Falling Windows RT Tablet Prices Signify Slow Adoption

angry tapir writes "Prices of Windows RT devices have started falling, signaling an attempt by PC makers to quickly clear out stock after poor adoption of tablets and convertibles with the operating system. Microsoft released Windows RT for ARM-based devices and Windows 8 for Intel-based devices in October last year. The price drop is an acknowledgment that Windows RT has failed, analysts claim. Though Microsoft has not publicly acknowledged the failure of Windows RT, there is already growing concern about the fate of the OS. IDC earlier this month said that Windows RT tablet shipments have been poor, and that consumers have not bought into 'Windows RT's value proposition.' PC and chip makers have acknowledged poor adoption of the operating system. Nvidia's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, last month said he was disappointed with the poor response to Windows RT, and Acer executives have said that Microsoft needs to improve the usability of RT."

Comments

Would I buy one?

[Freshly Exhumed]

Not even if it was free as in beer.

Re:Would I buy one?

[nametaken]

I don't get it. I played with the RT ones, and they're ok... but I kinda want one of the Pro's. They're certainly more appealing to me than an iPad.

Re:Would I buy one?

[cheater512]

They are ok for what exactly? You can't do too much with them.

Kinda expensive for a portable web browser.

Re:Would I buy one?

[cbhacking]

Erm what? Did you mis-read the parent post?

The Surface Pro is a full Win8 x64 machine. It's usable for everything from running Android apps (BlueStacks works pretty well, I'm told) to playing AAA PC games (at lowered settings due to the Intel graphics, but it can run the games). Along the way, there's a few things it's great at; it makes an excellent artistic platform, for example (Wacom digitizer with pressure sensitivity and all that). It's also an acceptable tablet (heavier and thicker and lower battery life than a modern iPad, but still usable - and there are people who used old-school Windows tablets that make Surface Pro look absurdly portable), and an acceptable laptop (assuming you have one of the keyboard covers, which also provides a touchpad) and, while not excelling in either role, it's lightweight and fast and compact and gets good-enough battery life for most use cases.

Surface RT, on the other hand, is definitely more gimped. Even if you use the various unlock/"jailbreak" hacks that are available, there's still only a limited amount of software available for it right now.

Re:Would I buy one?

[cheater512]

I played with the RT ones, and they're ok

You might wan't to read it yourself. I was referring to that.

I know what the Surface Pro's are.

Re:Would I buy one?

[gagol]

Looks like you just described my 300$ 2 year old netbook! No wonder Windows RT is a failure.

Re:Would I buy one?

[cbhacking]

Your $300 netbook uses solid-state storage, has a Wacom digitizer, weighs 2lbs (under one kilo), has 4GB of RAM and runs a 64-bit OS to be able to use it all, sports a quad-core CPU (not "four hardware threads" dual-core-with-hyperthreading, but actual quad-core i5), has USB3, supports hardware virtualization, supports full-disk encryption using a TPM, has a multi-touch screen, and a 1920x1080 ("1080p" in merketing-speak) resolution, Gorilla Glass, and is durable enough it can be dropped from shoulder hight onto cement with no appreciable damage?

Yeah, didn't think so.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

and there are people who used old-school Windows tablets that make Surface Pro look absurdly portable

Yeah, there must be dozens of those guys who really want a lighter version of MS’s last failure.

Apple figured out what MS did wrong with tablets for the decade before the iPad came out. What’s truly pathetic is that even after Apple showed them how to do it, they keep trying to shoehorn Windows into a tablet. They must be brain-dead.

Re:Would I buy one?

[gagol]

Point was, my 2 years old netbook runs quite adequatly, have more than I need battery life, no smuge on the screen, enable me to set the screen angle to ANY angle, can be used on my chest if I feel like watching a movie in bed, can run multiple virtual machines without a hitch, enabled me to create content in HD and fiddle with blender quite well, can play 3D games, and since I do not look at my screen with a microscope, I DONT CARE it is not 1080p or whatever... It does the job quite well thank you. What should I trash it and replace it with something 4 times more expensive?

Re:Would I buy one?

[gagol]

I dont see Surface RT as progress... obviously I am not alone. Also, the power in computers has been more than adequate for many years now, it is well known. Also, I will buy unlocked obsolete hardware before I enter the garden anytime. Now this is my opinion, and represents my needs. Nowhere I pretended my opinion represented a comprehensive industry-wide survey. But again, many people seems to agree with my by voting with their wallet.

Re:Would I buy one?

[mwvdlee]

How is it advancement if the new thing fullfills no more wants or needs than the old thing but costs 4 times as much? Job's done indeed.
I'm sure there are a few people out there for whom the Surface is actually useful. Fact is that these are only few or it would've been more succesfull.

Re:Would I buy one?

[smash]

Microsoft killed RT in an epic case of one hand not talking to the other, and corporate greed (to force people to go for Pro - which also falls through the cracks as a device without a real market - it's too big and heavy - essentially its a laptop with a shitty keyboard that you can't use without a desk). Enable RT to be domain joined/managed, give it a half decent screen and you'd see corporate sales pick up.

As it is, they disabled all that and gave it a shitty screen compared to the iPad - so no consumer in their right mind will want it. Corporates won't want it either as it is not managable via active directory.

So.... it managed to hit that segment of the market that doesn't exist. Way to go Microsoft!

Re:Would I buy one?

[smash]

Yup, and unfortunately it would appear that the 3 of you in that market are not enough to sustain it.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Dr Max]

So they should just do what apple is doing, or just roll over a die right. Fuck that man, i'm sick of companies chasing the masses, a lot of them are idiots. Should we all drive a Toyota Camry clone just because it's the most popular? Now we got dickheads like the AC telling someone how to make a product they would never buy in a 1000 years (well they probably would if all their friends did), this is why windows 8 is how it is at the moment they are trying to appease these people. I don't really even care for tablets (laptop is very little extra work), but here is a pretty kick ass model (granted i have some issues with win 8, mainly the secure boot) that to me makes the ipad looks like a kids toy and we get useless advice like above.

Re:Would I buy one?

[jonnyj]

No, I wouldn't buy one either. But the inconsistency of the technical press is quite entertaining.

Apple strips most of the functionality out of OS X, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a cool, hip, trendy iPad that the critics adore.

Microsoft strips a small part of the functionality out of Windows, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a vile, loathed RT device that the critics lambast for being dumbed down and failing to run Excel macros.

I don't want either device, but it's clear which one has been dumbed down the most. Microsoft needs a new PR department.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Joce640k]

i love it how the 'geeks' belittle the windows 64 gb tablet's space, while all I've heard is rave reviews about google's 32 gb laptop.

You won't be so happy when you find out how much space is left over after you install the OS.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Bongo]

Microsoft needs a new PR department.

Are they the ones who said "no compromise" ?

Re:Would I buy one?

[peragrin]

Well google came out with android and that is eating windows RT's breakfast lunch and dinner.

Tablets have a place between laptops and phones. Windows RT was MSFT's answer to the high power high battery drain of intel chips. It is failing because it has all the headaches of windows and none of the usefulness(Windows RT can't run standard windows applications.)

As for chasing the masses, it is exactly that allows companies to do things like sell it for less.

Take an android tablet or an ipad and compare it in price to Windows RT machines. The difference is mass market. One has it and one really doesn't.

I don't blame MSFT for trying. I blame MSFT for failing to change enough to actually be able to compete.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Dr Max]

Windows rt is on arm so it hasn't got the battery drain of Intel, but doesn't run legacy apps. The surface pro has an intel chip, but that is full windows 8 and can run what ever you throw at it (if only they weren't a bitch with secure boot you could run whatever OS as well). Why do you want another cheap fragile tablet, do you have a collection of these things or something? No one at all would of bought an ios or android clone, let them have this niche.

The windows rt machines are about the same cost as an ipad; infact you can get a thinkpad tablet 2 (little 10.something inch tablet, x86, windows 8 pro, with a wacom stylus) for $600 that's pretty much ipad price.

Re:Would I buy one?

[frdmfghtr]

Microsoft strips a small part of the functionality out of Windows, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a vile, loathed RT device that the critics lambast for being dumbed down and failing to run Excel macros.

A small part? I'd say the lack of ability to run anything except RT-specific software is much more than stripping a "small part of the functionality."

Re:Would I buy one?

[thoth]

Apple strips most of the functionality out of OS X, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a cool, hip, trendy iPad that the critics adore.

You left out the part where Apple spent 4 years building a software infrastructure including apps for handheld devices (phones), and then rolled out the iPad.

Microsoft attempted to birth both (phone, tablet) into a hostile environment (solid competition), at the same time. They may as well have chucked a baby into the deep end of a swimming pool and expected it to survive. After draining the water from the pool first.

Re:Would I buy one?

[mlk]

I love how this thread swings wildly between Surface RT and Surface Pro.

Is Surface Pro "progress"? After all that is what you compared to your two year old netbook.

Re:Would I buy one?

[FireFury03]

No, I wouldn't buy one either. But the inconsistency of the technical press is quite entertaining.

Apple strips most of the functionality out of OS X, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a cool, hip, trendy iPad that the critics adore.

Microsoft strips a small part of the functionality out of Windows, erects a walled garden around the system, dumps it onto an ARM-based tablet and, voila, a vile, loathed RT device that the critics lambast for being dumbed down and failing to run Excel macros.

While I'm no Apple fan, you've missed the point that Apple and Android both got there a long time before Microsoft. Microsoft is a late contender for the tablet/phone markets, and in order to succeed they needed an edge over the devices that were already available.

Apple has a cult following and so you'd be hard pressed to convert a lot of the Apple consumers away to any other platform. A good proportion of Apple users buy Apple hardware because its got an Apple logo on it - they don't care about the functionality so much as the "cool factor" of owning an Apple device. So in some respects, MS was always going to struggle to make significant inroads into the core iOS userbase, no matter what they came out with.

Android has cornered the "everything else" market - people who don't care about the supposed Apple "cool factor" are going to be drawn to Android largely because its a hell of a lot cheaper than Apple; but also there is the openness of the platform which is agreeable to a lot of the more techy consumers.

On the whole, there isn't actually a huge amount to choose between iOS, Android and Windows RT - they all do basically the same job; the vast majority of people don't know or care about vendor lockin and the only reason Apple can sell at such a high price is because they are Apple and have the affore mentioned cult status.

So Microsoft have pitched their Windows RT devices at a prices similar to iOS devices. People who buy Apple kit at the inflated prices that Apple charge will continue to do that because its Apple... The rest of the population will compare Apple, MS and Android and conclude that since they are all basically the same they may as well go for the cheaper one so MS has lost that part of the market too.

