Yeah, because no one else makes ridiculous marketing videos.



Yeah, I'm sure they needed to save that much money to offset the cost (not). Edit: It was far more likely to me that the OS was so under-performing that it couldn't push pixels fast enough for a 2560x1440 screen or whatever it'd be.



Yes, make it a huge problem so you have something to stand on. The thing isn't going to fry, it just has to be placed carefully to connect. Sort of like how micro-usb does on every phone on the planet. I'm not going to use conjecture to assume that because the connector doesn't immediately snap like a magsafe that the whole device is broken. You do, because that's the only point I've conceded for you.



You just stated explicitly what I was implying. They needed to optimize the desktop out of Windows, and they didn't. That's not the Surface hardware's fault, that's the software engineer's team for thinking it'd be possible. I explained why I made this distinction already in the final big paragraph of my previous post, so I'm not going to do it again.



Because I like to compare it to other devices, not some imaginary perfect world where this doesn't happen to everything.



Did they follow up with "for this reason I can't recommend a Surface tablet"? No, of course not (I read that review). The bullet point on every major review I've read has been Windows RT/8.

It's been there for a long time, along with keyboard support, but I think many ROMs disable or don't provide the mouse settings.

Well, to be fair the alternative use cases presented by Microsoft are to fling the Surface around by the touch cover and snap the kickstand open and closed in order to make music so I guess I'll concede this point. The covers are still useless for a bus ride though.

lol, what? No. Windows uses hardware compositing. The same data gets pushed to the video card regardless of the screen resolution. If there's a performance problem driving a higher-resolution screen, the hardware is absolutely the bottleneck.

I'm not assuming the hardware is broken, I'm stating that the hardware was not adequately tested. Lots of inadequately tested things work fine.

Because you are desperate to blame Windows for the performance problems, you refuse to accept that it was the hardware designer's job to choose adequate hardware in the first place. cf. thinking that Windows 8 can't "push enough pixels" to support a higher display resolution.

Oleophobic and hydrophobic plastics and plastic coatings have been available for many, many years. The keyboard in your Dell, Lenovo or Apple laptop is oleophobic. The keyboard included with the Surface is not.

No, but it was brought up as a design problem. And yes, some people do change SD cards frequently. Photographers for example. If professional photography isn't one of the top 10 workflows they analyzed when they were designing the Surface, they are incompetent.

Right, there's absolutely no performance impact from doubling the resolution. None at all. Come on, Jon`C, you know very well that's not true. I hate to use the iPad again as an example, but it is one.



I'm going to fix this for you. "It was a Steve Sinofsky decision". There doesn't exist portable ARM hardware adequate enough to run Windows RT, so the only other option would have been to just release the x86 edition. Clearly that's not what they wanted to do with Windows, they wanted to jump on the ARM bandwagon, not just for Surface, but for third party tablet devices as well. I'm betting high amounts of monopoly money that the decision for Windows RT happened long before the ARM Surface tablet was created.

They weren't making hardware to run specific software, they were making software to run on that hardware. Or trying to, anyway.



If that's even true, I sure don't see much difference. My Macbook has plenty of fingerprints, even from my very clean fingers. In fact, out of everything I've used (iPad screen, Macbook, regular PC hardware, etc), I think only my new EVO's screen coating has been able to actually keep fingerprints off. I've had to wipe down my iPad numerous times, despite the coatings.



Even photographers aren't switching out SD cards every couple minutes. Besides, you don't need a screwdriver to open the kickstand. You snap it out, and pull. Probably takes more time to actually get Windows to safely eject the thing than it does to remove it.

For what workflow, exactly? Uploading your photos to SkyDrive? Because that's all you could really do on the Surface. Even if there were a metro photo manipulation app that was somehow astoundingly good, it would be an extremely hard sell to photographers that are probably dead set on getting a Macbook anyway. Worse case scenario someone uses a USB cable. Every device has compromise on some level, and this one seems pretty reasonable to me (especially when many other tablets don't have an SD card slot at all). This may be a valid design criticism but it's definitely a nitpick. If we're gonna talk about whether Microsoft dun-****ed-up something like performance problems is a way bigger issue. In other words, I can't believe you guys are talking this much about the SD card slot.

I really don't get what's so hard about flipping out the kickstand and popping a micro SD card into the slot. It's braindead easy and takes no time at all. Considering some devices go as far as putting micro SD slots behind the battery, I really don't see what the fuss is about.

I already tried that one, apparently it's not common enough sense

Nice strawman.

