Back in March, I wrote a post called “Microsoft’s Marmite”, which likened the reactions of people to Marmite to their reactions to Windows 8 – they either love it or hate it.

Now that Windows 8 has been released, I continue to be amazed at the amount of vitriol being poured upon it. I really can’t see what all the fuss is about. Yes, there are some radical changes in the user interface, but I certainly don’t find them a problem at all.

In that light, I was somewhat amused to read Jakob Nielsen’s condemnation of the design of Windows 8. After all, he’s the design guru who jointly set up the Nielsen Norman Group along with Don Norman, another design guru, who has written:

Windows 8 is brilliant, and its principles have been extended to phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop machines (and larger — for example, Surface), whether operated by gesture, mouse and keyboard, or stylus, but with appropriately changed interaction styles for the different sizes of devices and different input devices.

(note: the Surface device that Norman refers to is Microsoft’s table top device, now renamed as Microsoft PixelSense – he wrote this piece before Microsoft announced their Surface tablets)

As well as being amused, I confess to also being more than a little irritated by Nielsen’s review, because it seemed to me that he was often deliberately misrepresenting what Windows 8 is, and how it behaves in practice.

For example, he writes:

“Windows” no longer supports multiple windows on the screen. Win8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test users were able to make this work. Also, the main UI restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed “Microsoft Window.”

Er, sorry, the Windows desktop is just as it always has been, supporting multiple overlapping windows. The Modern UI view, designed for tablets and similar devices, does indeed show only two Modern UI apps simultaneously, but the traditional desktop hasn’t gone away, it’s still there. I find it hilarious that Nielsen states that “none of our test users were able to make this [the Modern UI view] work”, when he has just proudly stated

we invited 12 experienced PC users to test Windows 8 on both regular computers and Microsoft’s new Surface RT tablets

“Experienced”? They don’t seem particularly savvy to me. I cottoned on to this facility very early on, and use it to share my Desktop with Modern UI Apps.

The other example that I’ll give where it seems to me that Nielsen is not playing fair is the section where he claims that Windows 8’s “Flat style Reduces Discoverability”. He uses the example of the Settings Charm to illustrate this:

I find it odd that none of his “experienced PC users” noticed that as they moused over the icons and text in this panel, they would be highlighted to indicate that they were buttons, e.g.:

   or  

Frankly, I think Mr. Nielsen has not done a very good job in reviewing Windows 8 here. Scott Barnes also thinks that, and goes into far more detail. His critique of the Nielsen review is worth reading.

It’s now a little over two weeks since Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system and the Surface tablet running Windows RT were released and I’ve been following the many reactions to the products that have been published in blogs, articles, and forums around the web.

I’ll write about Windows 8 in another post; here I want to consider some of the reactions to the Surface with Windows RT (I’m just going to refer to it as the “Surface RT” from now on…). I should say at the outset that I don’t own one, and for reasons that I hope will become clear, I doubt whether I would want to.

It seems as though most reviewers give high marks to the hardware design, fit and finish of the Surface RT. There are some niggles, e.g. the magnetic power connector doesn’t always make proper contact for charging, and as time goes on, other issues may start arising, which will require some corrective action by Microsoft in the design. For example, reports are emerging that may point to a weakness in the keyboard/cover design – however, it appears that only two people have experienced this issue so far. In general, the Surface RT and its keyboard/cover get high marks.

The hardware, of course, is only half the story. It’s the combination of the hardware and the Windows RT operating system that form the experience that the user has with the device. And it’s there that my doubts start to creep in. My starting point is that I have no interest in getting an Apple iPad – it’s too limited a device for me. Microsoft’s marketing positions the Surface RT as a device that can do more (“See more, share more, and do more with Surface”). For some people, that is undoubtedly true, but that is not the case for everyone. For example, Peter Bright, whose reviews of Microsoft products I trust, has discovered, I think to his dismay, that the Surface RT falls far short of what he is looking for in a tablet device. Mind you, he sets the bar pretty high, and it’s clear that an iPad also wouldn’t meet it. The deal breaker, for him, was that he relies on Outlook. While the Surface comes with some stripped-down components of Microsoft’s Office suite, it does not include Outlook. He summarised his opinion of the Surface thus:

Surface is meant to be something more than a plain iPad-like tablet. For me, it failed to be enough more, leaving it in limbo; it’s not good enough to take on laptops, and it’s not good enough to take on iPad. It falls short of both goals.

