Me, I didn't think it was that bad. Though I, too, wondered "why wouldn't I just buy and iPad?" Seems that's a question everyone else asked themselves.
Never heard of such a problem on an iPad.
The Windows division might think it knows how to deliver a tablet-friendly OS, but really, it doesn't. It's clownville; they don't understand how to do box-level security (as on consoles) and they don't know how to do stability at the level required by a "mom" consumer product. (The Xbox group took Win8 and had to do extensive modifications in order to make it play well -- the original mandate from the execs were "run Win8 without any changes" and /that/ would have been a fucking disaster).
If Microsoft is serious about putting a real "tabletized" version of Win8 in consumer hands, they need to do a bunch of housecleaning and internal education. It's a mess.
My iPad has now reached the point where, if I don't carefully set it into Airplane mode, Battery drains in 24 hours, even when asleep. I don't know if it's my mail client, or a background task being woke up by a geofence, or one of the GPS/WiFi radios - but I can't reliably leave it sitting around for several days anymore.
So, now I get into the game of "Disable Location Services for All applications, Disable Notification Services for All Applications, Turn off all Radios - NOW, turn on a small handful of services, and observe for a week - if everything looks good, turn on some more - keep doing so until the battery starts draining in 24 hours, and then try and identify the errant applications"
My #1 gripe about the iPad continues to be battery draining because of background tasks. If I could only "Force" the iPad into NO MULTITASKING, Single Damn Application at a time and NOTHING else mode, Don't Check Email, Don't Check GPS, Don't play music, Don't Download - I'd be happy. The only reliable way I've found of guranteeing this is to power it down - but it takes a long time (90+ seconds) to power it up each time I want to use it, which kind of detracts from the device...
So, no - iPad is not perfect. I would say 50% of my time this trip, when I went to use it, battery was completely dead so I ended up with my MacBook Air sitting on my chest to do reading.
I guess another way of double checking this, is just reinstalling the Operating System from scratch at the Genius Bar.
Clearly the poster has a faulty battery.
If anything is clear it's that he uses a setting that activates the radios too often or an app that spams notifications. Without knowing anything else about his setup I'd implicate a busy push email.
And by carefully disabling every background process - what exactly do you mean? Other than mail checking - what user controllable background processes are there?
(The exception is VOIP and GPS apps, but they are not likely to be enabled without the user either being on a call or geting directions to somewhere.)
I certain I'm not the only person who has felt their iPhone get hot, and shut down everything in the switcher to recover the and stop the battery from draining?
Likewise with the iPad, making sure every music, every voip, every downloading, every geo-fence, every GPS, every-single-app is shut down is the only way I can keep my iPad Battery from draining after running a good handful of apps.
That, or just powering it down - which, as I said earlier, kind of defeats the purpose....
if you run an app and switch out then it can perform a network operation or a few other very specific tasks but they're all killed after 10 minutes anyway.
The whole multitasking part of iOS is basically smoke and mirrors. Manually quitting tasks is pretty much voodoo at this point
There's exactly one answer to that question: office. 9 hours of office in a device the size of a pad of paper.
But the problem is, the exact people who would buy RT for that reason cannot use it or would not want it for a range of other factors (for example, it cannot join a domain).
And now with the new Intel chips there is no reason at all, because you can get 9 hours of office from a full Win8 tablet.
My Macbook died a few months back, I tried the Surface RT a few days as a replacement. At first, it was strange, and my work flow suffered. But, alas, after a week, I was back to normal productivity.
It has been several months now, of treating the Surface RT as my main machine. I mostly work out of the desktop IE. Sometimes I will snap Netflix or Hulu on the side. I take the device to work, and not need to charge it (awesome). If I need to show the team something, I snap of the keyboard, and pass it around. Microsoft Office is great on the tablet. Since, it is my lady's, skydrive is not useful for me. But, it is for her. Her phone uploads everything to skydrive, and she can access the skydrive files, on the Surface. The Surface treats skydrive, like a normal drive. So, if she wants to upload a picture on Facebook (in the browser). She can select any file on the Surface or the skydrive.
Most recently, I updated it to the 8.1 Preview. Now that I have outlook, its been even better! The Surface has had constant updates from Microsoft. The first month we had the tablet, it was sluggish and IE, was not ideal. But, it did act as a full fledge browser.
This might sound like a glowing review, and it is, but the device is definitely first gen. Besides a few hiccups here and there I am still amazed at how much the RT can handle. At home, I hook it up to a monitor and work of both screens. The type keyboard is great. And, my lady and I will often watch a movie in bed or play some Wordament.
Microsoft did a terrible job of communicating what the Surface tablets do.
This is coming from a person who grew up using Mac OS. I only used PC's in my last few years of high school, then went back to Macs.
Also, at least at my college, effectively no one takes notes with their laptops or iPads anyway. If they're out in class, it's for Facebook or something else totally unrelated to the class itself. Notes are still written down on good ol' paper.
i personally rather write in vim and output to latex... but to each it's own. I would have got a modern netbook with an extended battery and have 12hours of battery for writting on a decent keyboard.
Except that I hate using Office, and my job doesn't require it.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/why-bo...
In other words, it isn't.
Probably price is the only thing that matters here. Price and exposure. You can't compete with name brand -- no matter the merit -- if you can't beat them in price.
I can't think of a single person I've talked to about purchasing a tablet that considers specs except for myself so that's hardly the motivator some would make it out to be.
i'm shocked. really. i'm not trolling, belive it or not, but i fell like in a straight jacket using any iOS device.
Because they are expensive and completely locked down?