You're the one who suggested that Surface has a low-resolution screen because "the OS was so under-performing that it couldn't push pixels fast enough". The fact is, software has nothing to do with it. Hardware rendering is done using a message passing protocol with DMA. The video card is given textures, vertices, and a set of instructions for what to do. A change in resolution does not change the size of the data or the number of instructions that need to be sent. The reason the iPad is slower at higher resolutions is because the graphics hardware isn't fast enough, not because iOS is badly designed.

Software doesn't "push pixels" anymore, hardware does. Thus, what I said in my last post: "If there's a performance problem driving a higher-resolution screen, the hardware is absolutely the bottleneck."

Surface is using a year-old Cortex-A9 SoC, the Tegra 3 T30. The T33 would have given them a ~20% performance boost, or ~40% if they switched to a Cortex-A15. They absolutely could have chosen better hardware.

No, their priority was definitely to create a vehicle for their existing software. The whole point of the Surface is to show the world that bad OEM design is all that's holding Windows back. They started with Windows, a software product that already existed, and their mission was to select and design hardware that could run that software.

Oleophobic coatings mean skin oil doesn't bond to the surface. This is why you are able to wipe down your iPad to get rid of fingerprints, instead of having to use soap and water.

Re: SD card slot. I already said that the only reason I brought it up is because it was stated as a negative in a review. Obviously whoever wrote the review thought it was enough of a negative to draw attention to it. Maybe you should ask them why they thought it was a bad thing, instead of dismissing the criticism?

On Surface Pro you could run real Photoshop. But yeah, you're right... Microsoft has never met a market they didn't want to cede.

I have to say, when you all were first talking about a Microsoft Surface, I thought you all were referencing the multi-touch-table thing that was demonstrated back in 2007 I think, and I was thinking "Are us normal people finally getting the chance to buy those?" I got excited because I thought the idea of gaming in the tabletop, pencil & paper RPG, board and card games realm was finally pushing through. It seems to be just their own tablet brand though now. Oh well, guess I'll have to wait some years yet still.

It wasn't. You literally said that if there's a performance issue, it's the hardware. Which can only mean it isn't software (in your opinion), which you even add to later. That's not a strawman.



So you're literally telling me poor instructions given by the OS to the GPU would not be amplified at higher resolutions? Somehow this seems implausible. Under this assumption, there would never, ever be performance improvements in this area, which is dead wrong. There HAVE been performance improvements in the OS before, where the drivers nor the hardware itself were the culprit.



The T33 is only a slight MHz jump over the T30 (so 20% is hardly realistic, except maybe in raw benchmark numbers), and the A15-based Tegra 4 doesn't arrive till 2013. If they even had used the absolutely fastest CPU possible, it's not like it would have resolved all the software problems.



But by your own admission there's no way that would happen. So how is that the hardware engineer's fault? Is it his fault because he didn't resign from his job/get fired for telling Steve Sinofsky that it was a dumb idea? No, they did about as good as they could be expected, under the circumstances. It's a fine piece of hardware. It was just given the wrong software.



I don't use soap and water regardless of coating. Seems to me the only real point is to make it less built up on screens, because it sure as hell doesn't matter on a cover. Or a keyboard. Or anything else they throw the coating on. But maybe I've been spoiled by an actual good coating?

I just want to get a confirmation that you can indeed turn that crap off. Can't you?

" A [/B]straw man, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[SUP][3][/SUP] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[SUP][3][/SUP][SUP][4]"[/SUP]

My position: "The same data gets pushed to the video card regardless of the screen resolution. If there's a performance problem driving a higher-resolution screen, the hardware is absolutely the bottleneck."

Your strawman: "Right, there's absolutely no performance impact from doubling the resolution. None at all."
Attacking the strawman: "Come on, Jon`C, you know very well that's not true. I hate to use the iPad again as an example, but it is one."

This is practically a textbook example.

No, they wouldn't. Does it take me more work to tell you to draw a square on a postage stamp, or to draw a square on a roll of package paper? No. I just tell you to draw a square on something.

The instructions to render the iPad home screen at 2048x1536 are exactly the same as the ones used to render at 1024x768. The reason it's slower is because the per-pixel performance of the retina iPad is lower than the per-pixel performance of the original one.

Graphics throughput on the same video card is approximately linear in the size of the output, and that's already as good as you can do. What you're seeing is a constant-time performance improvement (i.e. independent of the output resolution). In other words, yes, it is an optimization, but screen resolution has nothing to do with it.