It seems to me that the Achilles heel of the Surface RT is the Windows RT operating system. It may look like Windows 8, but under the covers, it runs on completely different hardware. Simply put, that means that it can’t run the millions of Windows applications that are available. At this point, it can only run the 10,000+ applications that have been written for the Modern UI environment of Windows 8.

Here’s a few practical examples of why I won’t be buying a Surface RT:

• It doesn’t have GPS built-in. Now, I can add GPS capability to any Windows Notebook or a Tablet that has Bluetooth using my Qstarz GPS logger. However, even though the Surface has Bluetooth, I won’t be able to add the software driver for the GPS logger to the Surface, so no GPS for me.
• It doesn’t have an active stylus (unlike the Surface Pro), only a capacitive stylus. I write, as I always have done, by resting my wrist, or lower arm, on the writing surface. With an active stylus, the tablet is able to distinguish between the tip of the stylus, and my wrist that is resting on the tablet’s screen. I don’t think the Surface RT can do this very effectively, so I would have to write in what to me is an unnatural fashion (or wear a glove!). Handwriting recognition is built-into Windows RT as it is in Windows 8, but I suspect that it won’t be as fast on the RT platform as it is on the Surface Pro.
• There may be 10,000+ applications available for the Surface RT, but the quality of the majority is abysmal. I am still finding that I am working in the Desktop mode of Windows 8, with desktop applications, for most of the time. This blog post itself is being written using Microsoft’s own Windows Live Writer, which doesn’t run on Surface RT.

When Microsoft releases the second model in their Surface range, the Surface Pro, the situation may change. The Surface Pro will run all my Windows applications, and it uses Intel hardware. However, as I’ve written before, it uses an older generation of Intel hardware, which means that the Surface Pro requires a cooling fan. I suspect I’ll end up waiting for the new generation of Intel processors to start appearing – then fanless tablets will be available.

Update: Here’s another review of the Surface RT, this one being very positive. I can fully understand why, the Surface RT delivers on the requirements of this particular user. Unfortunately, it seems to me that my requirements exceed the current capabilities of the Surface RT.

Pardon the pun in the title, but I was reading a blog post by Barb Bowman, and I wanted to comment on it. Since her blog is closed for comments, I thought I’d make them here.

You see, Barb has just purchased a Surface RT tablet, and she’s hoping that it will be easier to make posts to her blog, using the Surface RT and Word 2013, than from her iPad. According to her, using her iPad and the Blogsy App is “inelegant”.

I have the feeling that trying to use Word 2013 to do blogging is equally inelegant. It may be a fine Word Processor, but an elegant tool for writing blog posts, it is not.

Microsoft already has a very fine tool for blogging: Windows Live Writer – and it’s free. It works with a wide range of blogging platforms (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and others) and works with your blog’s layout and themes. I use it for my blog.

Word 2013, by comparison, is like trying to use a rock to paint the Mona Lisa.

The trouble is, the Surface RT won’t run Windows Live Writer – it’s a traditional Windows application and these don’t work on the Windows RT operating system. Oops.

Microsoft does provide a version of Word 2013 that runs on the Surface RT, but quite frankly, I think Barb would be better off using the WordPress App that she can get for free from the Windows 8 Store.

Reviews of Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet are now springing up like mushrooms in the tech and mainstream media. As was the case for reviews of the Windows 8 operating system, most of them can be quickly dismissed.

However, two are worth reading in full. Once again, Peter Bright turns in a considered review, and the other is from Anand Lai Shimpi.

