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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

Give me the option to run desktop apps on it (just a few, a terminal, recompiled open source stuff, self-compiled stuff for my work), and I'll seriously consider buying one.

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Check out the XDA forums - a very simple bit flip allows installation of any (unsigned) ARM binaries and most open source projects have already been ported/recompiled.

Edit: Links: "Jail break" tool: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158

Ported apps: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348

Well, actually, if you already have recompiled ARM exes, you can quite easily 'jailbreak' the RT to have them run. I have Notepad++, 7-zip, putty and a few others.

I know you were trying to say that this should be enabled by default, but I thought you might want to know that it's at the very least possible.

Why not buy one of the Win8 tablets using Intel's Clover Trail?

I have one, a ThinkPad Tablet 2, and it's been pretty awesome for me. (It's the computer I'm using to type this reply. I find the Win8 touchscreen keyboard works much better for me than the iPad's ever did.)

You sound like you want the Ubuntu Edge.

The Windows RT is supposed to be competitive with iPads; i.e. they expect developers to re-tool their apps to work well with touch in WPF and/or Silverlight.

Surface Pro does it, but at a higher price point for certain.

Doesn't Surface Pro even have a fan? For me, it's a PC then.

Surface Pro is a PC. An old school tablet PC, same as we've had since since Windows XP Tablet Edition.

It's like a PC with a really crappy keyboard, unless you buy one that increases the price to the point where you should've bought a tablet notebook in the first place.

Chromebook with Chrubuntu might work

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