That was back of the envelope. From what I've seen, the Surface isn't really slow, but it chugs and stutters. I'm guessing that one of the biggest bottlenecks is memory bandwidth so I weighted it higher.

I don't disagree with this, but it was never intended to get the "right" software (i.e. Windows CE or Android). An impossible hardware design goal is a good excuse for fumbling, but it doesn't change the fact that they missed their goal.

You shouldn't use soap or other cleaners, because it can damage the coating.

The point of the coating is to make it easier to clean devices that are handled frequently. So either you don't clean your stuff, or you just haven't noticed because everything you use is working as intended. I can't remember what review had the photos, but the reviewer basically described the Touch Cover as uncleanable.

No, you can't.

If you could turn Metro off, I don't think anyone would have even complained about it. (Except over the fact that it wasn't defaulted to disabled)

Note that when we say it can't be turned off, we mean even with registry hacks.

Now I wonder if installing an alternate shell would disable Metro, or if it would just change how the desktop would look.

Probably crash the system, knowing Microsoft.

Thank you Jon'C. I was toying with installing Windows 8, but now I shall not.

Also, I was under the impression that this current Surface tablet was supposed to suck dick anyways, since you couldn't run Windows apps on it. You are basically pinned to the Windows App store, which is horrid compared to the Android/Apple store. I just can't imagine why anyone would want to buy this current tablet. And from the reviews, it does seem like performance (after the app thing) is the main sticking point with the device.

I'm more interested to see the full-on Surface tablet later on, but if the suckiness of Windows 8 is any indication, things aren't looking good.

More news from the Redmond laugh factory:

It turns out that the reason the Windows Store has so few RT apps is because of a buggy and highly-restrictive automated approval process. The Windows Store - not to be confused with the Microsoft store - runs a suite of automated tests on every app, on a variety of machines. One of those tests is for startup load time. In order to be approved every app must be able to open from a cold start, on an outdated and resource-constrained machine, in less than 2 seconds.

There isn't a single Microsoft app that can do this. Not even the weather app.

Also, the new Minesweeper has unskippable full-screen video ads.

Reminder that Windows 8 usually has the time to display a full loading screen for every app, with a spinning ball animation.

On iOS they use a screenshot of the last state of the application to cover up the split-second flicker while the app loads.

I'd like the performance benefits of Windows 8, but I really don't want to use an interface designed for a touch screen device with a mouse.

Thought this little anecdote was interesting. Seems like a Microsoft Store must be one of the most horrid places to visit ever with so many staffers and so little consumers.

http://www.marco.org/2012/10/26/an-alternate-universe

well it looks like there are third party options to hide/disable all the stupid crap (metro, hot corners) and go straight to desktop complete with start button...

if only i could score a copy of windows 7 for the same price as 8 i'd just say screw 8 all together but i am on vista and to upgrade to 7 (legally...) is ridiculously expensive

To be fair, Microsoft has released a software update for Word that makes it faster. But... that's the version of Word that comes with the computer, and the only version of Word that 90% of people are going to see before going back to the Microsoft Store to ask for a refund.

Wow...just....wow. That is inexcusable

what was wrong with windows 7 for real

It wasn't modern (in the way a marketer would use the word modern).

It doesn't matter that major changes mean that businesses will either have to upgrade, and spend lots of time and money on retraining (and possibly still loose efficiency until multitasking and multiscreen support get better if the company has relied on those features), or pass on it, thereby costing Microsoft sales.

Not to mention government organizations wont be able to upgrade for quite a while, because many of them would be using software that expects certain features (e.g. front end interaction based around IE 6), and rewriting the software and workplace procedures will take quite a bit of time, and a major OS release relies on getting money from the major clients, and this delay could make it seem like the OS is failing, rather than it just having been released early. (note, government clients can't rely on prerelease versions, meaning that if an OS makes to many dramatic changes, there is very little they can do to start the switchover prior to release other than ordering in the copies for those who will be involved in writing the retraining procedures)

Are you constantly scouring the Internet for articles/videos that paint the Surface in a horrible light? That guy's experience is nothing like what I've seen. No idea what's happened to his unit, because it doesn't take that long to boot, the mail app doesn't take nearly that long to start, and when he clicks add account there should be a list of various account types to choose, so clearly something is screwed up somewhere. That is not the normal experience.

Not the normal experience? Here, I took a screenshot of the "gradient" on my desktop computer:



The mail app is broken.