Who's going to buy MS's devices? Well, corporates would love tablets and phones that integrate well into their networks (and trust me, iOS and Android really don't - they feel, at best, extremely half arsed as soon as you put them on a corporate network). So The "edge" MS have is the corporates... However, they decided to leave all the "pro" stuff out of Windows RT - it actually won't integrate into the corporate networks any better than iOS and Android; so there they've gone and lost the corporates too.

Who's left? The only people I can see who are going to buy an MS device are people who haven't actually looked to see what else is available on the market. If MS had got there first, then I'm sure their current Windows RT offering would be doing very well indeed, but since they didn't they need to offer some kind of edge to sway people from the established platforms, and as far as I can see they just haven't done that.

(I should add that, unfortunately, there are people, even in a corporate environment, who buy shiny kit without researching if it will actually do what they want. For example, one of my customers has recently bought a load of Chromebooks without consulting with any IT staff... they were shocked when they discovered that all their users would need Google accounts and be expected to store everything in the cloud. The term "well duhh" sprang to mind.)

Re:Would I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pro sports a dual-core 1.7Ghz i5 processor (i5-3317U) designed specifically for low power consumption. The RT has a quad-core 1.3Ghz Cortex A9. Get your facts straight.

I won't buy either since both have the wrong mix of hardware and the RT is locked down to a store. The Pro desperately needs a GeForce 710M (12-watt TDP, 182 GFLOPS compared to 20 with intel graphics), quad-core x86 @2.4Ghz or higher, 8GB ram, and a user-replaceable battery and storage (standard 2.5" form factor SATA so it can take a 1TB disk, not the 1.8" crap). A SO-DIMM slot would be a plus - two would be better. Such a system would run circles around every other tablet and most laptops.

I'd pay $1400 for one if they'd build it. As it it, the "Pro" is a $400 laptop with a nice touchscreen.

Re:Would I buy one?

[FireFury03]

You left out the part where Apple spent 4 years building a software infrastructure including apps for handheld devices (phones), and then rolled out the iPad.

Microsoft attempted to birth both (phone, tablet) into a hostile environment (solid competition), at the same time. They may as well have chucked a baby into the deep end of a swimming pool and expected it to survive. After draining the water from the pool first.

I'm not sure that trying to push a variety of platforms at once is necessarilly a bad thing. Tablets and phones are not the same market (although there is some overlap) - they largely won't cannibalise eachother's sales, so they are increasing the platform's user base, which makes it more attractive to developers, which makes it more attractive to consumers.

Where MS have gone wrong is that Windows RT doesn't have any kind of an edge over the already established platforms - its difficult to see what kind of edge they could ever have for home users, but they could certainly have made a big impact into the corporates by making a platform that would actually integrate with and work well on the corporate networks. They didn't do that, so as far as I can see there is no reason for anyone to buy Windows RT devices.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Kielistic]

they keep trying to shoehorn Windows into a tablet.

Well to be fair this time they shoehorned some tablet into Windows first...

Re:Would I buy one?

[thoth]

I'm not sure that trying to push a variety of platforms at once is necessarilly a bad thing. Tablets and phones are not the same market (although there is some overlap) - they largely won't cannibalise eachother's sales, so they are increasing the platform's user base, which makes it more attractive to developers, which makes it more attractive to consumers.

Yes but then the success of the phone and the tablet is symbiotic - both need each other to succeed. More phone sales lead to more apps which makes the tablet more attractive, etc.

I can't fault Microsoft for trying, but the bar is quite high these days - both iOS and Android have lots of useful apps and that's a major selling point, leading to a nice feedback loop with developers building more apps, etc.

What I think Microsoft did wrong is go in half ass, or put another way, they went in soft trying not to irritate their OEM partners. They've got billions in the bank, if they want to be a player in mobile phones and tablet, they need to heavily subsidize their products and basically pay some big bucks to get apps ported/supported. Stuff that's more expensive but less useful? I can't believe they are scratching their head wondering why uptake sucked. Yes that will piss off their hardware partners but there is a fork in the road, the previous business model won't get the job done fast enough.

I'm hoping they are at least offering a total discount on Win RT to their partners, to soften the inherent advantage they have building hardware.

Re:Would I buy one?

[FireFury03]

Stuff that's more expensive but less useful? I can't believe they are scratching their head wondering why uptake sucked.

I think MS still can't understand why they aren't Apple... Apple regularly pull that kind of crap - produce a product that's very expensive but less useful than the competition, and the consumers just lap it up. From MS's pricing it seems that they think they have the same influence, and now they've fallen on their faces they probably can't understand why they don't.

Re:Would I buy one?

[yoshi_mon]

Surface Pro can do all that faster and better...

Faster, sure, better? Purely your subjective viewpoint.

If, for example, there is a device that can fill the needs of a user that has longer battery life that would be a "better" device for that user.

Admit that you are 100% wrong on the idea that it is better and I won't write you off as the MS shill that you appear to be. (No buts, full "I was wrong, end.")

Re:Would I buy one?

[Missing.Matter]

Also, with respect to "better speced" no, you cannot. Part of the value of the Surface Pro is its touch screen and active digitizer, as well as tablet form factor which lends to it being thinner and lighter than even the MacBook Air. If you can find me a better speced ultrabook, with a touch screen, with an active digitizer, under 2 lbs, and under 0.5 inches thick then you have a point. But if you're going to pick processor power and battery life as the only specs by which to compare, you are purposefully ignoring the strengths of the Surface Pro.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Missing.Matter]

Sorry, I don't give a damn about your "shill-free" stamp of approval. I prefer to address the merits of an argument rather than resort to ad hominem attacks. As to the merits of your post...

When I said "better" I was thinking in purely a performance context. If you want to get to the subjective nature of computing devices and how one might be better for one user and not the next, please read the parting words of my post you responded to. The point of the parent's post seemed to be that capability wise the surface pro was on par with a 2 year old netbook. This is absurd. He writes that his netbook is fine "for him" at running a series of performance related tasks, at which the Surface Pro excels performance wise compared to any 2 year old netbook.

There is a very subjective element to the surface pro which is its form factor. If the tablet form factor does not work for you, then the conversation simply stops there. There is no reason at all to buy the surface pro over any machine regardless of the specs if you do not want a tablet form factor. But there is a very strong narrative running on Slashdot that the Surface Pro is not good for anything, and this is just not the case, as I've experienced using mine over the past two months.

Re:Would I buy one?

[tverbeek]

Can you run NetBSD on one?

Re:Would I buy one?

[tverbeek]

And like so many people in this thread, you're failing to specify or distinguish between Surface RT and Surface Pro. They look a lot alike, but their capabilities –and thus usefulness – are very different.

Re:Would I buy one?

[mwvdlee]

And like so many people in this thread, you failed to RTFA, thereby not understanding that it was about the Surface RT, not the Pro.

Re:Would I buy one?

[MightyMartian]

If the figures are even accurate (and there's nothing I can tell that indicates that these figures are, look more like the classic claiming units shipped is the same as units sold), it would still be a drop in the bocket.

Surface Pro and Surface RT are failures. Get over it.

Re:Would I buy one?

[MightyMartian]

Yes, I'm going to pick performance over pointless gimmicks.

Re:Would I buy one?

[dmacleod808]

R&D + Marketing + production cost = they may actually have taken a loss.

Re:Would I buy one?

[david_thornley]

You're overlooking three things.

First, Apple was first by a good margin. When the iPad appeared, it had no direct competitors. (I really didn't expect it to catch on, showing that Steve Jobs was better at figuring out what would sell than I was.) Android tablets started to appear, and they could be cheaper and had some other advantages. I had what I believe good reasons for buying a Nexus 7 rather than an iPad. Currently, the market is crowded with both iOS and Android devices, and it sure isn't clear what Windows RT is bringing to the party, and a tablet comparable to the original iPad would be at a distinct disadvantage now.

Second, there was a thriving iOS app market when the iPad appeared, and the same applied to Android tablets. This doesn't apply to the RT. This can be changed, and Microsoft is working on it, and will likely succeed at some point, but they haven't yet. So, Microsoft is jumping into the market with something that is actually worse in many ways than the original iPads and Android tablets.

Third, the operating system on Apple desktops and laptops is Mac OSX, and the operating system on iDevices is iOS. Android tablets use Android, which was introduced as an operating system for mobile phones. Microsoft's desktop and laptop OS is Windows XP/Vista/7/8, and their tablet OS is Windows RT. How is a casual consumer, who hasn't been following this, going to know that their new Surface isn't going to run the vast array of Microsoft software that's out there? Heck, the Surface Pro does, and in general experience the Pro version of something is just a better, more capable, and more expensive version of the original, with no real fundamental differences. Microsoft has failed to establish a clear difference between a Surface running RT and a Surface Pro running 8, and that leads to broken expectations. (You are correct in that Microsoft PR sucks, but this was mostly a marketing fail.) That's why it's lambasted for not running Excel macros.

So it comes out as a lame also-ran that doesn't live up to what its name suggests, and you're wondering why the tech press doesn't like it?

Re:Would I buy one?

[Darinbob]

They would make nice beer coasters. Would even be quite handy as the screen could have all sorts of moving images that would reflect through the beer creating a visual experience.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Darinbob]

Can't use bluestacks without first getting a Microsoft Account. Even for free apps. That is a massive deal killer. So with Windows 8 you're stuck with only the built-in but usually unusable apps, or the desktop.

Then again, even if you like that stuff, Surface Pro is unusable without a keyboard and mouse, same as any tablet.

Re:Would I buy one?

[stymy]

A MicroSD slot and USB 3.0 port means that the base amount doesn't really matter much since you can add as much storage as you need.

Re:Would I buy one?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/surface-pro-disk-space-to-fall-a-long-way-short-of-what-youd-expect/

A stock surface 64 pro should only have ~ 23 Gb left

Re:Would I buy one?

[steelfood]

They are ok for what exactly?

Well, they can keep the paper from flying off your desk. They can hold books up in both senses. They can help you see in the dark.

That's all I got.

Re:Would I buy one?

[cheater512]

You didn't actually list anything that most people would actually need in a device of that type.

Re:Would I buy one?

[david_thornley]

Microsoft did come out with tablet computers, which were basically regular computers using touch screens and lacking keyboards. They served a small niche market, which found them very useful. The Surface Pro is essentially one of those, done much better, and capable of iPad-like functioning.

The iPad was not particularly similar to those old Microsoft tablets. It appealed to a whole different class of people, and wasn't really suitable for that niche market. It was, effectively, a new sort of market.

Re:Would I buy one?

[smash]

Actually I'm not just comparing RT to iPad. It fails against android and it fails against a traditional laptop. If you're going to abandon the Windows ecosystem to go for a tablet (as you need to, to go RT) then you may as well jump ship to a platform that has plenty of apps, better screen, etc.