For me, the interesting point was that Anand compared the performance of the Surface RT (which uses ARM hardware) with that of a Windows 8 tablet running the next generation of Intel’s Atom (codenamed Clovertrail), which is aiming to be as low power as the ARM hardware. The money quote:

On the user experience side alone, the Clovertrail tablet is noticeably quicker than Surface. Surface isn’t slow by any means, but had it used Atom hardware it would’ve been even more responsive.

The other clear advantage of a Windows 8 tablet powered by the Atom is of course the fact that it can run all your traditional Windows desktop applications and software drivers. The Surface RT can’t.

I still find it strange that Microsoft’s Surface Pro has elected to use the older, more power-hungry, Intel Core i5 processor. As a result, the Surface Pro needs to have fan cooling. I really would have been interested in a Surface that used the new Atom processor. Perhaps that will arrive in 2013.

With just over a week to go to the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has revealed the pricing on the first in its range of tablets, the Surface RT.

The price starts at $499 for a bare-bones Surface RT tablet with 32GB of storage and 2GB memory, but without a touch keyboard/cover. That puts it on a par with Apple’s iPad, or to put it another way: not cheap, but premium-priced.

The Surface RT is now available for pre-order in eight countries. Inevitably, this does not include the Netherlands, and there’s no word on whether availability here will come later, or, indeed, ever.

The announcement also revealed a little more detail about the specifications of the Surface RT and the Surface Pro models. There’s also a comparison chart.

While both models have sensors (ambient light, accelerometer, gyroscope and compass) built in, neither model has a GPS sensor. This strikes me as a rather surprising omission, particularly since some iPad models have GPS. Using Bing maps on the Surface would seem to be a very limited experience if the Surface has no means of discovering your location. I suppose that, with the Surface Pro, I could always use my GPS Logger connected via Bluetooth. I could install the Windows driver for the logger onto a Surface Pro; something that I don’t think can be done with the Surface RT. Still, on further reflection, this lack of GPS capability may not be a showstopper. I rather think that 3G and GPS capabilities go together in the chipsets, and since neither of the Surface models come with 3G built-in, then GPS is also missing. And as for the Bing maps experience, perhaps the Surfaces can do Wi-Fi positioning to provide location coordinates. We shall see.

One other thing I notice in the specs for the Surface Pro (which will be available “soon”) is that it lists the CPU as “3rd generation Intel Core i5 Processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000”. That also is a bit odd: using a Core i5 processor, rather than the next generation Intel Atom processor, the Z2760, codenamed Clover Trail. The selling point of the Atom Z2760 is that it is able to take advantage of the new “Connected Standby” capability in Windows 8, which allows longer usage time between battery charging. While the Surface RT, like all ARM-based devices will be able to exploit Connected Standby, Microsoft’s Intel-based tablet, the Surface Pro, will not, because it uses the Intel Core i5. Other manufacturers will have Atom Z2760-based tablets on the market as early as next week, e.g. Samsung, with its Series 5 Slate.

I think I’ll wait and see how the tablet market develops. In the meantime, my desktop will get upgraded to Windows 8 next week.

Update: it’s clear that many people are totally confused about the differences between the Windows 8 operating system (used on the Surface Pro), and the Windows RT operating system (used on the Surface RT). For example, I saw a question on a photography forum where someone asked if the Surface RT would be powerful enough to run Adobe Lightroom.

Many people assume that Windows RT will run traditional Windows applications. Nope, it can’t; not unless the application developer recompiles the software code for the different hardware (ARM instead of Intel/AMD). In addition, this recompilation is not always possible, because the Windows programming environment for the ARM hardware is a subset of what is available for the Intel/AMD platform.

We will see next week just what the limitations are in detail. For example, one question I have is whether the Surface RT will have the same level of handwriting recognition that Windows 8 has. I suspect that it won’t.

Update 2: AnandTech has a comprehensive review of the Surface RT that is worth reading. I particularly like the fact that Anand compares the performance of the Surface RT with an unnamed (but shortly to be released) Windows 8 Tablet that uses the Atom Z2760. It’s interesting that the Atom out-performs the ARM-based Surface RT. Plus, of course, the Atom will run all the traditional Windows desktop application software and the Surface RT can’t.