About to be assimilated..... Any last comments???

frank freedman

Well after months of looking at various tablets, considering my own convenience and compatibility with to many things I do on a daily basis, not the least of which is runnning like crazy in full on FE mode as an in-house imaging specialist who would rather have full compatibility with the service management software, I may be on the verge of being assimilated by M$. Having used a BLackberry 64GB Playbook, I am very spoiled (less now that their fixes and updates are trashing the performance I originally had experienced) by its ease of use and other things. But the compatibility for what I do in the daytime, most of which works well on the BBPB, is not there on some very critical areas and only work well from a PC and IE (web interface to the service software). If not for that, I would either stand with what I have or go to the google nexus 10. The small format of the BBPB is great, but the eyes are beginning to age out and glasses on tiny type PDFs don't always get it either. Guess I am getting tired of dealing with "we don't have support for that yet (if ever)" as well. Just need to getr done, without hassles. All about my own convenience work or home, 24/7 ......

All that said, has anyone had any experience with the Surface 8 pro? Not even going to bother with the RT, just go straight to pro probably next week sometime. Please no rants or flames, been there, got the scorched asbestos undies to show for it. Looking for your experiences, good, bad, or indifferent. Preferrably first or at worst second person experiences.

Thanks for any responses.

FF

Oh, if you have used it, does proptools or BST work from it?

Mike Green

I haven't used the Surface 8 Pro, but I do have a netbook with Windows 8 installed and the Propeller Tool seems to work fine on it. I don't care for the user interface, but it works and the performance with the wimpy netbook is poor but adequate. I haven't tried BST on it. The Surface 8 Pro should be similar or better.

JordanCClark

I've been running Win8 on my Asus Slate for about four months now with no issues. The Metro interface is good if you've got touch. If you don't, installing Classic Shell will give a Start Menu back to you on the Desktop. It gives you a choice on whether to boot direct to the desktop instead of the Metro UI, and you can even use it as an "XP" shell, so you can have folders in the Start Menu again (I installed it to my Win7 desktop machine to get that functionality back).

Actually, It's a good add-on, even for touch-enabled devices. Sometimes a menu is just nice to have...

I had looked hard at the Surface, but got such a good deal on the Asus that I had to go that direction

Heater.

frank freedman,

Please no rants or flames, been there...

OK.

Bytes lip very hard...

Ale

That or a powerful android tablet is probably the best way to go. You would not like the iThings because at some point you want to use them to create something and that is where they fail short .

jazzed

JordanCClark wrote: »

If you don't, installing Classic Shell will give a Start Menu back to you on the Desktop.

Thanks for mentioning that ! Here I was thinking ... oh never mind.

mindrobots

Ale wrote: »

That or a powerful android tablet is probably the best way to go. You would not like the iThings because at some point you want to use them to create something and that is where they fail short .

I'm currently unassimilating from the iPad camp for that reason. I love my iPad dearly but am being limited by some things I want to try. I'm off to Android land (I couldn't take a M$ bullet for the team!) to see what life is like over there. I bought a Samsung Tab 2 to play with just the other day.

Is it ranting or flaming to state that the Surface ads on television are possible the most annoying I've seen in a while? What's with all the pent up anger in these people using Surface tablets??? Oh, never mind.....

@Ale, I love your current location! I'm not sure of your particular destination but it seems every country has *that* place when you head off on holiday!!

jazzed

mindrobots wrote: »

Is it ranting or flaming to state that the Surface ads on television are possible the most annoying I've seen in a while? What's with all the pent up anger in these people using Surface tablets??? Oh, never mind.....

Hey! I was fat old guy with glasses number 2. LOL

Martin_H

From what I've read a Surface 8 Pro is basically a Windows computer minus the keyboard. So it should work for most tasks that Windows can be used for. Surface RT is ARM based and has a problem with a lack of applications compiled for the ARM processor.

Dr_Acula

I'm very happy with Windows 8. And I agree, don't bother with RT.

On the start menu I added a link to the desktop as one of the menu items. Makes life easier. And added a free program called Power8 which adds a start menu in the bottom left corner. Looks like there are other programs that do the same thing.

Oh, if you have used it, does proptools or BST work from it?

Yes, no problems at all. So does GCC and SimpleIDE. And the drivers for the USB to serial adapter seemed to be included in the operating system so that is just a plug and play exercise.

In fact, getting all the propeller software working on a windows 8 machine was very easy.

What else?

Oh, yeah, it is supposed to be a touch screen operating system. But I'm running it on a good old fashioned cathode ray tube monitor. My kids keep leaving greasy fingerprints on the screen!