If you want to run Windows apps, you're limited to the Pro, which is too big and heavy to be a decent tablet, and not really usable in PC mode without a desk. Touch for most windows apps currently sucks. Sure, metro is OK, but the existing apps have widgets that are way too small. And yes, I've tried using it - both with a Windows 8 tablet, and via PCoIP on an iPad. At least running View on an iPad you can zoom in and out of the screen to click Windows application widgets more easily - ironically, when using via VMware View, the iPad (or equivalent Android running View) makes a better touch enabled Windows desktop than Surface RT.

Re:Would I buy one?

[cbhacking]

Not really true (to take an example from the parent himself, he claims that he runs "multiple VMs" which, with the amount of RAM and CPU capabilities of a netbook, will run like shit) but beside the point - his "argument" if you can call it that is that a netbook can do anything the Surface Pro can do; mine was that he was full of shit and I backed up that statement.

Lighter weight and thinner chassis are *huge* determining factors in laptop/tablet choice. A netbook will be thicker and heavier, while being made of vastly inferior matericals and therefore also much less durable. You may claim that durability doesn't matter when the price is that low, but that's really not true; unless the HDD manages to survive unscathed and can be transferred into a waiting body immediately, the hassle of needing to replace netbooks is going to rapidly exceed the value of their low price tag if you use them in any kind of mildly rough environment.

Full disk encryption is a huge deal for business users. The average bum on the street doesn't give a damn, but for the large number of people who have jobs involving sensitive data of any kind (client info, patient info, tax info, PII, financial info, source code, unreleased audio or video, cryptographic keys or other important credentials, important company memos or other internal communications, the list goes on an on...), it's vital. You may think that losing a $300 device hurts a lot less than losing a $1100 one, but to a business, the cost of dealing with the potential leak of the data on an employee's laptop - even just email - is far, far higher that the price difference of the machines. In my particular job, it would also cost me quite dearly; the price difference would have been made up in a couple days of the salary I would no longer have.

As for the digitizer, I'm not personally an artistic sort, but I know many people who are. The ability to use a pressure-sensitive stylus directly on a high-resolution display? That's a huge, huge deal. For the rest of us, it's an alternate input device that's faster that touch for entering text (assuming you passed second-grade handwriting classes, which is actually more than it really needs for recognition), more accurate than touch for precise clicking, and works with gloves on.

What did they think was going to happen?

[DigitAl56K]

Even forgoing "backwards compatibility" with x86 apps, maybe, maybe if you could actually compile desktop applications for it it would be a slightly more attractive platform, but being stuck with nothing but Office and what's available in Metro? It just isn't going to live up to many buyers desires or expectations.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[DigitAl56K]

If you wanted to run Desktop apps, and wanted x86 compatibility, Surface RT is not the device for you. You need a Surface Pro.

Summary suggests Windows RT is not the device for a lot of folks ;)

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[roc97007]

Even forgoing "backwards compatibility" with x86 apps, maybe, maybe if you could actually compile desktop applications for it it would be a slightly more attractive platform, but being stuck with nothing but Office and what's available in Metro? It just isn't going to live up to many buyers desires or expectations.

Oh, I don't know. I figure everyone who were talked into buying a Windows CE laptop back in the day is probably a candidate for Windows RT.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[Bert64]

Which is the whole reason it failed...
By marketing it as "windows", buyers expected some level of compatibility. The compatibility isn't there, which left buyers feeling misled.

And being able to compile desktop apps wouldn't be much use, 99% of windows desktop apps don't come with source code so most of the apps you could recompile for it would be cross platform open source apps. And if you want to compile cross platform open source apps for ARM you have been able to do that in Linux for many years already.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[purpledinoz]

It's also a marketing problem. What the hell is the difference between Windows RT, Windows RT Pro, Windows 8, Windows 7? Wait, there's no Windows RT Pro, but there's a Surface RT and Surface Pro, right? What's the difference again? One is thicker than the other, and the cheaper one runs ARM. I would do more research, but I just don't care enough. I'm sure I'm not the only one. People just want shit that works, they don't care if runs on ARM or x86.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[cbhacking]

Strictly speaking, this is actually possible. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2096820
It requires some hacks, though, and RT is missing most of the legacy libraries plus missing any form of OpenGL support. Nonetheless, there are a reasonable handful of programs which have been ported ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348 ) and a few written specifically for (desktop mode) RT ( http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2095934 ).

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[sjames]

That is the crux of the issue. Apparently a LOT of people want more than Office and a few metro apps.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[sapphire wyvern]

If you could target Windows RT with win32 desktop code, I'm sure many of the proprietary vendors would happily release arm versions of their products.
But the need to target a whole new set of platform APIs (Metro /Modern) for apps on the Windows Store / WinRT makes the barriers to entry significantly higher for the proprietary vendors.

Access to the source code is only required if the end users need to do the build themselves. Obviously a big advantage of FLOODS is that you're not as dependant on a vendor's business case to target a new platform, but I don't think there's much enthusiasm for targeting metro amongst OSS enthusiasts.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[sapphire wyvern]

Floods = floss, by the way. Yay autocorrect.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[symbolset]

Or hold out for the Microsoft Ultrabook.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[Hal_Porter]

If you could compile apps you'd see a bit of third party support. Perhaps some web browsers and some other stuff.

Now admittedly that was true of Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC but they didn't sell well enough to see much software getting cross compiled. Mind you at that point the world was x86. Now the world is x86/x64 - i.e. a lot more stuff is already running on two architectures. In fact quite a lot of mobile stuff already ran on Arm because of Windows CE/Windows Mobile - Opera Mobile for example.

So if Windows RT had allowed it you'd see some applications running on Arm. Banning all third party Win32 applications in the hope of moving everyone to Metro clearly isn't working.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[Dorianny]

The real problem is not the new APIs but rather the sandbox which makes it impossible to write any useful productivity application targeting these new APIs. Not even MS Office apps on RT use the new API's as doing so would cripple them behind any usability. Sand-boxing makes sense on phones as being primarily a communication device precautions must be taken so that buggy, malicious apps cant render it non-functional, or spy on you. Tablets are not primarily a communication device, treating them as over-sized phones is whats holding them back from being really useful tools.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[tftp]

I figure everyone who were talked into buying a Windows CE laptop back in the day is probably a candidate for Windows RT.

Back then they didn't know any better. CE was better than PalmOS. The market is mature now, and it is ruled by iOS and Android. WinCE and WinRT are in the noise, for very good (and different) reasons.

Microsoft is in a bad position. It has to compete with two excellent and zero-cost OSes that are not encumbered with legacy expectations and are designed specifically to do what they do. Microsoft has to charge pretty penny for their product, but it is not even as good as the competition. Microsoft probably feels already that its best days are in the past. There is simply no market that would be interested in buying their new OS. The competition would be still better if you have to pay for it, but you do not. (Perhaps Apple sets aside some revenue to pay iOS coders, but from POV of the customer he buys a complete product.)

I think MS's best bet is to continue the server line of products, and to resurrect usable PC desktop (get rid of Metro on PCs.) This will buy them another decade or two of good revenue. In the end, though, PCs will die out, and MS will have to change. MS refuses to change, and if they are persistent in that then it will do them in.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[im_thatoneguy]

It's not. But I bought a Surface RT to 'hold me over' until the surface pro but actually found it far more useful than anticipated. It's nice to have support for real remote desktop so that I can use our company's web portal for accessing my workstation. Even just downloading a file from box's website onto a USB drive and printing to a real printer without any hassle was an enormous relief.

That being said. It seems like Windows RT shouldn't have ever been a consumer product. I can see why Microsoft would want to port Windows to ARM *cough* Windows Phone 8 Kernel *cough*. And I suspect a unified operating system is the future. But the choice isn't between bad battery life and x86--an atom processor is more than capable for ARM style computing but still delivers backwards compatibility.

I can understand Microsoft wanting to push the Metro app ecosystem. And I can understand having a 'killer device' which is exclusively metro styled being a good driving force. I can't for the life of me understand though why HP or Dell would pick ARM over Atom. They cost about the same. Battery life is about the same. Performance is about the same. The only difference is that Atom can at least poorly run legacy software. Which from a consumer standpoint is a positive--even if it's a negative from Microsoft's long term goals of moving people off of Win32.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[smash]

Alternatively, you could have an MBA with more storage a decent keyboard, a nice trackpad and a form factor that actually allows you to use it on your lap, without a table, and without needing to hold it.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Maybe this is part of the reason Sinofsky was fired?

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[Hal_Porter]

The whole thing is insane really. At the start MS had 90% of the desktop market. Windows Mobile had about 10-20% of the mobile market. Most importantly they had a load of ISVs producing software, the old stuff run on Win32 and the new stuff on .Net.

MS introduce the Kin and Zune. These were spectacular failures - based on .Net and C#

Then MS decide to replace Windows Mobile with Windows Phone 7. It is based on C#/.Net and is locked to prevent Win32 code. It share a lot with Kin and Zune. It is a failure. They replace it with WP8. WP8 is locked to prevent Win32 code except for Microsoft's code - IE and Office are still Win32. Everyone else is supposed to use the WinRT API in C++. Then they move the WP8 API to Windows 8 and release an ARM version which is locked to prevent Win32 code. Windows Phone is now down to a few percent market share. Most of the ISVs defected to Android and iOS and show no sign of coming back.

So you've got a UI which they used on their phone project which is not selling on their desktop OS which is. At that point it seems like people stopped buying machines with Windows 8 - if you look at what happened Windows 7 is still outselling it.

Now if you look at Vista it sold poorly and they rushed out Windows 7. So you'd expect them to rush out a Windows 9 which had the start menu restored. But if you look at Windows Blue the biggest change is apparently "an improved charms menu".

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[RotateLeftByte]

Heretic!

~But you aren't far from the truth :)

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[ciggieposeur]

The network effect comes back to haunt them. It seems that the only thing people really want from Microsoft is Win32/64 compatibility afterall.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[drinkypoo]

Back then they didn't know any better. CE was better than PalmOS.

By what measure?

I think MS's best bet is to continue the server line of products, and to resurrect usable PC desktop (get rid of Metro on PCs.) This will buy them another decade or two of good revenue.

