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Dell Dumps Keyboardless Windows RT Tablets
jfruh writes "On Friday, Dell was selling Windows RT tablets for as low as $300. By this morning, the cheapest one on offer was $479. The difference? The only tablets they're selling now come bundled with keyboards, which may indicate that customers are finding even the Metro-focused RT version of Windows 8 too irritating to navigate by touch alone. (If you really want a 10-inch Dell tablet without a keyboard it looks like you can still get one on Amazon, at least for the time being.)"
sell those silly things for $100 and people will be able to put a real OS on them to be useful
I suspect that the keyboard was initially not included to (a) make the cost of ownership seem less than it would later prove to be, and (b) give people the impression that Windows 8 could be used in some reasonable fashion entirely via touch. Neither of which is true, of course.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Windows RT tablets are a collectors item and you'll be able sell them on E-Bay for a tidy sum. And this is a great reason to buy one today.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
and rt is dead.
A friend of mine is a teacher. Her school got a bunch of these keyboardless RT tablets, one for each student. She brought hers out to our writer's group last night with the intention of getting sued to it.
It wouldn't boot up, so her techie boyfriend started messing with it, He got it to boot to an error message of the "Press F1 to continue" variety...
...on a keyboardless tablet. He and I had a good laugh.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
which may indicate that customers are finding even the Metro-focused RT version of Windows 8 too irritating to navigate by touch alone.
Or Dell has figured out that they will not be selling mass numbers of the device, and it will be more of a niche device, and thus they want to increase their profit margins on the ones they do sell.
Better known as 318230.
So first MS inappropriately tries to put a desktop operating system on to smart phones where it's pretty much unusable.
Then they decide inappropriately to put a smart phone operating system on to a desktop where it is pretty much unusable.
Genius. Pure and inappropriate genius.
They don't want to have to write off the keyboards as the tablets sell out. It's a cost saving move.
... it strikes me that the main reason to buy Windows RT over the competition (e.g. Android or iOS) is Office. Realistically, Office needs a keyboard so offering a keyboardless version is just another part for Dell to manage. It likely leads to poor reviews and extra support issues as well, since some ill informed people are going to buy the cheaper keyboardless version and expect Office to work as well as it does with a keyboard.
If a tablet must have a keyboard, due to a lousy operating system interface; why not build a proper 10" netbook with all accesories for $400?
Atleast then, the Windows OS would run all Windows applications, including legacy applications. Now the only 'apps' or applications on a Windows RT would be those on the Windows Store; which are largely useless and unusable.
Microsoft and its partners seem totally confused on what constitutes a tablet, what is a notebook and what is a desktop. Why would anyone want to run a full fledged Office package on a 10" tablet? What else could be the reason for investing more than $400 on a smallish computing device?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
So, Dell and MS are both circling the drain?
I thought we knew that already.
Laptop.
I swear, Slashdot talks so much about them, I begin to think it's a paid operation. I just don't know whether it is Google or Apple behind it.
Well, Swirl-swipe, triple tap, Windows Key+C+4, followed by shoving a charm bar across the screen diagonally probably wasn't as efficient as clicking the start menu after all.
Well the MS design intent is for all WinRT devices to be locked down.
Since MS Secure Boot has already been cracked, it will probably be a matter of time.
When a 10 inch Windows RT tablet can be had for $199, I'll be all over it. With a jailbreak, there's a great deal of open-source software that has been recompiled for ARM, and will work just fine in desktop mode. I already have a Bluetooth keyboard.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
You're right. MS decided to put a phone UI on their desktop, a desktop UI on their tablet, and and offered /. $35,000 per article about Surface. It seems they didn't quite think things through for any of those decisions.
"Dell will likely not abandon Windows RT because it has a close relationship with Microsoft, Kay said"
translation: MS is subsidizing at the rate of several hundred dollars a tablet. .
I'd rather have the $300 one with a $10 keyboard from the drug store if all I'm doing is sitting on the sofa surfing...and a mouse...and a different OS.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
$179 for a keyboard? WTF?
For that much you can buy an entire rather good 7" android tablet.
Except Android 4.3 broke compatibility with several popular Bluetooth mobile keyboards. At least the keyboard that ships with a device is warranted to work with the device.
Download the software to make your modem work.
Isn't downloading a radio driver (using another device) what you have to do anyway to build CyanogenMod for a new device?
It's absolutely horrible that Dell dumped these. I know they couldn't sell them, but they really should have been more environmentally conscience and e-cycled them instead of just dumping them.
Making it more expensive should fix it.
