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Microsoft Surface RT & Me

The iPad is gone. After a year, I never grew comfortable with it. It always seemed a fight. I’m willing to take some of the blame. My biggest issue was how it never really blended into my PC environment. It was always a wrestling match. The problem was driven entirely by the software, both the operating system and the apps. Especially the apps.

For example, while Pages sorta reads/writes Microsoft Word files, it tended to do so while mangling the formatting. And my document formatting it pretty plain Jane. The text editing apps didn’t like to play nice with syncing back and forth. IAWriter is lovely, but syncs best to iCloud, and iCloud syncing works best with the desktop version of IAWriter...which is Mac-only. Etc.

In any event, it’s off at a new home. They’re happy, I’m happy.

Now it’s the Surface RT’s turn to see if it can be a lightweight, tablet-like laptop substitute. So far, so good. First, and no surprise, it ties in perfectly with my PC. Everything syncs via SkyDrive, though not as automatically as I’d like. Still, better than I had with the iPad, especially OneNote files and Word documents.

Second, most complaints about the Surface RT are accurate. It can sometimes be slow to respond (a problem I had with my iPad, too) and the app market is a desert compared to iPad and Android. A higher resolution screen would be nice, but it’s better than my iPad 2 was. I generally don’t miss the apps because it already came with my key apps (OneNote, Word, and Excel, with PowerPoint as a bonus). I also don’t understand some of the app complaints. No dedicated Facebook app? So what? I can use the browser to access the full site. Ditto Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

But I do wish I could play Plague Inc. on it rather than having to pull out my Kindle Fire HD. And just as with the iPad, reading Kindle books on the Surface RT is rather...silly.

I’m still not used to the Touch Cover keyboard. I either need to practice more or surrender and buy a Type Cover.

Battery life is fine; I can go a couple of days between charges (for comparison, I could go almost three days on my iPad 2). A recent firmware update made a massive improvement to speaker volume. Other tweaks keep improving overall performance. This is one of the things I like. I get monthly firmware updates, meaning that MS is still active with the platform, and each update improves something.

Adding music is a drag and drop affair, or I can sync via the MS cloud. Which is, frankly, half-assed. Xbox Music needs lots of work before it can match what Zune used to do.

The Surface RT includes a MicroSD slot for expanding storage space. This is not as useful as you’d think. You have to mount the card if you want to add any directories on it to your libraries. Even then, the Music and Photo apps won’t automatically scan and read what’s on your SD card. In contrast, the Video app does and is, therefore, the champ. Even with the higher overhead of the Windows RT OS, I still start with more storage space than I had on my iPad, which is no surprise since the RT is starting with twice as much RAM. And I can download all sorts of videos to the SD, so it’s disappointing but functionally a wash.

Right now I’m taking advantage of one of the features I love best, the ability to snap an app to the side and work on another. So I have the music app off to the side while I type. With the iPad I would have had to task switch back and forth; here, I can see the music controls, playlist, etc.

In short, the Surface RT fits now I want to work. If I just wanted a tablet for content consumption, I would happily stay with my Kindle Fire HD. Most of the write-ups I’ve seen content creation on the iPad seem to be written by people running Mac desktops, and in that environment the iPad shines. In mine, it didn’t.

This is not meant as a knock against the iPad. This is more an example of how one tool doesn’t fit all, and isn’t it nice to have diversity?

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