I don't think it will. I agree it's their best bet, though.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[vettemph]

  I think It's a legal problem. MS lawyers were asleep at the wheel when it came to phones and tablets. MS was able to force exclusivity on the likes of HP, Gateway, Dell etc... back in the day. "Sell something other than Windows and you will pay dearly for each copy of Windows."
  Because MS didn't get their hooks (crooks?) in early on the ARM front, They have no leverage in the phone and tablet arena. At this point the manufacturers are not stupid enough to let MS rule their lives anymore.
  My view of Microsoft is this: You are either still still forced to use MS products or you finally found a way out.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[Missing.Matter]

Then you're looking for something like the Dell Latitude 10. $500 with an Atom Z2760. Can run x86 apps, half the price of Surface Pro.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[BonThomme]

"an improved charms menu"

They added blue diamonds?

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[sjames]

Apparently, they wanted those things AND a start button.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[roc97007]

Understood, (we use it here too) but the number of general purpose laptops available that are using WinCE is zero. And I suspect by the end of 2013, the same will be true of WinRT. It was a stopgap until they could figure out how to wedge a Win8tel computer into the Surface form factor. (I suspect that WinRT will become a better choice than WinCE for embedded systems, but I suspect we will continue with WinCE rather than do the migration.)

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[sjames]

You may be in a minority. It may be just the thing for you. The sales figures suggest it's not what most are looking for.

The fact that it's doing worse than Windows 8 and that Windows 8 isn't doing that well itself suggests that SOME of the issue may be an unfamiliar interface (or people just don't like it) but that RTs greater limitations ARE a problem for it as well.

Re:What did they think was going to happen?

[Bert64]

No, they wouldn't...
proprietary vendors will only release for a platform which has significant numbers of users, and users wont buy into a platform without the proprietary apps.

Re: hi

[Anonymous Coward]

What - to buy a Windows RT tablet? ;)

Look Out!

[jennatalia]

The prices are falling, the prices are falling!

Let me guess...

[elashish14]

Redmond is gonna blame OEMs for this one too eh?

(Reference: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/24/windows_8_blame_game/)

Re:Let me guess...

[sjames]

Yes. If those candy ass OEMs would have just used rope and a rubber hose in their marketing campaigns it would have been just fine.

Re:Let me guess...

[BonThomme]

they just aren't throwing enough chairs.

Who is the core audience for Windows?

[TheGeneration]

I just don't understand who the core audience for windows is any more. Who are they trying to sell to?

Office workers? Great, Windows is a pretty good system for that usage since office workers have admins that can unf*ck their system when they pick up a virus off browser exploits.

What about the 90% of home users who aren't computer professionals? Are they better off with a Windows operating system that comes preloaded with so much bloatware it can make in Intel i7 chip work hard just to boot? What about when good old Mom or Dad accidentally downloads that trojan horse "anti-virus" that takes over her system to the point where it is unusable? Is Windows still a good value for them then? Wouldn't they have been better off buying a mac with it's easier to use interface, bloatware free on day 1, and far fewer viruses circulating?

Gamers of course are stuck with windows since so many games use Direct X instead of OpenGL.

What about programmers? Windows is SH!T for programming (unless of course you are developing windows applications.) Mac OSX and Linux are both far superior for programming. (OSX after all is a posix compliant Unix Operating System under the hood.) Considering how limited DOS was (and, apparently no longer even present in the current windows) programming from the command line in a Unix/Linux machine is a far far superior option.

So if you're an office drone, or a gamer you're really the only two people who still have a reason to have Windows.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[DigitAl56K]

Nevermind who Windows is "good for", let's look at what Windows has going for it:

1 - A ton of users familiar with its desktop UI
2 - The mother-load of desktop software
3 - A ton of games compiled for native x86/x64
4 - Office

With Windows RT Microsoft basically said "Screw #1. Screw #2. Screw #3." That leaves a tablet for .. people who want to use Office on.. a tablet? Oh and they also added Metro. Except that the market for portable devices is already full of app platforms that are far more established.

Why would you buy a Windows RT tablet? Beats me. Clearly someone thought they could toss their core value propositions but win in the app space because... because something?

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[DigiShaman]

Windows 8 is a massive paradigm change. The only people using Windows 8 are those forced to replace their computers. Microsoft's whole point around Windows 8 is that it's a thin-client. All future applications and data will be stored in the "cloud". See Office 365 and SkyDrive for example. The idea of CPU architecture should only be important to the software developers, not the end user. Again, the idea being your data in the "cloud" is architecturally agnostic. Never mind the fact that the Windows 8 UI is an anathema to end user multitasking. They still haven't figure that out after the preview of Windows 9. In fact, they actively do not want too. The corporate world reality is an inconvenient truth. The disconnect will always be there from the start of Windows 8.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Therad]

Gamers of course are stuck with windows since so many games use Direct X instead of OpenGL.

Are they really? Doesn't most games use a commercially bought graphics engine today? And can't many of them use OpenGL as a backend? I am genuinly curiuos about this, since I don't have that much information about the different game engines out there.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Bert64]

Windows is a terrible system for office workers, it is expensive, unreliable, insecure... Sure the admins can fix the system once the users have screwed it, but thats a classic case of treating the symptoms... Far better would be to have a system that didn't break in the first place.

Windows is also a terrible platform for gaming, the overhead of the os plus any third party cruft has a significant impact on the performance of games...

Home users are actually better off with a walled garden system like an ipad... A fully featured os is an extremely poor choice for home users, as they will inevitably get it owned. Average users are simply not competent enough with technology (and dont want to be) to safely use such a complex system on a public network.

People buy windows because...

1, they are locked in and have no choice - the costs in both time and money are too high to escape from the lock-in, or a short term view is taken on doing so...
2, they aren't aware anything else exists - try to buy a desktop or laptop, you *might* see apple occasionally but other than that everything comes with windows and its quite an effort to find something that doesnt.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[evilviper]

1. Users are NOT familiar with the Windows UI. The UI changes every damn release, in substantial ways, requiring retraining or lots of trial and error. Ironically, Windows 7 with its new large task bar and large icons, looks almost exactly like my GNOME 0.9x desktop on Slackware Linux 3.x, circa 1996.

2. Windows has a lot of software to fill in missing pieces and fix broken-ness of the OS, which are entirely unnecessary in other OSes. You bet, Windows has a lot of disk defragmenter programs, and Linux has practically none, but that's not a bad thing. FOSS software has reached a point that damn near anything you could want on Windows, can be done on any other OS as well, and usually BETTER.

3. I'll concede games, though I, and I believe most people, prefer bypassing the topic, and using a game console instead. PC gaming was a big deal back in the 90s, but these days consoles are just as capable, games are as good if not better and cheaper all-around.

4. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are superb. With Microsoft's absolutely moronic switch to the "ribbon" interface, I find MS Office to be the second-class citizen... the also-ran that I avoid if humanly possible. MS Office is now the crippled knock-off version, where there are tons of things users want to do, but can't figure out how to do, to save their life.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[TheGeneration]

You can use WINE to play DirectX games on a Linux or Mac, however it is a subpar experience.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[flimflammer]

1. Users are NOT familiar with the Windows UI. The UI changes every damn release, in substantial ways, requiring retraining or lots of trial and error. Ironically, Windows 7 with its new large task bar and large icons, looks almost exactly like my GNOME 0.9x desktop on Slackware Linux 3.x, circa 1996.

No, the theme changes. The UI design itself has stood relatively untouched since its inception. Most major UI changes up until Windows 8 were purely cosmetic and almost universally had a means to revert to older forms.

It wasn't until Windows 8 when achieving any of the older functionality was pretty much universally removed.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[sjames]

And you obviously haven't used Linux in a long time. One install DVD and you're good to go for development. You can choose your favorite approach from the good old command line and make on up to eclipse. No need to count seats, plan a software budget, or store funky holograms in a fireproof safe. If you want/need it, just install and be happy.

Meanwhile, I'd love to know how you manage to program in windows with no text...

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Krneki]

Every OS comes with bloatware when bought in a store. Even the phone, there is so much crap on it it's unbelievable.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Krneki]

Thanks to Unity3D now there is a ton of games for every OS.

Sure, they are not spectacular as the high end PC games, but we are not talking about this type of games now.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Patch86]

considering MS dos has not been a part of windows since windows 2000, I assume you are also unaware of how modern windows works? .

You mean Windows ME. Windows 2000 was NT-based- no DOS in there.

System Restore is not a fool-proof way of removing viruses. Often to remove viruses, you need to hunt around in the file tree and muck with the registry. That's pretty damned user-unfriendly. Anything that constitutes "complex computing" is always difficult, on all platforms; that's just the way of the world.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Anne Thwacks]

Using that legendary app which allows you to write PHP by throwing virtual cowpats at the screen with your Wiimote?

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Therad]

I know that, but if you do that you basically emulate DirectX. But take as an example UT-engine, since it works on many platforms it should be able to connect to a OpenGl backend. Shouldn't it be a quite easy task to port such a game to linux? Isn't it just a management problems nowadays?

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[aztracker1]

Faster these days to backup what's really important.. usually pictures, music and quicken (shudder) data. The wipe (with a clean linux disk) and reinstall... 2nd or 3rd time I need to clear someone's computer, they get Linux... at least there's less chance of being overwhelmed by viruses.. not perfect solution, but at that point the person can't be trusted.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[rtb61]

Everybody knows exactly who is the core audience for M$ Windows, it's the major shareholders. Those justifying the position of Uncle Fester Balmer being of Uncle Fester Balmer must shoot out new products in the hopes of convincing the major shareholders the keeping Uncle Fester Balmer in that position is sane no matter how many insane failures M$ has fired out under Uncle Fester Balmer's directions.

So Windows RT a blind loony shot in the dark with no real targeted market in mind just a crazily imagined. Yes, Windows RT was apparently targeted at Apple macBook, iPod, iPhone users as that is the majority market for iPads because http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3CH0tN515M, what more can be said.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Users are NOT familiar with the Windows UI. The UI changes every damn release, in substantial ways, requiring retraining or lots of trial and error.

Win 95 and 8 are the only ones where it really changed, actually; the last version I used before installing Linux was XP, yet I had no trouble working with my mother's Windows 7 PC on a consumer level when introduced to it a year or two ago. It's also important to note that there was little-to-no "trial and error" for most users in the transition to Windows 95 -- MS pretty clearly designed the ad campaign in the months leading up to 95's release (including the choice of theme song) so it would double as user education, and seemed to focus on UI changes that would make the OS easier to handle for regular users.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[smash]

There's a lot of broken shit in Windows 8 and i'm not just talking about the start menu - that's actually the least of the problems (even if it is a step backwards). Try to actually install/configure a printer, customize the non-luser wifi settings, etc. You're constantly switching between Metro and classic, as teh settings aren't even all reachable from within a single UI.