I have an exploit to load NT kernel drivers at near-boot time on RT tablets. It's not as good as a true Secure Boot exploit, but in theory it would be good enough to make a Linux/Android build for Surface RT.
Screenshot of my Surface RT running Windows RT with a kernel debugger, which should not be possible under Microsoft's Secure Boot configuration.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Good luck finding a new 10" laptop priced like the 10" laptops of 2010 through 2012, which aren't made anymore.
good for Dell, I guess
I have an RT tablet and bought the extra keyboard for it, only to never use it. The touch keyboard usability is excellent.
I forgot to add: there are legitimate issues with these tablets, most notably lack of apps, but the touch keyboard isn't one.
I'm tired of the pennyanny OS's on these devices. Put a desktop OS on the phone formfactor. It is well within our capabilities.
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I have an Asus VivoTab RT that I bought a few months ago, and I like it a lot. It's replaced about 90% of the functionality of my laptop. First of all, Windows 8 is about as useless as teets on a boar hog without a touch screen. I have no idea why Microsoft even allowed their OEMs to sell Windows 8 on low-end PC's without a touchscreen.
However, I bought the accessory keyboard for the VivoTab, which adds a second battery and USB ports. It turned my perfectly functional RT tablet into a middling netbook. The keyboard just gets in the way.
Now, if you want to run LINUX on a tablet, buy a cheap Android tablet and load LINUX on it. There are lots of 'em.
You Microsoft-hating fanbois need to get a grip. The solution to all of your personal problems is not simply to install LINUX over everything Microsoft. There is room enough, and time enough, for LINUX to catch up. (Of course, BSD will always kick LINUX's ass, but hey, you penguinistas are precious).
What is slashdots obsession with the surface rt? A sale from Dell? Has there ever been a time when everything Dell offers hasn't been on sale? This is starting to seem like Slashdot's version of the royal baby.
It was called Windows Mobile. It did all right in the market, back in the days when only serious nerds and corporate executives had smartphones. It crashed and burned when iOS came out, despite being technically a vastly more capable OS than early iOS versions. Android was the nail in the coffin.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
from here it appears that Windows 8 has begun to expand every related aspect of technology http://garasi.in/
Almost. I have the Surface RT and somethings are very irritating.
* virtual keyboard is overlay on top of your current application instead of the more standard pushing application out of the way. This leads to situation where you can't see the text you're typing.
* there's a virtual numpad, but it's a weird mix of phone numpad and standard keyboard numpad. 1-9 use phone layout (1-3 top row...etc) but "0" and "." are on the bottom like a standard keyboard numpad.
* some very basic settings can't be accessed from the Modern interface (ie. screen timeout and sleep mode) and must be changed in the desktop mode. Desktop mode on the Surface RT is just not usable with touch interface.
10" screen, 9-10 hours battery life, runs Windows and has Office installed. It's very light.
It's called "netbook" and cost me less than what Dell is selling.
I see it available on amazon from dell at less than 300 with free shipping under prime if anyone is still interested. I did not order one as i can not afford to throw money away like that and the reviews on the Dell website are mostly horrible for a 2 month old product.
Seriously, it does look like /. is proactively madvertising the Surface. IMHO, Win8 is perfect (use it daily on non-touch PC) and the only downside for RT is a lack of apps. Just as Android when it launched, but back then it only had one iOS product (!) as competition. Its harder for RT to win in the current market.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
You are not allowed to use Office commercially on Windows RT devices. Also, it doesn't come with Outlook. This made the device positively unusable for any "professional" use. You could buy the Surface Pro later, that was supposed to have Outlook and "full legacy application windows compatibility". The fact that they have Office doesn't mean they are licensed, you have to buy a separate license for it. These things made any RT "for amateurs" only at launch. Given the fact that they were more expensive than iPads and at launch time, the iPads had way more apps available and were a proven concept, nobody was very interested in a surface RT at launch.
The keyboard feature on the surface RT is a fallacy. Yes, you can type on it. I haven't tried it myself but it could very well be a nice keyboard too. However, you need a flat surface to place the kick stand on, so it won't really work on your lap, you need a table. The angle at which you can set the screen with the kick stand is "limited" to put it mildly. You can fiddle a bit and maybe use some objects to change it to your liking, but for any semi-serious laptop-like work, you'd want an adjustable angle, so you can sit and type more or less ergonomically. Having to fiddle with this if you can buy a device that is just as expensive that has a proper laptop form factor, will make the RT not very interesting for people that sort of consumer either.
