
They're using Windows RT - 1337biz
http://www.zdnet.com/omg-theyre-using-windows-rt-7000018596/
======
girvo
I work at a large consumer electronics retailer as a salesperson in the
computer and tablet section.

You would be blown away by how many Surface RT's I've sold, simply by demoing
Metro on the touch screen, the Touch Cover, and the fact that you can plug in
USB devices and has Office included.

People who's netbooks are dying now, and want to replace it with something for
their normal light usage love it. The best bits of both worlds.

The problems arise when someone expects it to be as useful as a $1000 ultra
book. That's where the Pro comes in, but I've sold them mostly to business
owners who are using it for sales and other on-the-floor purposes

~~~
harrytuttle
I do the opposite thing when someone asks what to buy. I sort them out an
older Lenovo T-series with windows 7 x64, security essentials and open office
for around 150GBP. Never a single complaint.

Sure it ain't pretty but they work and are cheap and way more functional than
an RT device.

Not sure I could live with the inevitable brick wall when someone takes their
RT and tries to install some obscure bit of software they've been relying on
for years on it (or open university materials for example). That's instant end
game for them, resulting in "why did I buy this piece of shit"

~~~
untog
_Not sure I could live with the inevitable brick wall when someone takes their
RT and tries to install some obscure bit of software they 've been relying on
for years on it (or open university materials for example)._

Like when someone tries to do the same with their iPad? As long as you don't
sell the RT as being able to run everything, I don't think people will expect
it to.

~~~
smacktoward
It would be a lot easier for people to understand that RT can't run arbitrary
Windows applications if Microsoft didn't insist on calling it "Windows."

~~~
untog
I agree that the branding could be better, but IMO the Surface Pro is in the
weirder spot out of the two. No-one expects Windows Phone to run desktop apps,
and I'd wager that people wouldn't expect Windows Tablet (if they called it
that much more sensible name) to, either.

------
Aaronontheweb
I have a Surface Pro and a Surface RT - can run SC2 and VS2012 on the Surface
Pro, but despite that I still use my Surface RT far more frequently.

It's an excellent tablet, I love having the keyboard when I need to compose
emails or edit spec documents for work when I'm on the go, it has great
battery life, the Kindle and Netflix applications are better experiences than
their iOS counterparts (on the iPad), and the app selection is actually pretty
decent for my use cases.

~~~
shin_lao
I have a Surface RT as well and I'm super happy with it. I can do serious
Office work with it, work on any file, browser, mail, etc. I bring it with me
all the time when I go to my customers to take notes.

Last time I was in a conference, I talked with a Microsoft guy who was happy
to see I had a Surface RT. He told me I was the first person he saw at a
conference with that device (or a Pro). I was pretty surprised.

So where did Microsoft screw up? Marketing?

Maybe they shouldn't say it's a tablet.

~~~
asveikau
They should have allowed people to port old-style Win32 apps to ARM. They were
IMO betting too much on the shiny new Windows Runtime which is not mature.

If it won't run ported Win32 code there is no compelling reason to get it over
an iPad or Android tablet. It's effectively a Windows tablet that doesn't run
Windows apps. iPad and Android don't run Windows apps either, but they both
have more and better software than the Windows Store and will probably
continue to do so for some years to come. OTOH imagine if you could actually
use that "Desktop" app to run useful software ported from x86. It might have
some of the appeal of the Surface Pro.

(Full disclosure: I worked in the Windows division during Win8 development. I
left the company in 2011.)

~~~
shin_lao
To be honest, there is no application I currently miss on my Windows RT.
Except foobar2000 maybe.

But where you are spot-on is for old games: the ARM has got enough punch to
run them and it would turn the RT into an old game portable console.

The other thing that isn't very great is Windows Media Player. It's painful to
browse files from a NAS for example.

So a couple of rough edges, but overall, really great.

------
qdpb
The article concludes that Windows RT meets students needs perfectly, but it's
hardly surprising since the college's workflow is so heavily skewed towards
Microsoft applications.

It's equivalent to saying Mac OS X is an excellent development environment for
iOS apps.

~~~
edtechdev
Yeah it's partly a byproduct of some schools being slow to change, which is
partly from wanting tight centralized control (like at a business), partly
from budget cuts, and partly from just being slow to learn new things and not
wanting to have to do more work. Our university still uses Windows XP, just
like at some businesses. Our students were still in elementary school when XP
was released. And we still use Blackboard since before even XP was released.
They don't support Apple or Google stuff at all, even when it's completely
free (like Google Apps for Education).

~~~
sliverstorm
Bah, in the big picture I don't think it is any of those things. "Slow to
change" was not the reason I used Powerpoint, Word, and OneNote in college. I
used them because they were the best I could find at what they did, and I
could afford them because they offered attractive pricing to students. As much
as Office might irritate people on occasion, let's be honest here- Office is
pretty good, and I'm not aware of any honest competitor.

The only other applications I used specifically for college were remote
computing clients, Matlab, and a fairly slick PDF annotator.

------
jackbravo
So, universities using proprietary formats (Power Point instead of Libre/Open
Office) encourage students to buy Microsoft products. Times have not changed
as much as we'd like to think.