It's a clusterfuck.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Lonewolf666]

I find the ribbon that Microsoft uses in many newer UIs does take some getting used to. My observations for the ribbon in Word 2010, which I got about 15 months ago at work:

The basic principle is not that strange - it is essentially a series of tabs (as known from Windows 3.1) that switch between different sets of UI widgets.
But it does take some re-training because many functions are no longer found where a user of older versions expects them. On top of that, some icons have changed in ways I find rather un-intuitive. It usually took me a Google search to find out what to click in those cases.

This said, I agree the UI changes from Windows 7 to windows 8 seem even larger.
 

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[drinkypoo]

Ironically, Windows 7 with its new large task bar and large icons, looks almost exactly like my GNOME 0.9x desktop on Slackware Linux 3.x, circa 1996.

I laughed and laughed and laughed when Windows 95 came out because of how much it looked like Afterstep. And the truth is that Microsoft became a member of the Motif WG before Windows 3 came out, and they deliberately made their OS look like Motif was going to look when it finally was released, in order to make Motif look like a metoo of Windows — but the reality is that the Windows interface is a metoo of the design agreed on in the Motif WG, so graphical windows has never had its own design.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[BonThomme]

" It usually took me a Google search to find out what to click in those cases."

Their master plan to get you to use Bing failed!

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[SenseiLeNoir]

....The wipe (with a clean linux disk) and reinstall... 2nd or 3rd time I need to clear someone's computer, they get Linux... at least there's less chance of being overwhelmed by viruses.. not perfect solution, but at that point the person can't be trusted.

Wiping the computer and forcing linux if you have to clean their computer more than 3 times?

Calling a person as "Untrusted" simply because they got a virus?

God you are a piece of work, and you call THEM untrustworthy?

IT is their computer, their right to do what they want with it. IF you don't want to support them, you tell them you don't want to, or charge them appropriately. Don't wipe their computer and install a alternative OS, and treat them as if they are untrustworthy

I hope you were joking when you said what you said above. Even so, I hope this is a joke you dont share with normal people.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Sepodati]

I upgraded and have no problem using it. It's primarily my wife's computer though, and the kids play games on it. Other than for the first couple of days, I haven't had to show them how to do anything... I don't think it's THAT intuitive of an interface, but obviously (in my experience) it's decent.

-John

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Sepodati]

In the move to RT on ARM, MS had to say screw it to #2 and #3 and the move to a tablet forced them to say screw it to #1, too. "Desktop Windows" on a tablet has been shown not to work time and time again. Hell, the move to to a tablet essentially removes #2 and #3 since most programs are shit if they aren't designed specifically for a tablet.

#2 and #3 were never really under MS control, either. MS hoped to follow the "build it and they will come" philosophy. It worked with iOS and Android, but I guess people are just too tired to go another step, MS/ARM/RT is horrible to program for or they carry enough of a grudge that they just won't.

So why, or rather when, would I buy an RT tablet? When it's cheap. Just like any other tablet, it'll do about 90% of what I need it to do, regardless of the OS.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Rich0]

Office workers? Great, Windows is a pretty good system for that usage since office workers have admins that can unf*ck their system when they pick up a virus off browser exploits.

The average slashdotter seems to have no concept of why Windows rules in the office still (though if they keep making stupid moves they could lose that market).

The answer is simple - win32. They've basically had the same API for 20 years now, give or take. You could probably take calc.exe from windows 3.1 and run it just fine on Windows 7. You could probably do the same thing with Wordperfect from that Era, minus their funky bundled printer drivers, or MS Office from the early 90s.

The other answer is 10 year support timelines. Windows XP still gets security patches. That came out 13 years ago. Support ends a decade after the OS STOPs selling. If you look at the consumer tablet/phone market the longest support comes from Apple, and they end support about 3 years after a product STARTs selling. If you look at any non-Nexus Android device you're lucky to get updates while the thing is still on store shelves.

Businesses love this. It means that they can buy a $100,000 industrial robot and the ancient software that operates it installs just fine on a PC that still gets security updates. They can spend $50M on some ERP solution that is married to IE 6 and they get a decade to work out the upgrade path. Traditionally there just aren't surprises with MS - if you buy their OS you can upgrade it on a very relaxed timeline.

Toss in active directory and domains and management tools and such and you have a complete package.

That's why the dumbest thing MS can do is abandon win32. Oh, sure, promote the latest and greatest with devs and get people to adopt some newer solution, but keep win32 support for an extra 10 years. Does this cost MS money? Absolutely! Does it make MS more money that it costs them? Almost certainly!

If you want to sell somebody something you need to understand what makes THEIR lives easier, not yours. People complain about all the legacy stuff in Windows, but the people who pay big money for it buy it mainly because those features are there. Sure, getting $30 for every PC ever sold is a nice thing for MS, but getting that umpteen-million a year professional service contract from every big company out there is worth a lot of money too.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[jadv]

Then your experience is different from mine. I upgraded to Windows 8, but with the "erase everything and do a clean install from scratch" option activated. Windows 8 Pro installed fast and easy, and all my printer and network configurations were picked up automagically.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[marcosdumay]

Businesses love this. It means that they can buy a $100,000 industrial robot and the ancient software that operates it installs just fine on a PC that still gets security updates...

The funny thing is, Linux can probably run that robot just fine nowadays, windows can't. Ditto for the ERP. You can still install IE6 on modern versions of Wine, but not on modern Windows.

Linux is more backward compatible with Windows than modern Windows. Each day some people find that out, and that is yet another reason MS is losing their monopoly.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[TheGeneration]

I don't agree.

In the case of the Mac there are pre-installed Apple made applications, but they are applications that have tight integration with the OS for handling certain types of media, and generally these apps are not loaded on startup. There are no third party trial bloatware installs.

As for Linux, I suppose every distribution includes different applications and it is your job to clean up and keep or get rid of the things you don't want.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[steelfood]

1) Build up a solid customer and developer base.
2) Kick them off.
3) ???
4) PROFIT!

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Rich0]

Yup, and the advancement of web/citrix/cloud-based solutions is making the workstation OS less relevant anyway.

However, their stability was the whole advantage of Windows.

Linux isn't exactly the bedrock of stability either. No distro provides a decade of support, though RHEL does a fairly decent job.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[marcosdumay]

Linux isn't exactly the bedrock of stability either.

What's funny again, Linux has more backward compatibility with Windows than with itself, by a huge margin.

You often don't get 2 years of binary compatibility, even in a 2 years old supported distro. Unless your program just depends on glibc and bundles everything else, in that case the last incompatible version is about a decade old.

Anyway, the lesson is that you don't bet on the long term availability of proprietary software. Linux just makes the lesson explicit enough for everybody to notice, while MS spent decades and billions of dollars teaching everybody the oposite, just to suddenly drop it.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Osgeld]

what is this magical DVD? I haven't found one that even recognizes my monitor correctly anymore let alone lets me program anything outside of core functions without a good download of toolchains (nevermind eclipse itself)

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[sjames]

You should try Debian then. I have never had it fail to detect my monitor correctly.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Osgeld]

Debian is what I have now, it took a good hour to get it working at 1280x1024@60 hz with a kludge

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[sjames]

You mush have strange hardware. All of mine just worked, including switching the laptop between it's built-in display and the VGA input on my TV.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[smash]

Yes, I've been testing since the beta. Have you?

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[smash]

are you attempting to run it in an enterprise environment?

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Osgeld]

It just worked until about 2 years ago, now it pops up at some screwy resolution at 50Hz which makes my monitor flip out for 2 seconds every 5 seconds... been using linux for about 10 years now, been using debian based systems for about 4, now every single distro I try does the same thing ... kernel thing I guess.

winders 7 has no problem detecting it, nor does OSX when I drag the dusty old mac out

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Rich0]

You often don't get 2 years of binary compatibility, even in a 2 years old supported distro. Unless your program just depends on glibc and bundles everything else, in that case the last incompatible version is about a decade old.

A big part of this is due to how dependencies are managed. On Windows there is a defined stable ABI and a set of core libraries provided by the OS, and then everything else is always bundled with the application. It isn't uncommon to find 14 versions of zlib floating around on a Windows system as a result. On Linux a distro provides all the libraries, and an application is really just supposed to provide itself. That is what leads to all the binary incompatibility across OS versions.

As you say, if you always bundle everything but glibc the compatibility lasts quite a bit longer. And, nothing is stopping distros from shipping a few versions of glibc as well, which would stretch the compatibility WAY back. Such an approach would of course waste RAM and disk space, and mean that software would often be using old/buggy/vulnerable dependencies, and that auditing for these sorts of problems would be more painful than it is today.

The model used for Linux works really well if the source code for everything you use is available to you. That is the dominant approach on Linux, and the only model that is really interesting to most of those developing for Linux. However, if I were running a company like Canonical that wanted to make it easier to install proprietary software on Linux I'd strongly consider ensuring binary compatibility over decade-long time scales, however that has to happen.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[Krneki]

I don't know about Apple, as everything made by them is on my ignore list.
But since you mention Linux .... it's not a problem of the distribution, like for Microsoft it isn't, but what a particular store/company decides to install on the device they sell.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[vandamme]

If grandma wants a thin client, why not buy a Chromebook?

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[smash]

Yup. And the core problem is this: Windows 7 is currently good enough to do whatever people ask of it. I don't particularly like it (I'm an OS X guy by preference these days), but it is good enough.

To justify spending $ in terms of time and money to upgrade to 8, it needs to offer something compelling. "Does basically the same stuff but is more frustrating to use, and breaks a heap of old stuff" is not a compelling argument.

Re:Who is the core audience for Windows?

[lexman098]

You mush have strange hardware.

And this is why linux never made it to the desktop mainstream. That and lack of eye candy.

Fire sale?

[longbot]

I, for one, cannot wait for the clearance fire sale as MS dumps and runs from the tablet market. I love my $150 32GB HP Touchpad!

Re:Fire sale?

[ocratato]

Since its locked down so it can only run Windows RT, and the App Store would probably be shut down, what are you going to do with it?

Re:Fire sale?

[longbot]

I take it you don't remember this.

Re:Fire sale?

[ocratato]

To quote from the referenced article:

"The specific value can't be permanently altered on devices enabled with Secure Boot"

So not much use really.

Re:Fire sale?

[longbot]

I am aware of that. It however proves that the device can be hacked, which means the hardware has some value on it's own.

Re:Fire sale?

[symbolset]

Not really, no. They were really careful to make sure that without Windows RT these devices are paperweights. There is not, and is not likely to be, a crack in time for it to be a useful hacked device while the hardware is still interesting. Buy a secondhand Transformer Prime for $150 on eBay instead - that's all this is anyway, except the TF201 doesn't have this lockdown problem.

Re:Fire sale?

[sjames]

To make it really useful, you'd need to flash a proper bootloader on it and install a proper OS on it. That procedure might or might not involve a soldering iron.

