Is The Surface Any Good For Gaming? First, We Need Apps
- Color Gamut Revisited: Illustrating The Surface's Weakness
- We Like The Surface; We're Waiting For Surface Pro



Its comforting to see that not everything has changed with Windows RT.
The ASUS also claims up to 16 hours battery life for theirs (im thinking less but still amazing if its 12+).
These things simply WORK
For her it is simply perfect: she can do with it all she would do with an ipad (she's not much of a gamer though) AND it actually replaces her desktop-PC... she's using office without macros and addins so the RT-Office is "good enough". She just plugs in an extra monitor and USB hub (for full-size keyboard and mouse), and she is all set for productivity. We did not experience any hardware limitation related issues (obviously office doesn't start as fast as it does on a x86 PC with SSD).
Based on our experience with the Surface RT I will definitely buy a Surface Pro for myself (I need Office with macros and addins for work) and hopefully finally have a PC that works both as a productivity tool as well as entertainment gadget. Yay! And *poof*, there goes the business notebook...
Too bad I will still need my desktop gaming rig (HD 4000 still not powerful "enough")...
I wouldnt buy a device today which i know is going to be upgraded in a few months with atleast a better SoC, and probably a better display.
It's on our to do list
Its comforting to see that not everything has changed with Windows RT.
The ASUS also claims up to 16 hours battery life for theirs (im thinking less but still amazing if its 12+).
These things simply WORK
That is correct, but for documents and on the run its not a bad thing at all.
For her it is simply perfect: she can do with it all she would do with an ipad (she's not much of a gamer though) AND it actually replaces her desktop-PC... she's using office without macros and addins so the RT-Office is "good enough". She just plugs in an extra monitor and USB hub (for full-size keyboard and mouse), and she is all set for productivity. We did not experience any hardware limitation related issues (obviously office doesn't start as fast as it does on a x86 PC with SSD).
Based on our experience with the Surface RT I will definitely buy a Surface Pro for myself (I need Office with macros and addins for work) and hopefully finally have a PC that works both as a productivity tool as well as entertainment gadget. Yay! And *poof*, there goes the business notebook...
Too bad I will still need my desktop gaming rig (HD 4000 still not powerful "enough")...
I completely agree. Tegra3 is a complete joke of a chip, but nvidia has managed to fool a LOT of people with marketing (QUAD COAR CPU!!! 12 COAR GPU ZOMG SUPER FASTTT BEAST).
I'd understand if tegra3 was included in a cheap $200 tablet(e.g. Nexus 7) to cut down the costs, but for a $500+ tablet?! that just sucks
Ofcourse, UI may be optimized and runs great, but gaming though will suffer from low frame rates. mark my words
I'm probably in the minority here (and that's fine), but (setting aside my dislike of Windows 8) I think I'd rather have a device in the 13.3"-14.0" range, especially given that 16:9 devices are smaller overall than 16:10 and 4:3 devices at the same diagonal measurement.
The only thing holding me back from a purchase right now is Tegra 3. As soon as they upgrade the SOC to something more powerful (or if Surface Pro comes in something less than equal to $800) I will be getting one. I currently have a Asus Transformer android tablet and that thing does not hold a candle to Windows RT.
When Windows 7 came out, there was an "XP Mode" feature that allowed you to install Windows XP (and other O/Ses, for that matter) as a VM, with some odd limitations but also some unusual advantages compared to the typical VMware / Virtual Box implementations. Applications installed on the guest O/S could be launched and run just as if they were installed on the host O/S. User files on the host were shared seamlessly with the guest, so that double-clicking e.g. an Excel document could launch an instance of Excel in the guest, and load the file, and the window would look like it was running in the host.
Apply this to Android running as a guest O/S under Windows RT, and what do you get? All of a sudden, Google Play, Google Apps, etc. become accessible. If the host/guest integration is done in such a way that the GPU is accessible to the guest, then you even get full gaming of all Android games. On your Surface. Seamlessly. MSFT could even go so far as to declare Apple's refusal to license iOS as a separate product to be anti-competitive, and push for the DoJ to force Apple to allow the installation of iOS as a guest OS on Windows RT.
I mean, why not? Yes, the HW and in particular the CPU and GPU architectures probably need to be modified to support this, but the concepts for how to do that have already been figured out. If MSFT wants to truly own the tablet space, this would seem to be the most profound way to get there.