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Microsoft To Start Dumping Surface RT To Schools For $199
onyxruby writes "In a move that will remind many of Apple in the '80s, Microsoft is going to start dumping Surface RT computers to educational institutions. In an effort to try to gain mindshare for their struggling Surface RT platform, Microsoft is giving away 10,000 Surface RTs to teachers through the International Society for Technology in Education. They're also preparing to offer $199 Surface RTs to K12 and higher education institutions. The strategy of flooding the educational market was quite successful for Apple. Unfortunately for Microsoft, today's computers require management and the Surface RT presents significant management challenges in terms of the inability to join the computer to a domain or available management tools."
Surface RT is not a dud, it is a great product and millions have been sold.
-Steve
Unfortunately, Surface RT requires that secure boot must not be possible to disable. The only way to get Linux on these things is to install an additional key or an approved boot loader, and that can be very complicated.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Remembering the time when Apple was pushing Apple II's in schools, I sure don't recall kids "hating it" because they felt "forced to use something" --- for the majority of kids, it was their first and only opportunity to use a computer at all. Playing those Apple II games was something new and exciting, that they'd be unlikely to have access to at home (without both well-off and technologically cutting-edge parents).
In this case, however, I agree with you --- a lot of kids (pretty much all of them from a middle class socioeconomic background) will already have seen better computers (or even have one in their pocket). Dumping crappy cheap tech on schools for a tax writeoff and some publicity isn't particularly going to be awe-inspiring for the kids. But, it will stall school administrations from considering switching to less Microsoft-centric platforms for at least a few more years; and, even if the kids don't like it, they'll be blocked from learning much about alternatives when they have to do classwork in Microsoft Office instead of [insert superior alternatives here].
What they did was confuse the hell out of people. At first Microsoft was touting a tablet that could run Windows Apps called the surface. What they meant was the Surface pro. Instead the device that got released first was the RT and it still had the name "windows". Most people looking at them, and I know of one business that bought a couple, did so thinking they could run existing windows programs. They got 'em home and learned they couldn't.
At least Apple makes it clear that while underneath the hood, both MacOS and iOS share many of the same parts, they are entirely different OS's designed for different purposes. Microsoft failed to do that with the Surface.
The next problem is that the Surface Pro is $1000. At that price what is the incentive to buy it? You can buy a convertible ultra book for just a few dollars more.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Especially since Linux drivers for a Windows tablet thats apparently designed be bootloader-locked aren't going to be forthcoming.
It comes with Office, so it's a business computer that can also play the tablet game, right?
Except that there's no Outlook. Try getting business done without that.
And you can't join a domain. That goes hand-in-hand with the above.
And most critical to anyone who just wants to get work done: it's not x86-compatible, and you're limited to Windows Store apps.
Who the hell came up with this horrible hodgepodge of an OS? And who expected anyone to pay a premium price for it? They'll be lucky if they can get these things to move even for $200!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I'm probably one of the few on here who have used an RT. Picked one up for $99 + keyboard at TechEd, and used it all week at the conference to take notes/surf/do work. Honestly, for your basic user who wants surfing/word docs, it's perfectly fine.
Also - I have an iPad that I love, but I couldn't dream of doing the work I was doing on the surface. The desktop mode is very nice, plus it just seems more workable when I can VPN in just like my PC at home. When comparing iPad to Surface for doing actual work, it's not event close, the Surface wins by a landslide.
I have a table that wobbles.
The big thing Apple had going for it compared to Atari and Commodore was expansion. They had slots that you could put cards in that allowed it to do things:
Serial cards (RS-232 serial interface)
Parallel cards (Centronics/IEEE 1284 parallel interface)
Multifunction I/O cards
Internal modems
80 column (or more) text cards (e.g., Videx)
PAL Color graphics cards (required for color graphics in early European Apples)
RGB cards
Floppy disk controllers
Hard disk controllers
Network adapters
Co-processor cards
Memory expansion cards
Accelerators
Realtime clock cards
Music and sound cards
Miscellaneous cards
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
WindowsRT reminds me of the PCjr. IBM wanted to sell a cheaper version of the PC and so they made a crippled version so it wouldn't compete with the high priced units. It withered and died. Now MS seems to be repeating the idea. Very Ironic. They took IBM's monopoly away from them and now they repeat IBM's early mistakes with hardware. I love it.
Because you have the make-for-windows tablet for only $199, or your principal buys it and hands it to you and tells you to use it. Thus you need to put a reasonable OS on it to make it usable. Remember these RTs dont come with Windows 8, they come with Windows 8 RT, which means metro-only except for some extremely limited desktop, and all apps must be signed and approved (ie, Microsoft Store ONLY). Thus they ship as unusable devices by default.
All executables on Windows 8 RT must be signed before they're allowed to run. You won't even get an "are you sure" dialog box. Thus no software is possible without prior permission from Microsoft. Sure you may have some nice byte code emulator but it's useless if you can't get it signed.