*shrug* Like I said, not what I've experienced at all. Perhaps the version of Mail before the last update did that, or it happens to everyone but me and the other people I know who've used it without issue, but it's not what I've experienced at all. And I've definitely not experienced any of the performance issues on the scale that guy's seen, so if his unit is in fact patched to all of the current versions of the software, I can only assume his must be defective or something, because neither myself nor the other people I know who have gotten one have had any sort of experience nearly that bad with ours..

One of the first things I did with this PC was uninstall most of the bundled apps. What you're looking at is a repro of the issue with the latest version from the app store. Note that this happens when I use a Microsoft account I opened with an e-mail on my own domain. When I log in using embarrassing high school webmail account, it works fine.

By the way, "scouring the internet" makes it sound like it takes a lot of time to find problems with Windows 8. I promise you that it doesn't.

If that's the issue, then that would explain why most people wouldn't be seeing it, since I imagine most Passport/Live/Whatever accounts are based on Hotmail or Gmail accounts. MS has always had issues with accounts created off of personal domains it seems, so I can't say I'm shocked if that's the cause. Still doesn't explain why his Surface took so long to boot, why the Mail app took so long to start, and why Word was performing so slowly for him. It's almost as if the processor in his Surface is throttling itself. That behavior is definitely not normal.

here's the million dollar question

should i get windows 8

the facts to remember... my computer has Vista, to upgrade to 8 i'll only have to spend $40, to upgrade to 7 i would have to spend $200 (i'd prefer to keep things legal with my OS)

i did some quick fiddling about with the windows 8 laptops at work... i have a few questions after getting some rather brief experience with 8

is there any easy way to get to the old settings dialogs with some REAL options or is all that stuff too well hidden? all i saw in the few minutes of messing around was some settings menu that made me think of a phone or tablet (even had an option labeled "airplane mode")

has anyone here had any experience with the various options that bring back the start button?

Same guy as before. Fun fact: SkyDrive is the project that Steve Sinofsky stole from Ray Ozzie. Because Steve Sinofsky thought that he could do it better.

Nobody here can tell you if you will find Windows 8 better than Windows Vista. If I had to choose, I'm not even sure what I'd do. Windows 8 has better app performance, but Windows Vista is a much less frustrating and inconsistent user experience.

Yes and no.

The settings are now split roughly 50/50 between the desktop control panel and the new Metro settings app. So what I'd suggest is that you suffer through the Metro control panel, and then be delighted when it unpredictably chooses to fart you out onto the desktop after you click on something.

Windows 8?! But I already have Windows 95!!

Wow, I gotta side with the Win8 haters. And not just the UI.

I decided to install it onto my souped up netbook first as an experiment. Since it's not my primary PC, I figured I would create a new Microsoft account for things like Skydrive/Store/ect rather than use an existing account.

So I signed up to a new Microsoft account using my gmail address. It needs to do a verification that I actaully own that email address, no prob. It sends the email. When I log into gmail and click the Verify Email address, I'm taken to page that says

"Incorrect email address

The Microsoft Account that you signed in with is not the email address that needs verification. To verify the correct email address, follow the instructions in your verification email message, and then sign in with the email address referenced in that message."

I resent the verification email a few times but got tired that loop real quick. So I used my MS Hotmail account and of course it all worked fine.

Tried to reproduce that issue and couldn't. If you look, he goes from the Documents folder in Skydrive back to his root Skydrive folder, then tries to go up one more level, which he shouldn't be able to do. That's obviously why he got stuck in password hell. He's still running the Preview version, so my guess is that's fixed in the current version, because I've tried to do that same thing and once I'm in my root Skydrive folder, it will not let me go back any further. I can click on it all day long and it will never try to go back to that level.

Ya know, I thought 8 just looked janky. Now I'm convinced it is.

Heh, I wish I had started playing with Windows 8 before now.

Again I probably should have done a clean install instead of upgrade, but when I try to delete the folder 'C:\Windows.old', it prompts:

'You will need to provide Administrator permission to delete this folder'.

I answer 'Continue' and then after scanning all the files it's going to delete it prompts again with:

'You need permission to perform this action.

You require permission from SYSTEM to make changes to this folder.

Try Again, Skip, Cancel'

Try again doesnt magically work. There is only 1 account on that laptop and it has admin rights. Time to google for some solutions, or if I get desperate I'll boot Linux off a usb drive and delete the folder.

Also I'm guessing I can turn off the notifications for 'There is a newer application for this filetype' everytime I open a JPG on the desktop. Time to hunt that setting down too.

Disk Cleanup should have an option to remove the old copy actually.