I don't know about the ergonomics of the Dell devices, but evidently, as a "content consumption device" without a keyboard, they weren't very successful, or Dell wouldn't be stopping the sales. If their devices that come with a keyboard are at least ergonomically viable, they may have a chance the surface RT never had. The OS and licensing are still going to be a challenge, but it may economically viable to make and sell these.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
90% of users, most notably users that are in purchasing positions, are over 95% content users, not creators. The content they create is simple. Tablets are so popular because they offer a simple interface and form factor to consumable content. I see managers type notes on iPads now, send e-mail from them and have everything they need worked out delegated to others. Only secretaries and system admins need something slightly bigger than a tablet in real life. Home users and most office users can get by with just a tablet, even if it's crippling their productivity, they choose the form factor themselves.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It has been cut down just to get the parts "working". But it isn't a complete Office.
With such bargain pricing it's no wonder Dell is in the shitter. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't why people don't like them. 12 hour battery life. Runs office and has most of Windows 8 functionality (notepad, remote desktop, full version of ie etc etc) all in the same form factor as an iPad. Last week I was on a flight from Washington DC to San Francisco. 6 hour flight. Used the planes wifi and worked solid on my RT clearing email in Outlook and programming on a dev box I have in the cloud. When I landed in SF I still had 6 hours battery. Just awesome.
What is slashdots obsession with the surface rt?
You know why, or should know why. It what Microsoft had built to dominate the (hardware) mobile industry using its old monopoly's of Windows Desktop Applications...and Microsoft Office Insurance. Its a locked down (Secure Boot Crap) Microsoft hardware running Windowsish on (Incompatible with X86 Binary) ARM, forcing you to use Microsofts store. Using the Very Unpopular Metro(Instead of a real Desktop...and Without Desktop Applications). Hitting its OEM Abused Wives on the with a backhand of "you're rubbish". Throwing its hostages on the fire with Metro(PC's are on their 5th quarterly drop in PC sales). While the rest of the industry is moving towards Chrome and Android(Its set to eclipse Windows this year)...Dell being the last hangout because of this supposed takeover.
The reality is their is no bigger news. When will be the year of Microsoft Mobile?
I don't think that shipping 14.6M of anything can be called a market collapse, especially when it is happening to a product that is now 11 months old, and widely rumored (and not just in tech rags, but publications like the Wall Street Journal) to be ripe for replacement in two weeks. Which, you'll recall, didn't happen a year ago, since the iPad 3's lifecycle was all of 7 months long.
Yeah, sales are gonna slow down, if measuring year-over-year identical sales. Because they aren't identical sales.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
A keyboardless tablet can work fine for...
- watching netflix
- playing games
- reading your favorite star's latest tweets
- reading e-mail
Yeah, that whole aforementioned 'consumption'. But these devices have long since moved beyond the toy status. The lines of definition for what people thought a computer is now blurred. And now people expect even an Android phone to be a productivity device. And for that, a keyboard is just so essential. Ye olde QWERTY keyboard may be purposely inefficient, but it is faster and more accurate than any on-screen keyboard or voice system. In my own experiments with trying to be productive with an iPad 2, Droid 4 and Acer Iconia W700...I absolutely needed a physical keyboard to type anything out without error.
As for Windows RT, Microsoft has spent too much money to let it natural fail. We will see RT languish on for years and years why Microsoft's profits prop it up. They will offer enough money to bribe devs to write apps for it to keep it going. With Outlook coming to RT 8.1, that will address the business side issues.
Bearded Dragon
I think the worlds "Dell" and "Dump" are going to become more prolific over the next 6 months as this is about all the life this company has left.
I think there is only one way for Dell to survive, scrap their entire product lineup.
Dell is the GM of computers. They have way too many product model lines up that try to cater to different markets and saturate every price point. Like GM, you can't have 15+ product lines and maintain profitability. Something has to go. GM only recovered from their bailout by dropping entire brands and then merging vehicle platforms across the brands to simplify and reduce operating costs. Dell needs to do the same thing.
Dell NEEDS to simplify their Laptop and Desktop lineups. Create 3 models only that have a ultraslim, small or large screen offering. Forget about Inspiron and XPS and Latitude and Vostro and Precision and, etc, etc, etc. Focus on creating 3 model lines and bring back configurability so you can get economy or high-end out of the same model rather than having to move to another product line. Do the same thing for Desktops. Bring back configurability so that I can set up a corporate Peon workstation or a high-end engineering marvel, but don't make my have to pick one of 16 model lines first.
