This is a test post made on my new Lenovo ThinkPad 2 using the handwriting recognition of Windows 8. I must admit that it’s pretty scarily good at recognising my scrawl.

You know, I think it is preferable for someone to acknowledge that they don’t know the answer, rather than to either studiously ignore the question, or make something up on the spot.

This has been brought to mind during my hunt for a suitable Windows 8 Tablet.

You may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with the current state of the Windows 8 Tablet market. Well, it’s now six weeks further on, so I’ve been gathering more data points in my search for a suitable tablet to invest in.

My shortlist of tablets came down in the end to

• the Lenovo Thinkpad 2
• the Dell Latitude 10
• the Asus Vivo Tab TF810c
• the HP Envy X2

The Lenovo and the Dell are pure tablets, while the Asus and HP are hybrid convertibles – they can be used as notebooks, but their keyboards completely detach when required. All four supposedly had active digitizers with proper pen support, which was one of my requirements.

I also had an outside candidate, the Microsoft Surface Pro. Outside, because although it uses the more powerful Intel Core i5 CPU, in place of the Intel Atom Z2760 CPU used in the above tablets, this in turn means that it has a shorter battery life, and requires a cooling fan. There’s also a question mark over whether it will be available in the Dutch market.

In the end, I dropped both the HP and the Asus from consideration. The HP, while it supposedly had an active digitizer, the pen was optional, and at the moment is completely unobtainable. In fact, it’s like the mythical unicorn – some people claim to have seen it, but in practice, it’s missing in action. The Asus looks good, and seems to have a decent build quality, but what finally knocked it out of consideration for me is the fact that Asus support is lagging badly. Unlike the other vendors, Asus still do not yet have updated software drivers available for their product, or the Intel Atom chipset. That’s not a good sign in my book.

It was then down to a choice between the Lenovo or the Dell. I liked the fact that the Dell had a replaceable battery, but on the other hand, the prices for the accessories were always higher than for the Lenovo range. So my choice came down to the Lenovo Thinkpad 2.

The problem was, that there was not just the one model in the Thinkpad 2 range, there was a veritable army of them, and it was far from clear as to what precisely the differences might be, or what what be available in the Dutch market.

Lenovo publish documents that detail the models that are available in Western Europe. The first time I looked, last December, there were only a few to choose from. Then, in January, more became available. There seemed to be two series of products: the 3679 series and the 3682 series. From the published information (as of January 2013), that detailed the models as follows:

Type-model	Storage	Tablet Pen	WWAN	NFC	O.S.
3679-23G	64GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3679-24G	64GB	Pen	Yes	None	Win8 Pro32
3679-25G	64GB	Pen	Yes	NFC	Win8 Pro32
3679-2PG	32GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3679-4HG	64GB	No	Yes	None	Win8 32

Type-model	Storage	Tablet Pen	WWAN	NFC	O.S.
3682-28G	64GB	Pen	None	None	Win8 Pro32
3682-29G	64GB	Pen	None	NFC	Win8 Pro32
3682-25G	32GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3682-42G	64GB	No	Yes	None	Win8 Pro32
3682-4FG	64GB	Pen	Yes	NFC	Win8 Pro32

However, when I looked at the sites of the Dutch retailers, I was seeing a completely different series of numbers:

N3S23MH – 64GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S25MH – 64GB, Win 8 Pro (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S4HMH – 64GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S2PMH – 32GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)

Looking at all the sets of numbers, and the prices, then I was fairly sure that the mapping would be:

3679-23G – N3S23MH
3679-24G – ?
3679-25G  – N3S25MH
3679-2PG – N3S2PMH
3679-4HG – N3S4HMH

However, I had no clue as to what the difference was between the 3679 and the 3682 series.

I documented all this in the Lenovo Thinkpad forum, and hoped that someone from Lenovo would pop along to clear up the confusion.

No such luck.

And there it stood until a few days ago when I saw that one of the Dutch retailers (only the one so far) had the N3S25MH model arriving in stock. So, I emailed the retailer to ask whether this model shipped with the digitizer and the pen.

No response.

Yesterday, the model was showing as in stock, so I asked again. I also took a chance and ordered it.

Of course, as soon as my order was accepted, I had a reply from the retailer that (1) this model did not come with a pen, but that (2) I could order a pen part number FRU39T0803. Naturally, this pen was NOT the Thinkpad 2 pen, but something else entirely. 

Clearly, either this salesperson did not have a clue, or my assumption that the N3S25MH model was the 3679-25G model was completely wrong. I might add that a few weeks back, I was reliably informed by another Dutch reseller that the N3S23MH model came with a digitizer and pen (it doesn’t).

Well, the Thinkpad 2 arrived today, and I’m relieved to report that the N3S25MH is exactly the same as the 3679-25G model – it even says this on the box. So it came with the pen, with WWAN and NFC.

It also came with a large sticky label plastered on the back saying NON-ENCRYPTION. I suspect that this is the difference between the 3679 series and the 3682 series. The latter has the TPM hardware fitted and enabled, while the former does not.

It is a bit frustrating that we have to figure all this out by ourselves. Lenovo don’t make it clear, and their resellers, judging from my experience of the Dutch resellers, don’t have a clue.

I admit that I am getting fed up with two things.

• The constant drip-drip of people complaining about Windows 8, and how it is a disaster of epic proportions.
• Microsoft’s seeming inability to market Windows 8 as something that really is a step change for the better.

So it gives me some pleasure to be able to claim that someone, somewhere in Microsoft knows how to do proper marketing. Enter the (small) demonstrator.

I really like the punchline at the end. It punctures prejudices on a number of levels.

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.