My Surface for Windows RT Review

Lucifurr said:
I wouldn't be surprised if you had a visit from the courier tomorrow delivering your Surface.

My order is still processing, yet my surface is here.
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Looks like you were right! Quite pleased so far although having to sign in the first time to every single app is a tad annoying, they should have made it easy to add one set of credentials out of the box at least for Microsoft apps.
 
DeathStorm said:
Looks like you were right! Quite pleased so far although having to sign in the first time to every single app is a tad annoying, they should have made it easy to add one set of credentials out of the box at least for Microsoft apps.
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If you log in (to Windows) with a Microsoft account you shouldn't have to sign in on a per-app basis.
 
Whats the CPU in yours? Is it Tegra 3?

I think these things need A15 class hardware after reading the Anandtech review.
 
Spit said:
Whats the CPU in yours? Is it Tegra 3?

I think these things need A15 class hardware after reading the Anandtech review.
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It doesn't feel slow but neither does it fly through everything (shame it can't load web pages faster), so far I'm glad I picked one up but there's a ton more work Microsoft needs to do.

Should keep things interesting while they get on with it.
 
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I'm definitely eager to see how the Pro version holds up, I would have been much more tempted by the surface if it used a much better CPU.
 
One thing that's annoying me as both a skype and live messenger user. It merged my skype and windows live account (which is fine in itself) However now when I get a windows live message I get two notifications for the same message! One from skype and one from messaging.

This is slightly annoying so I have requested my skype and windows live account be un-merged.

EDIT Seems I'm not the only one. http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-8/Annoying-Duplicate-notifications-on-Windows-8/td-p/1156828
 
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Just a quick note to say I've been doing more testing today with HDMI output, and also Micro SD cards. I expect to have part two up by Sunday night (give or take) and a couple of additions to the hardware side of things (battery life for example)

Cheers for the positive feedback so far. :)
 
ruffneck said:
One thing that's annoying me as both a skype and live messenger user. It merged my skype and windows live account (which is fine in itself) However now when I get a windows live message I get two notifications for the same message! One from skype and one from messaging.

This is slightly annoying so I have requested my skype and windows live account be un-merged.

EDIT Seems I'm not the only one. http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-8/Annoying-Duplicate-notifications-on-Windows-8/td-p/1156828
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I have the same problem on my desktop using Win 8 Pro. I ended up uninstalling Skype. Not a massive user anyway.
 
What I really want to know is how good Office is. If productivity software on android was any good my asus transformer would get way more use.
 
Skidder said:
What I really want to know is how good Office is. If productivity software on android was any good my asus transformer would get way more use.
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Do you like how Word and Excel work on Windows? You'll probably like how they work on RT then. I'm not a huge fan of Office so I prefer to use it as little as possible but it feels the same as if I were working on a desktop machine. Right now the touch keyboard is fine for taking notes but if I were trying to write a really long document I'd want a full sized keyboard (I don't consider that a weakness of Surface, I'd want the same on any device).

The processor in the Surface doesn't lend itself well to firing up programs the first time (although Word/Excel seem to launch pretty quickly) but once you're there multitasking is a surprisingly smooth experience from the little I've tested.
 
As said, Office is pretty much the same as the desktop version. Unless you rely on any particular macros or add-ins that is. The only other thing worth mentioning is that it's a non commercial license.

I'm not going to have time to update the review tonight like I wanted, but I'll bump it when I do.
 
can you advise,if 1080p videos on youtube play smooth ?
as you said speakers are loud so thats good. if it plays smooth then I could get it for my other half as she spends most of the time listening to youtube and watching videos and other time on www and facebook ;)
 
bastic said:
can you advise,if 1080p videos on youtube play smooth ?
as you said speakers are loud so thats good. if it plays smooth then I could get it for my other half as she spends most of the time listening to youtube and watching videos and other time on www and facebook ;)
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Video plays fine on YouTube. The only time I really notice Surface isn't an amazing performer is when starting up new tasks:

Start a new video in YouTube, while the animations occur around it (i.e. the menu which controls quality, full screen etc) there might be a few dropped frames but it plays back flawlessly afterwards.

Open Xbox music, wait for it to log in, wait for it to queue up the last song and then play, this actually takes quite a while but it works OK after that.

The most glaring one so far is audio stutters when the screen is switched off, it shows you just how rubbish the reviews are on a lot of the big gadget sites they miss these kind of basic details.

Now presumably the audio stuttering is just down to how Xbox music is written and will hopefully be fixed when they update apps (there's plenty of other small bugs which need fixing anyway). Given that apps are small self contained pieces of software I was hoping Microsoft would be more prolific in how quickly they update them.
 
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