Create a single Tablet offering. I mean sure, these days you need to make 4 screen sizes of the same model available to keep up with the Joneses, but you don't need a convertible laptablet version. Also forget about offering 8 versions of the same tablet that only vary by storage capacity and/or 4G connectivity. Just use a freaking SDXC card slot and let the user decide how to expand their storage. Make 4G an add-on option by slipping in a card into a special slot the way you can with Dell laptops and their add-on cards. And Dell needs to seriously consider going Android.
Ramp up gaming. Gamers are about the last market segment that will still drop more than $1000 on a typical workstation, but the problem is that Alienware is about the shittiest designed products on the market. I have always hated their case designs and I am not twelve anymore so I don't care if the case lights up or has an alien motif. Create a laptop and desktop gaming lineup that brings back state of the art and drop the Alienware shitty design elements. Look at what game console companies are doing, including Steam, and realize that people want a sleek box they can set up in their living room, not some obscene embarrassment of design that is hidden away under their desktop.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I used that OS. It would not run windows software. it would only run windows mobile software.
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a temporary fix is to rename /system/usr/keylayout/Vendor_0a5c_Product_8502.kl
Except /system is read-only. So a user who wants to use a keyboard that he paid for on a device that he paid for would first have to learn how to back up, unlock the bootloader, root, and restore the backup.
or wait 'till the official patch comes out.
I've been waiting since the 4.2 release for a fix that restores the ability to use a a Wii Remote, something that 4.2 broke.
Not shown on that page, but I notice that both MSI and Zoostorm have current, new models on the shelves.
The shelves of which (U.S.) store chain? I tried Walmart, Best Buy, and Staples, and netbooks had disappeared in favor of more expensive tablets and Ultrabook laptops. If I plan to be entering a lot of text on a device whose keyboard isn't replaceable, I prefer to try to make sure that the keyboard it comes with is acceptable before I buy it. Or should I just buy any brand and just eat the return shipping if I don't like it?
Selling the tablet bundled with a keyboard suggests Dell views it as a device for creating content rather than just consuming it, perhaps because Windows RT is designed to provide some "laptop-like" capabilities, Kay said.
Got it? Softkeys on tablets on smartphones are for consuming content, not creating any serious content. For texting, and short emails, softkeys are annoying. Are quality tactile keyboards and keypads antiquated by the hipster consumer crowd? Damn brats.
Maybe it has something to do with Microsoft making fun of keyboard-less tablets these days...
Eh... the CE version of Win32 was so close to that used by 9x or NT that some apps would work after nothing harder than a recompile to ARM. Others took some work, probably some #ifdefs, but there were definitely programs that were on both platforms.
The UI, on the other hand, was pretty desktop-esque. People appear to have universally hated it. As in, usually there's *some* dissenter, somebody who will say "No, I liked it that way"... but I have yet to hear a single person say they like the WinMo UI.
The only other thing that comes to mind for "run desktop apps on a phone" would probably be Maemo... it was simply Debian Linux recompiled for ARM and running a small-touch-screen-targeted window manager. Any Linux software that was available as ARM-compatible source code, or that had ARM binaries for Linux (Flash, at the time, for example), could generally be persuaded to run on that platform; a lot of it was available directly from the package manager.
It still didn't do very well in the marketplace, although many believe that's the fault of Nokia failing to position it correctly and push it hard enough.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Show me where I claimed UEFI has been cracked.
And FYI, Secure Boot is not the same thing as UEFI. If you disagree, take it up with MS.
And lastly, look at the title of TFA I linked. It says, oh "Microsoft ‘Secure Boot’ Cracked".
As I said, not the same OS. And programs wouldn't natively run on both platforms.
That is a required feature. MS does that and they instantly win.
How could android compete? How could iOS? But MS won't do it because they've got their heads wedged up their asses.
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Reading all the comments from people who have tried to use the soft keyboard or have seen it trying to be used, plus people getting aggravated at the dual nature of the operating system GUI (not functioning well as a desktop and not intuitive as a touch interface) it's readily apparent why commercials don't show people actually using the Surface.
But the real point, it's become apparent that the Surface was designed to sell, not to use. It's like a movie made to formula that some people see the first weekend, and then nobody else goes to once the word gets out.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Go read about instruction set architectures, and the differences between ARM (what nearly all phones use) and x86 (what nearly all desktops use), then come back and explain how you intend to fix it. Apologies for assuming you knew what you were talking about before; I didn't mean to talk over your head like that.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
You don't need to use arm on phones. And again... people have gotten windows XP to run on android phones.
So... you apparently don't know as much as you think you know about the subject.
There are ways to build an OS that will work on the phone and can run all the desktop windows programs natively.
These pennyanny half measures are costing MS its place on the mobile market. They can either provide that product and win or refuse and lose.
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