Ironic that Farad Manjoo uses the crummy trackpads on Windows notebooks to make the case for Microsoft’s move to build its own Surface tablets for Windows 8, because I’m pretty sure, given the small size and the friction of the materials involved that the trackpad integrated into the Surface’s optional keyboard/cover is going to suck.
Category Archives: microsoft
Microsoft Surface Reportedly Wi-Fi-Only, Will Start at $599 Really? $599 for the ARM version, that doesn’t sound like itwill do very well.
Microsoft Surface Just Made the MacBook Air and the iPad Look Obsolete
On Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz claims that Microsoft Surface Just Made the MacBook Air and the iPad Look Obsolete. An odd assertion. I don’t even think Surface has made Windows laptops look obsolete. Surface has to contend with the legacy of earlier versions of Windows, and from what I can tell, that is going to be awkward.
I Don’t Think I get Microsoft Surface, Yet
Leave a reply
I’ve been reading about the Microsoft Surface Tablets running Windows 8, which Microsoft unveiled yesterday afternoon. I don’t think I get it yet.
I’m not going to bother trying to give a balanced picture of this product. If you want that, there is plenty of other coverage, including the two articles I linked to above. I’m also not going to try and craft a unified argument, because frankly, I’m still gathering and processing information. Instead I’m just going to dive in an run down the things that puzzle me.
What’s with the “widescreen” display on a tablet? I know that the form factor has taken hold amongst makers of Android tablets who are trying to find a way to distinguish their offerings from the Apple iPad, but its strikes me as something that’s only really useful for watching movies, at the expense of other uses. Of course, watching movies hardly requires a full-blown version of Windows, which is supposed to be one of Surface’s advantages over an iPad.
Microsoft thinks that Surface and Windows 8 will appeal to people because they can run existing Windows applications, but a tablet isn’t really ideal for those legacy applications, and its not great for Microsoft’s cash cow, Microsoft Office, which is why the Surface is available with a screen cover that doubles as a keyboard and a trackpad. Actually, they have two versions of the cover, one that tries to feel like a traditional keyboard, and another that is more of a touch-sensitive multitouch surface. Here is the thing, the trackpad looks tiny and cramped, quite the opposite of the only trackpads I’ve used that don’t suck, the big ones on Apple’s MacBooks. Further more, the whole arrangement looks completely unsuitable for use on, well, a lap.
Actually, its not quite true that people can run legacy Windows applications on the Surface Tablet, because there are two versions of the Surface, one with an ARM CPU, running Windows RT, and the other with an Intel CPU, only the Intel version can run legacy Windows apps.
Microsoft has given no information about the run-times of these devices, but it is reasonable to guess that the ARM version will have longer battery life than the Intel version. I’m sure they are shooting for something close to the 10 hour battery life of the iPad, but their silence on the subject makes me think that they are having trouble getting there. As for the Intel tablet, it has a larger battery, but also a higher resolution display. My guess is that it will be, at best, 66% of the battery life of the ARM tablets.
If I step back, it looks to me like the ARM version of Windows RT is the “purest” product. It should have the the best battery life, and it will only run applications that are consistent with Windows 8’s Metro User interface, but it has that widescreen display that is awkward for most uses beyond watching movies and, perhaps, using a spreadsheet. On the other hand, the ARM version apparently won’t support any of the features that companies use for large-scale management of Windows computers.
And then there is the Intel version, which seems like a computing frankenstein. It can run legacy Windows applications, but they will look and feel out of place on a small tablet. There will be a keyboard and trackpad, but you’ll have to use it on a hard surface, and the trackpad is probably going to suck. Companies will be able to manage them centrally, but they’ll have to pay more for machines with worse battery life.
Perhaps I’ll see things differently when I have a chance to use one, but that’s another problem. As best as anyone knows, it is going to be 3-4 months before these things actually start shipping. By that time, Apple will have shipped a bunch more iPads and iOS 6, and a new round of iPads will only be a few months away.
One last comment: This seems to be a mortal blow to transitional PC makers. In the short run, Microsoft still needs them, but they need Microsoft more, so they have little alternative than to dutifully ship Windows 8 PCs and laptops. In the long run though, Microsoft has shown that it doesn’t think it needs them, which is really no surprise, since they’ve pretty much been squeezed dry between Microsoft and Intel.
Trial Separation From Microsoft Outlook
I’ve been using the combination of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook for my work e-mail for over a decade. It hasn’t been an unhappy experience, so I kept using Outlook at my current job over the past two years even though we don’t use an Exchange server. That’s changing this weekend. I’m starting a trial separation from Microsoft Outlook, and it may lead me to divorce Microsoft products all together.
Up until this point, I’ve had Outlook connect to my mailserver using POP3 because it’s only really been important for me to be able to handle my mail from my laptop. Now though, I’d like to be able to check and reply to mail from my iPhone, and so POP isn’t going to work very well.
With POP, all your mail is supposed to be collected by the computer running your e-mail client and deleted from the server. There are ways to leave mail on the server so it can be checked from multiple machines/devices, but it doesn’t work very well, and it’s no help if you want to be able to do anything with folders other than your inbox. So, for example, if I stick with POP, I can’t refer to a copy of a message I sent from my laptop from my iPhone.
IMAP solves this problem by letting you manage folders on the server and keeping them in sync with a local copy on your laptop in case you want to do something when you don’t have a network connection. Unfortunately, Outlook is a horrible, horrible IMAP client.
Microsoft has crippled the IMAP user experience in both Outlook and Outlook Express in order to provide incentive to use Exchange server. For example, if you delete a message on a POP or exchange account, it moves the message to a Trash folder. If you delete a message on an IMAP server it leaves it in the folder and just draws a line through it, cluttering up the mailbox. Beyond that, it won’t let you set up rules for mail received via IMAP, so you can’t use it to automatically sort mail for you. I’d hoped they would have changed their stance in Outlook 2007, but from the reading I’ve done, the IMAP support just as bad as it’s always been.
I’ve been irritated by this customer-hostile crap for a long time now, but it is finally come to a head for me. For the most part, they could get away with this behavior to extract more money from customers when they were still able to leverage their monopoly position to squash competitors. Now though, this tying together of products by making customers lives more difficult is working to drive customers away. I don’t have Exchange server, I’m not going to start using Exchange server and now, I may be ditching Outlook. Even before this, I was becoming more and more convinced that I could do my job just as well with a Mac. I’d probably have to use some Microsoft applications, either via XP running in a virtual machine, or by using Mac Office, but it would certainly be another step away from Redmond.