Re:Fire sale?

[tftp]

To make it really useful, you'd need to flash a proper bootloader on it and install a proper OS on it. That procedure might or might not involve a soldering iron.

I might be technically capable of this work, but what financial or other reasons would I have to bother? It is not trivial to open a tablet that is glued together and is not designed to be opened. It is not trivial to solder a JTAG connector, or to make a needle probe jig for connecting to onboard test points. It is not trivial to develop the new bootloader. All this effort for what? To reward MS for making a bad product by buying their garbage and then investing my personal time and personal time of hundreds of other developers? Don't we have better things to do with our time and skills? A generic Chinese ARM board for a tablet can be bought, along with a working tablet, in a box, for under $100. I would rather reward the people who didn't go out of their way to screw me with secure boot.

Re:Fire sale?

[sjames]

It would have to be sold at fire sale prices (or perhaps cheaper than paying for disposal prices), and the hacker would have to be someone with a lot more time than money, or perhaps a hobbyist that wants to use it as a learning platform.

Re:Fire sale?

[drinkypoo]

A generic Chinese ARM board for a tablet can be bought, along with a working tablet, in a box, for under $100.

You can, but it will be shit and there will be no aftersupport and even CM probably won't support it so you'll be forever stuck on whatever revision it came with.

Re:Fire sale?

[tftp]

What kind of support you expect to have on an opened and hacked WinRT tablet, with some parts missing and other replaced, and with wires soldered to test points? On a product that is officially discontinued?

Once you start soldering, all support and warranties fly out of the window. You are on your own. Those who are not comfortable with that should buy a finished product, or R-Pi - at least that one is *intended* for hacking. Not that you will get far with support if you burn the I/O with 120V AC.

With regard to quality, where do you think those WinRT tablets are made? In Redmond, perhaps, in MS's own basement?

If you are worried about performance of the CPU, or the amount of memory... MS has no exclusive control over that. If the market wants a tablet with this and that hardware, China will put it together, very quickly. If that's only you who wants 16 GB of DDR3 RAM in a tablet... sorry, you'll have to make your own.

Re:Need a common platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to Windows RT hardware suppliers: Unlock the boot ROM, so we can run linux on the fire sale devices - I've got several netbooks running linux from Microsoft's last attempt. I'd buy unlocked Windows RT Tablets at the prices that Netbooks got dumped at.

Landfill

[ocratato]

The only way these could have succeeded was to price them below Android and recover the losses from the App Store.

The way these are heading, we will see Microsoft soon abandon them and because of their locked down nature they will be consigned to landfill.

Re:Landfill

[symbolset]

Well they built 3 million and have sold 1.1 million so far. Since the stock is getting old (hell, it was born old in mobile-device time) something has to break.

I just checked Amazon -

[pecosdave]

I wouldn't say these things are priced into the dangerously low zone. They're still more expensive than the equivalent Android tablets and right around iProduct pricing. Even if I could put Android on one there wouldn't be a reason to buy one for that reason, a native Android tablet would still be the better dollar based choice.

Re:I just checked Amazon -

[ocratato]

If you could put Linux on one it would be a sweet little machine. One of the reasons they are so expensive is the Windows requires a higher performance CPU and more memory than the other brands. This in turn pushes up the battery requirements as well as the cost. It would be nice to be able to put something more efficient on them.

Re:And yet they look expensive...

[ocratato]

I was watching a couple of youngsters trying to play with a Surface in one of our local electronics stores. It must have been that the keyboard was not connected correctly since nothing worked unless you poked at the screen. Not very impressive, and WAY too expensive compared to laptop computers.

Well, duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, with a locked-down Metro tablet, why bother?!

Corporations are so stupid sometimes!

of couese!

[jameshofo]

its ok microsoft tends to screw up the first re-design. but don't worry windows 8 is the re-design of the re-design. So, we just need to wait for the re-design of windows 8 and well have a solid windows os again! I'm not exacly sure how many microsoft re-re's it takes to make a good OS but I'm sure by now we know, it's a lot!

Re: hi

[davester666]

Never used! Just took it out of the box to hear that satisfying click between the keyboard and tablet.

windows RT experience

[chentiangemalc]

so I've been using Surface RT 64 GB as my primary device now for several weeks. The good * working with office documents clearly superior than existing tablets * jail break to run .NET (non-WPF) and re-compiled native apps to ARM is great. I have SharpDevelop, full C# IDE on tablet and it works great. * remote desktop capabilities works great * can achieve 80wpm+ on the "touch" cover The bad: * The Windows Store Apps/Games suck big time * Windows Store Apps Quality * Windows Store Apps Launch Speed * No official SDK to compile desktop apps to ARM * jailbreak required to run 3rd party desktop apps * Mail app search is totally non functional for me (but works on my Windows 8 x64 dev) * Not sure if Touch Cover will be durable * Screen too reflective * Auto brightness is either lacking totally or works poorly * can't dual boot an alternate OS (yet) * gcc not ported yet to target Windows RT (ARM) desktop apps * WinDbg for ARM not publicly available * citrix Client is TERRIBLE (worse than iPad/Android versions) HTML5 client is slightly better. I find overall I'm happy with it,use it to remotely access full Virtual Desktop with external monitor and keyboard/mouse, and then take it away to cafes &c or crammed public transport for document reviews/editing/creation. In my opinion main thing MS needs to do: unlock desktop apps (at least as system setting) and rapidly get QUALITY in Windows Store, and ensure apps like MAIL search works flawlessly and launch time is super quick. I think the product has potential but if the app quality issue is no rectified fast doubt it can survive.

Re:windows RT experience

[93 Escort Wagon]

When you mentioned "the bad", you forgot to include the apparent inability to format Slashdot posts.

Re:windows RT experience

[Bert64]

The problem there is that windows applications are primarily closed source, so even if you can recompile existing applications and run them many apps don't come with source code, and the majority of those that do are cross platform and probably already worked on arm based linux long before windows rt existed.

Re:windows RT experience

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

When you mentioned "the bad", you forgot to include the apparent inability to format Slashdot posts.

Or that RT disables mandatory previews, for that matter.

Re:windows RT experience

[KlomDark]

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Branding Branding Branding

[ScottCooperDotNet]

Microsoft seems to be tied to the Windows brand when it is not appropriate and even harmful to the prospects of a product. Would you buy a Microsoft Windows Xbox?

Windows RT brought to mind all the negatives of the Windows brand: viruses, instability, insecurity.
Yet the Windows RT name here, as DigitAl56K noted above, did not include the brand positives: Familiar UI, existing software and games.

Coming up with a new product name is difficult, especially for a global company. Using the existing brand plus two random-to-consumers letters was a wimp-out that added nothing to differentiate this radical departure from the rest of the Windows brand.

Re:Branding Branding Branding

[Bert64]

The worst problem is that the brand name *implies* a familiar interface and existing software, leaving users extremely disappointed and frustrated when they find those two factors lacking.

MS seems to have an obsession with putting the windows brand everywhere, they are seemingly too arrogant to realise that their brand is viewed extremely negatively by many and only tolerated because in its core markets users are stuck with it or even completely unaware that alternatives exist.

They are like the east german trabant, a car almost universally derided and yet people still queue up to get one because nothing better is available to them.

In the phone and tablet markets, users are not locked in to windows, non windows systems are well known and widely available.

Re:Branding Branding Branding

[aztracker1]

Don't know about that.. they could have just called it the Microsoft View (your new view into the online world). About 30 seconds... no windows name.. but they could have said... fully compatible with "Windows 8 games" (meaning win store apps had to work on the RT tablet)...

RT isn't bad.. and for new development it's decent.. MS's problem is both screwing over their vendors, their customers, pricing themselves out of the market and to top it all off, using the "Windows" name where it clearly shouldn't be. MS Windows has a 20+ year history of huge platform compatibility. A number of really old windows apps will still run on today's windows (at least from win32 forward on win64). RT breaks from that, which is a good thing.. though MS should have retired windows as a brand for the non-x86 platform.

Improve usability?

[SeaFox]

Isn't Windows RT pretty much Windows 8 without the normal Desktop mode?

That would pretty make it a statement that Metro itself is a failure, and what's more we're talking about a tablet device, the very thing the Metro interface was created for.

Forget trying to make it work for a desktop OS, Microsoft. Your creation can't even cut it on its home turf.

Re:Improve usability?

[cbhacking]

It actually has the normal desktop mode. Office, the legacy Control Panel, Windows Explorer, all the old admin tools (from Task Manager to Registry Editor and Local Security Policy editor), all the command-line or scripting environments (CMD and PowerShell, plus WSH scripts), the built-in Remote Desktop (there's another one in the store), and one of the two Internet Explorer modes (the one that looks like, and includes all the features of, IE9 on Win7) all must run in the Desktop. It's definitely still there.

However, by default, desktop mode applications must be signed by Microsoft before they can run on RT. This has only limited impact on scripts - there are .CMD and .PS1 scripts to automate a number of things in RT, both written by MS and by independent third parties - but it means that the average independent software vendor can't just distribute an ARM-compiled version of their Win32 app and expect it to work. That said, there's a hack which has been out for months (and multiple Patch Tuesday cycles) which unlocks (some say "jailbreaks") Windows RT to remove this signature restriction. At that point, you actually can just fire up Visual Studio, set the target platform to ARM instead of Win32/x86 or x64, compile your app (VS will complain a little, but it's easily fixed), and run it on RT. In fact, you can even just download a .NET 4.x (4.0 or 4.5, currently) app and run it right on RT with no forther effort at all, assuming it was compiled with the "AnyCPU" target platform.

Link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158

Re:Improve usability?

[symbolset]

This is really for the grandparent. Nobody can write apps for the desktop mode of Windows RT except Microsoft. It is forbidden. Also, the "desktop" doesn't support legacy apps. Sideloading is likewise forbidden, and it's not Win32 capable anyway as it's ARM. These bits of trivia were overlooked by the parent poster for some unknowable reason, even though they were the point of your question.

Re:Improve usability?

[cbhacking]

The hack to remove that "forbidden"-ness of third-party desktop apps is widely published, has been noted and then ignored by Microsoft, and works great (the current version also allows kernel-mode code).

Sideloading (a term which only reasonably applies to store apps; anything else would just be called "installing") is fully possible; Microsoft has not only failed to forbid it, they actually publish step-by-step instructions for it along with a warning to beware of untrusted sideloaded apps. It is also free. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/Hh974578.aspx

Win32 is an API, and is very much present on Windows RT (along with WinRT, the new API for Windows Store apps, which can be used on x86 and x64 machines as well). It's true that x86-compiled software is difficult (not impossible - there's an emulation layer, but it currently supports relatively few system DLLs - and support is all the time) to run on RT, but open-source software can be recompiled, .NET software can usually run unmodified, Java software can run with some restrictions (via a .NET-based Java runtime called IKVM), Python is partially available (the foreign function interface is full of assembly and taking time to port), and in theory other languages are also possible.