~~~
jmduke
For Windows, the Office software suite is far and away superior to open-source
alternatives. If you're using them heavily, the amount of effort/time you'd
lose wrangling with Libre is not worth it (I know, I tried.)

~~~
speeder
I don't get why people say that.

I am using Libre Office for about 10 years already without issue, except to
open proprietary formats...

~~~
Joeri
Have you used ms office? I've used both extensively and ms office is clearly
and obviously superior in my opinion. Superior in usability, not in
functionality (you can do everything with LO, it just takes more work).

~~~
deno
I’ve published an entire dictionary with Libre Office + Python alone. Didn’t
find anything missing. Please provide specific examples.

[http://medipage.pl/pl/p/Medyczny-slownik-
kolokacji.-Polsko-A...](http://medipage.pl/pl/p/Medyczny-slownik-
kolokacji.-Polsko-Angielski-%E2%80%A2-Angielsko-Polski/1841)

[https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/deno/S%C5%82ownik+Kolokac...](https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/deno/S%C5%82ownik+Kolokacji+Medycznych+\(sales+promo\).pdf)

------
jetru
My mom bought a Windows Tablet. I had just dismissed it before. However, I
started using it. The UI was great - fast, responsive and clean. Sure, the app
choice is nothing like in it is iOS. But it had all the most common apps and
did everything it was supposed to. Who thought so? _Face palm moment_

In other news, my Windows machines crashes much lesser than my Mountain Lion
machine. Go figure.

------
josephby
Alternate title: "Attention Silicon Valley: Office and Windows are Not Quite
Dead Yet"

~~~
kevinconroy
Or "Most Computer Users Don't Care What's Cool, Just What Works"

~~~
workbench
It only works because that's the schools dated and closed ecosystem

~~~
randyrand
I hate to break it to you but MS Office is here to stay. There are no good
alternatives to it for the average user.

------
rwolf
4.5% tablet marketshare ([http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-and-windows-
rt-account...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-and-windows-rt-
account-45-global-tablet-market-share-q2-2013)) is tiny, but big enough to
account for anecdotes like this.

------
mtgx
Seems like a case of that school being already heavily invested in Microsoft
programs, and being very hard to use anything else there. This is why
institutions and organizations need to open up to alternatives, otherwise
they'll always be stuck with using stuff from the same vendor over and over
again.

------
captainmuon
Give me the option to run desktop apps on it (just a few, a terminal,
recompiled open source stuff, self-compiled stuff for my work), and I'll
seriously consider buying one.

~~~
bpicolo
Surface Pro does it, but at a higher price point for certain.

~~~
acqq
Doesn't Surface Pro even have a fan? For me, it's a PC then.

~~~
freehunter
Surface Pro _is_ a PC. An old school tablet PC, same as we've had since since
Windows XP Tablet Edition.

~~~
astrodust
It's like a PC with a really crappy keyboard, unless you buy one that
increases the price to the point where you should've bought a tablet notebook
in the first place.

------
mtgx
Asus has just announced it's abandoning Windows RT.

[http://allthingsd.com/20130730/asus-pulling-back-on-
windows-...](http://allthingsd.com/20130730/asus-pulling-back-on-windows-rt-
chairman-says/)

Samsung and Acer has said so earlier, too. And Microsoft took almost a billion
dollar hit on it (and probably more losses to come). Windows RT is _dead_.

I've noticed many of the "old PC companies" are starting to aggressively
support Android, and there's also a rumored massive wave of Chromebooks in the
second half of this year, from most of the big PC OEM's.

~~~
michaelwww
> Windows RT is dead.

I doubt it. I like to remind people that Microsoft historically takes 3 tries
to get something right.

~~~
astrodust
Three tries later, it's dead.

Zune. Windows Live. PlaysForSure. Spot watches...

~~~
criley2
Zune ideas became Windows Phone. Windows Live was rebranded.

As far as Spot watches... I think I speak for many people here, "what"? Some
random minor product line from a decade ago?

~~~
pedalpete
Well, actually, they had a few kicks at Zune (2, I still love my HD) before
launching Windows Phone, which would have been the 3rd kick, which is normally
when they get it right. At this point, they're at kick 2 on the Phone, and
making progress, but still have a long way to go.

------
Tobias42
The author fails to mention tablets with an Atom CPU as an alternative. They
cost pratically the same as similar ARM tablets and give you the option of
running x86 software.

------
forgotAgain
To date RT has been a failure. You can't rewrite history.

------
mixmastamyk
Forced to use Office and only Office, eh? When there are plenty of free
alternatives? What a racket. Perhaps they can be sued.