A large number of people appear to actually believe that RT has no desktop at all, possible because MS almost never shows it in their ads. I was attempting to correct this misconception. "Windows 8 without the normal desktop mode" and "Windows 8 compiled for ARM and requiring a small unlock utility before it can runt third-party desktop apps" are very different things.

Re:Improve usability?

[symbolset]

You guys just don't get it. There is no advantage in explaining it to you.

Re:hi

[gagol]

1999: Windows ME, Mostly Excrement
2007: Windows VISTA, Vastly Improved Subpar Total Ass_shit
2012: Windows RT, Royal Trash
2013: Windows BLUE, ?

Fill in the blank!

Re: hi

[Anonymous Coward]

It’s pretty sad when the sound of a keyboard being attached was the biggest feature they could tout...

Windows advantages

[Enderandrew]

In the enterprise market, iPads and iPhones are everywhere. The reason Microsoft could in theory have won back that enterprise market was providing a device that:

1. Could join a domain and be managed by Microsoft tools
2. Run existing Windows legacy apps

So Microsoft provided

1. An OS/tablet that can't join a domain to be managed by Microsoft tools
2. Can't run Windows legacy apps

So is arguably worse than existing Android/iOS tablets on price and hardware. The software provides less value. And the OS eats up all your storage space.

Honestly, I can't see anyone making an argument for buying a Windows RT tablet.

Re:Windows advantages

[Missing.Matter]

So is arguably worse than existing Android/iOS tablets on price and hardware.

Which might clue you in that perhaps Surface RT is not meant for the enterprise. Which is why Microsoft offers

1. Powerful yet expensive core i5 powered tables capable of ultrabook type computing, with all the enterprise benefits of Windows (Surface Pro)
2. Light and cheap atom powered tablets that can at least run legacy x86 applications but have the battery life of ARM powered devices (Latitude 10)

This is what enterprise is now interested in. That's why 32% of mobile tech workers want a Windows tablet as their next device, compared to 26% for iPad and a mere 12% for Android. (Source: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/Forrester_2013_Mobile_Workforce_Adoption_Trends_Feb2013.pdf)

Windows RT is microsoft's answer to the iPad home market. It's lacking apps now, yeah that's a given as Metro is a new platform. But there's nothing specifically that Windows RT cannot do that iPad can. Windows RT outshines iPad in several areas like being able to use two apps side by side, being able to use multiple accounts, having an open filesystem for using USB drives, and being able to view flash content like Hulu. It's probably not on equal footing yet, mostly because of the apps, but that will grow in time. But don't confuse Surface RT as Microsoft's answer to the iPad in the enterprise. Windows 8 tablets are for that purpose.

Re:Windows advantages

[Chris Mattern]

But there's nothing specifically that Windows RT cannot do that iPad can.

Except, it would appear, sell.

I'm sure this won't matter to the haters

[Barlo_Mung_42]

but my surface RT is the best travel computer I've ever owned. When I'm on the road I don't need to compile apps or do heavy lifting. I need to check email, use word / excel and browse the web. So why is it better than any regular tablet? It's as light as a tablet when I want tablet mode but has support for a real mouse / keyboard when I don't.

Re:I'm sure this won't matter to the haters

[WaffleMonster]

but my surface RT is the best travel computer I've ever owned. When I'm on the road I don't need to compile apps or do heavy lifting. I need to check email, use word / excel and browse the web. So why is it better than any regular tablet? It's as light as a tablet when I want tablet mode but has support for a real mouse / keyboard when I don't.

This is a trick question. A portable computer with a keyboard and mouse is called a laptop not a tablet.

Re:I'm sure this won't matter to the haters

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Don't most tablets support a real mouse & keyboard via Bluetooth/USB?

Re:I'm sure this won't matter to the haters

[Therad]

Yes, they all support keyboards trough bt or USB if they have that connectivity (not all tablets have USB, not sure about bt). And let's all forget about asus transformers, which provides a nice keyboard and doubles battery time when using it.

Re:I'm sure this won't matter to the haters

[gsslay]

And indeed your Surface RT may be the best travel computer you've ever had.

That only gives it a small market (travel computer) and makes it only the best you've had. Many, apparently, have experienced better. Microsoft's problem is that those who have experienced better, and those seeking a travel computer, are mostly the same people.

Predictable result; no-one buys it.

Re:I'm sure this won't matter to the haters

[marcosdumay]

Except for the problem of changing the computer type based on what periferals are plugged, it's the best definition. I'd say that the division between tablets, phones, netbooks, and laptops is completely subjective/irrelevant.

If you disagree, please tell me what is an Asus Transformer.

Bingo. MS still owns the enterprise, but...

[Radical Moderate]

they crippled RT so that enterprise would buy(more expensive) Tablet Pros. Which killed any incentive to buy an RT device. It's too bad, my wife test drove an RT tablet for a week and liked it a lot, but limitations made it a no-go.

Re:Even though Surface looked great in paper...

[WaffleMonster]

I recently bought a W7 tablet. Jesus fucking christ, what a piece of shit. It's like a Cyrus Cybernetics Corporation product. And I LOATHE apple products, so don't call me a shill. But W7 could never be considered usable by touch by anyone sane who is not a shill.

All tablets are useless pieces of shit.

This is exactly the problem.

[symbolset]

It's the millions of comments and reviews like this that are killing Microsoft's hardware partners on WinRT. "Loved WinRT - intuitive, responsive, loved the hell out of the OS. Returned this (VivoTab RT, Dell XPS 10, Lenovo Yoga 11) to the vendor because I also bought the Surface RT and prefer it because x,y,z. Four stars for this though, as you might like it." And where do these comments and articles come from? Microsoft's own marketing campaigns, fed by the billions in profits their partners funnel them, amplified by their Bing search engine. With friends like this Microsoft's hardware partners don't need enemies.

If you want to survive as a manufacturer never ever ever screw your distributors. Word gets around.

Re:This is exactly the problem.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Bing??? Does anyone actually use Bing!!!

Now clusty there was a decent search engine but sadly it's gone

Re:This is exactly the problem.

[smash]

unsafe image/video search

Re:This is exactly the problem.

[drinkypoo]

Thing is, people say the same thing about Google Android devices, yet the non-Google devices are still selling in numbers. That's because Android sells in numbers, unlike Windows RT. Microsoft could get away with selling their hardware if only anyone wanted anyone's RT hardware in significant numbers.

Re:This is exactly the problem.

[Rich0]

Google doesn't pay people to promote the Nexus devices on non-Nexus review pages.

I'm sure many of their fans do, but that isn't the same thing.

The parent post was complaining about MS actually paying people to post reviews like the this.

Re:This is exactly the problem.

[vandamme]

Yeah, he's the mayor of Detroit.

Did you post this from your RT POS machine?

[girlinatrainingbra]

Did you post this from your RT POS machine? Or do you need to pause and take a breath because you talk nonstop like that? I ask because somehow you neglected to put line-breaks at anyplace appropriate in your posting, like perhaps just before the "good" and the "bad".
:>p
Line breaks, and paragraph marks, or even emoticons of a face sticking a tongue out at you, help break a document into logical parts and make it easier for people to read. Oh, wait, I get it. You were trying to demonstrate another failing of your RT tablet. Thanks!

Re:Did you post this from your RT POS machine?

[drinkypoo]

Did you post this from the future? Because someone else left a much better comment snarking about the poor formatting before you did. Clearly, your knee jerked and you had to say something about a comment that said anything good about the platform, but all you could come up with was blah blah blah hurgle burgle blah blah blah.

Re:hi

[Dr Max]

Weren't android tablets dropping prices like this a year (and a half maybe) ago. I guess it's a dead platform.

Re:Even though Surface looked great in paper...

[symbolset]

I'm quite happy with my Asus Transformer. The only problem I had with it was it cost me an unplanned $300 to buy the kids junior level Android tabs so I could use it without too much interference.

Re:It has less to do wtih Windows RT

[mwvdlee]

IMHO, Windows ME is way better than any other ME operating system om the market.

Microsoft should have asked me

[erroneus]

Microsoft: You keep doing it wrong.

You want to compete in the tablet market? GREAT! I say WELCOME even. There is/was room for Microsoft in the market. Create your own snazzy tablet interface? Well, what I saw of it was kinda cool but I'm already used to small icons and stuff but the dynamic favorites looking main screen thing seems fine with me too. And I loved that you started out by getting Angry Birds ported over to your new platform. But here's where you screwed up.

You decided that everything should use the same UI. Sorry, but no. That's just wrong. A business machine is not a tablet. When putting together documents and presentations and exchanging massive amounts of emails, people need keyboards and mice -- touch screens get in the way. Surely you realize different UIs are suited to different purposes right?

What's more, people were comfortable (finally) with Windows 7. Business had been moving over to it and all that. But you turned around to threaten that comfort with Windows 8?! Sorry, but what were you thinking?! You're scaring the crap out of IT and consumers everywhere! First there's all this talk of "the new machines you buy will only ever run Windows 8 and if you run anyrhing else, it will brick the device" called secure boot or something like that. Then there's this impending end of Window 7 being announced and all that. Convenience stores exist for a reason -- humans love convenience and comfort. And when you threaten that comfort, you threaten the humans. We thought you were humans too so we were hoping you would sort of get that.

Look, I think we would have been more than okay with you entering the phone and tablet market with your unique take on UI design for touch screen devices. You could have put all sorts of money into it, pushing it and it would have been everywhere. And if you just could have left desktop computers ALONE, you would have actually created a much better buzz. "What's this? Microsoft trying something new? Sure, I'll give that a go..." But no. Instead of making people curious and interested, you want to change your whole ecosystem from developers to business to consumers.

Your first clue to back off was heavy developer resistance. There have been times when I doubted developers of Microsoft tech were all that smart. They all just seemed to fall in line with every new language and library and everything. Silverlight? Sure, let's do that. .NET? Let's do it! Seems like a great idea that doesn't solve anything since it's all just WinTel anyway. But with Windows 8, developers are saying "uh... no... this sucks" you should have paused for a moment to rethink things. Instead, your "Type A" personality pushed you into believing the rest of the world is not type A. Really? You think you are more "A" than everyone else? How very "type A" of you to think so. How's that working out for you?

Business is desperately clinging to their EA agreements to keep what they have. Change is pain in business. They are extending warranties and keeping their old hardware too. Does this mean nothing to you Microsoft? Not a hint? Not a clue?

Consumers love their gadgets. But change from iThings and Androids means there is a pre-existing set of expectations. Cater to them. It almost seemed like you were getting it when you started having popular apps and games ported to your phones and tablets. But then you started muddying things up by trying to unify everything.

Microsoft isn't listening and they aren't reading this either.

Advice:

LEAD, FOLLOW or GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

Re:Microsoft should have asked me

[drinkypoo]

And I loved that you started out by getting Angry Birds ported over to your new platform.

They had angry birds for WM6. It worked on my HTC RAPH110, too. It wasn't enough to make wince not stink on ice.

LEAD, FOLLOW or GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

Incapable of doing the first, unwilling to do the second, unable to comprehend the third. What's option four?

Re:Microsoft should have asked me

[TheGeneration]

Look, I think we would have been more than okay with you entering the phone and tablet market with your unique take on UI design for touch screen devices. You could have put all sorts of money into it, pushing it and it would have been everywhere. And if you just could have left desktop computers ALONE, you would have actually created a much better buzz. "What's this? Microsoft trying something new? Sure, I'll give that a go..." But no. Instead of making people curious and interested, you want to change your whole ecosystem from developers to business to consumers.

I think at this point Microsoft has developed a reputation for failing at new things. When I think "Microsoft" and "New" I get immediately skeptical. So I suspect at this point Microsoft trying something new that requires consumers shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars is a red flag for the consumer to either "wait and see" or "avoid avoid avoid".

I mean how many loyal customers can be left who have a Zune, a Windows phone, a Kin phone, a Windows Millenium, Windows Vista, and now Windows RT device collecting dust in their home? Considering that this represents more than half of new products microsoft has released in the last 15 years and it is really clear that it does not pay to be an early adopter.

Re:hi

[Wowsers]

BLUE = Bill Loses Ubuntu Encounter ?

Re:hi

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Well they didn't really drop that much, but what little they did is easily explainable: Inexpensive but good tablets hit the market hard and fast around that time. Namely, the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7. Naturally the competition needed to do just that - compete.

Re:Microsoft must make good lube.

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

I favor the old theory that spending a large sum on a device causes a lot of people to become defensive about its merits; agreeing that it has really serious faults would mean admitting to themselves that they were fooled into paying several times what the item is worth.

Re:hi

[Joce640k]

Weren't android tablets dropping prices like this a year (and a half maybe) ago.

That was just healthy competition.

Windows RT? Not so much.

Restricted Boot

[andrew3]

Windows RT is worse than Windows 8 because it doesn't give its users the freedom to boot another OS, or control the computer at its very lowest level. Sure, maybe most users don't care, but they should. If tech-savvy users boycott the Surface RT, maybe users will as well.

I can't yet see any reason for not allowing users to control their own device at its lowest level. Maybe an "unlock" option like a few Android phones do would prevent users from making unwise decisions.

I feel like I had to say something, because many of the comments here are aimed at the technical qualities of the Windows RT/iPad/other proprietary OS. This is missing the point! If people aren't adopting Windows RT at the moment, let's tell them why they should avoid it forever.

Also, I believe the FSF's petition to stop Restricted Boot is still open. Please take a moment to sign it if you have the time - it's getting close to 50,000 signatures.

-- some crazy free software user.

Re:It has less to do wtih Windows RT

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that there's a difference between a tablet and an operating system, right?

Re:hi

[Dr Max]

Android adoption (especially tablet) was pretty slow at the beginning, lots of stores were trying to get rid of all kinds of models from acer to viewsonic. I'm not really defending windows rt (I'm not buying one) they need a lot more apps to replace the lack of x86.

Told you so

[Tridus]

"Windows" is not a brand name that excites the market. People don't see a Windows tablet and get all warm and fuzzy inside. They think of their crashing old XP machine, or even worse they think of Windows 8, which confused the everloving hell out of them (Windows 8 sales are also well below expectations and never going to recover).

Based on that, what makes them want to buy a Windows tablet over the far cheaper Android alternatives or the iPad, which has a much better market reputation?

Microsoft has never been able to answer that question for the Surface RT, because the answer is "nothing". There is no particular reason to recommend the RT over anything else on the market. So long as that remains true and it's saddled with the poor market reception of Windows 8, marketing is going to have an uphill slog to sell the thing. Of course, marketing focusing on the keyboard clicking noise instead of what the thing can actually do isn't helping a whole lot either...

Re:Told you so

[ultrasawblade]

This.

Microsoft has never been a cool brand to the "unwashed masses"

Microsoft also is too dependent on their monopoly of the desktop. And the reason why this came to be is that the same "unwashed masses" didn't really differentiate between the OS and the computer. I would propose that many non-technical people (the majority who use PCs) don't understand that you can install a different OS.

Microsoft also has a problem with branding. Look at MSN Passport, Windows Live, .NET. This is because Microsoft has been too comfortable being the guy behind the curtain, merely being responsible for providing the "software" platform (and wanting to be powerful enough to be able to dictate the minimum requirements of that platform), and letting the hardware manufacturers be the customer facing front lines. Microsoft's real customers for the longest time have been the OEMs. This worked great for the PC industry since no one really owns the platform, but the mobile network carriers, who exerted a lot of control over all mobile platforms until the iPhone, didn't really put up with it to the extent Microsoft would have preferred.

Microsoft doesn't know what to do now and really doesn't know how to act any other way. They are very used to dictating terms to OEMs. Hard to say this will be their downfall since they have so much money.

Re:Even though Surface looked great in paper...

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

They have value, but it's as secondary devices when someone's away from their computer... For example, while I need a real computer with a keyboard and full-blown word processor to get serious writing done, I don't really need one when I just want to read a book before bed or order a prescription I need refilled -- my e-reader (effectively an e-ink tablet) is sufficient, so using it *for that* is far more reasonable than either toting my laptop everywhere or running back downstairs to where it 'lives' most of the time.

Specialization can be a good thing, and comparing related devices that have distinctly different purposes misses the point. By your logic, home computers in the 70s-90s were useless pieces of shit because they shared elements with mainframes without having similar powers -- which obviously ignores that they still did a great job at meeting the modest needs of average people interested in perhaps playing games or entering the household VHS tapes in a database.

Re:hi

[Ragnarok89]

BLUE... like the porto-potty!

app store lockin at least androids let's you run

[Joe_Dragon]

app store lock in at least androids let's you run 3rd party stores and any app as well.

Also app store censorship is big issue as well.

Options for Microsoft

[Taantric]

I think the best move Microsoft could make for Windows RT would be to remove the artificial restriction of not allowing apps complied for ARM to run on the desktop. Windows App store is not being embraced by developers so this could be one way to throw open the doors to all sorts of new apps. They can still regulate and police the Windows store so Mom & Pop users could still feel secure in downloading those apps but the enthusiast crowd (people who actually recommend gadgets to family & friends) would have a proper Windows machine running on a ARM chip.

Re:Microsoft must make good lube.

[drinkypoo]

It's called "cognitive dissonance" and it is the mechanism responsible behind our tolerance of basically every ill in society. "That can't possibly be true" (even though I can see it) or "That can't possibly have happened" (even though it's clear it did) or "I made the best decision I could have at the time" (even though it's clear one didn't) just leads to more willful ignorance and more bad decisions.

That's your inference; it's not my implication.

[girlinatrainingbra]

No, I opened up a new tab to reply to the comment, not having seen the other poor formatting comment. I took the time to read the poorly formatted comment, which had some interesting points that were hard to pick out because of the run-on nature of the writing style. I took the trouble to make a joking comment, and actually pointed out what things would make their comment better: carriage returns and paragraph breaks which would organize the parts of "good" vs. "bad" vs. "ugly", and embedded all of that in a joke.
.
Too bad you can't take a joke. My comments were not "burgle blah blah blah. I pointed out that good formatting would have preserved and presented the sensibility of the post. I don't know why you've got a knee-jerk response that any joking disparagement of the "form" or "style" of a comment implies automatic disagreement with and disparagement of the "content" of a comment. Seems like a knee-jerk response and poor inferencing on your part. :>p

That's a tongue being stuck out at you, just in case you can't infer the implication of the emoticon created by the serial concatention of a colon, a greater-than-sign, and the lower-case letter 'p'.

Two problems.

[MaWeiTao]

Windows RT should have never been released. All it's done is cause confusion. Well, arguably the problem was poor implementation, Windows RT just felt like Windows 8 but crippled. What Microsoft should have done is release a variant of Windows Phone for tablets and keep Windows 8 for the Surface Pro and actual PCs.

Another problem here, however, is the power of perception. People have dumped on the Surface without even using it. Everyone I know who's actually tried one has been impressed. Also, actually owners have been pleased. But consumers default to being dismissive because it's Microsoft.

Re:Two problems.

[BonThomme]

yes, if they had only leveraged their success with Windows Phone...

Its dead Jim

[Waveguide04]

The whole 'plan' from Redmond with regard to OS's and hardware mystifies me. The OSs seem to be getting more and more dumbed down & incompatible and the hardware just doesn't have any juice in more ways than one (big price tab, limited usability, no nice). RT was dead before it ever even left the drawing board. Is anyone actually shocked that they are not fling off the shelves?

Yeah

[ichthus]

$uck it, Micro$oft.

No Discernible Market

[EndlessNameless]

If they want to see lots of sales and premium pricing, they need to deliver something that someone craves. So let's see which large markets they've locked on to...

Consumers? Not without long battery life and a strong app ecosystem.

Business offices? Not without domain capability and policy enforcement.

Industrial or scientific? Not without win32 or easy access to privileged functions (both of which are a bad idea without centrally-managed security policy).

They got their "Ooh, wow, look at this" customers that any new gadget will get, but that's all they'll get with this release of Windows RT. Better luck next time.

The same could be said...

[DiEx-15]

Nevermind who Windows is "good for", let's look at what Windows has going for it:

1 - A ton of users familiar with its desktop UI 2 - The mother-load of desktop software 3 - A ton of games compiled for native x86/x64 4 - Office

With Windows RT Microsoft basically said "Screw #1. Screw #2. Screw #3." That leaves a tablet for .. people who want to use Office on.. a tablet? Oh and they also added Metro. Except that the market for portable devices is already full of app platforms that are far more established.

Why would you buy a Windows RT tablet? Beats me. Clearly someone thought they could toss their core value propositions but win in the app space because... because something?

...with Windows 8. They took the clusterfuck of a phone UI and tried to pass it off as their "latest" OS.

How well has it worked for them so far? How about it hasn't .

So in all honesty, who isn't surprised that the Surface and Surface Pro aren't selling well?