Mythbusters

Windows 8 shines on a touch screen laptop. I was in the market for one over the black Friday and not many were available at a decent price. If that picture changes then I am sure the adoption will accelerate.

It's odd that Microsoft's name does not come in the discussion that talks about technology giants. Google, Apple all are competing with Microsoft tooth and nail. Amazon and facebook maybe less so. Not mentioning it makes me question if its the bias or lack of knowledge on the part of the author.

have you?

You can download a free VM that runs on OSX to test.

yeah 3 million in 3 days that is almost as fast as how windows sold (4 million in 4 days) that really is impressive!

That tis not correct. It's much more than a gig.

Who cares? With most of the phones being sold with contract, this is just a gimmick. What does it have going for it other than a cheap price anyways? Poor camera? no expandable memory? No LTE? Poor speakers? Manufacturer with questionable quality record?

9/10 really? Is this phone really better than GS III or Nokia 920? Doesn't look like.

It was chrome's marketing earlier now it's Microsoft's. I think they are both great browsers on their own. I find IE10 to be even better and so much faster though.

Right is subjective. Care to explain? Maybe there is no single device that gets everything right? But are there separate devices that each got one aspect right? Care to give examples?

My pint is that Windows ecosystem is all about diversity. If there exist separate devices, some manufacturer will bring the together.

Likely. The other way to look at it is that many of the apps that are present in Windows phone app catalog are the ones where Microsoft convinced the app developer to write for the platform specifically. Now if that strategy is used then its obvious that Microsoft would have courted the top quality apps rather than going after poor quality ones.

with kid's corner feature to boot so that you can have fine grain control over what the kids have access to.

It's not the difference in performance but having to compile against a different architecture altogether. These two are architecturally different and porting an old legacy app like office cross platform must not be an easy feat. I don't see examples of old apps easily being ported over across platforms.

DMCA is ineffective anyways in doing what it was designed to do. Don't know why they have kept it around. Just search for NFL on youtube and you'd know what I mean

and the updated office runs on it beautifully. So what is your point again?

In case you are not trolling, time to educate yourself with the difference between these two architectures: http://www.brighthub.com/computing/hardware/articles/107133....

Surprise, if you copy an old mac app on your iPhone it won't run!

I was referring to ARM as the architecture. Should have been clearer

Hmmm you should really try skydrive in that case. Much more reliable and friendly to use.

Aren't we talking about the architecture here? Surface and the software on it is ARM architecture. Something that Office never ran on before. These are significantly different architectures and just because the graphics or processing capabilities are same does not mean it will run right?

Besides the version that was tested with was a beta. The final version of office runs smoothly on the device. So what is your point? RTFA!

Right and those office like apps are toys. Not a real productivity application. There were touch screen phones before iPhone and search engines before Google. I am not saying Office running on ARM is in the same league but there is no denying the first class engineering there.

Anybody who shares their opinion should consider these points:

1. The office on surface is not the final version of software. It has RTM'ed so it should get updated with the final version pretty soon.

2. The fact that you have an ability to run a program like office on a tablet class hardware and ARM architecture is in itself a feat of engineering and Microsoft should get some credit for that here. I was dying to put this louis CK piece in the comments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk

>> while costing more than an iPad

and where did you get that from?

>> The problem with Windows "apps" is that they are made inefficient and un-optimized by default

Very knowledgeable opinion sir. This is indeed true. Us as windows developers are required to add a sleep statement every few lines of code so as it not make it appear responsive.

Netflix is not at $5 but almost there. So is Hulu+. Does the Xbox music have subscription or is it free?

Checkout the surface Pro or many other similar products that came out recently (a windows 8 tablet that docks into a keyboard) The only tradeoff there is the smallish screen size and possibly price but those are to be expected I think.

I get that it was not a replacement for a desktop. That's a given. but I don't get "not a replacement for iPad" part. I don't see why it is not a replacement for iPad for doing most of what people do on iPad, browse, game, read, watch, listen, etc. If you consider broad app ecosystem, nothing is going to be a replacement for iPad except iPad. Agreed Windows8 doesn't have a whole lot of apps at this point but its not even released yet.

Seems like an interesting choice not use the fast disk as a cache. This is the design that Windows 7 and beyond went with. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff356869.aspx

I don't know how it can be called a PC. Maybe the Surface Pro version that runs a full Windows 8 OS is the one they should be referring to. That is a true tablet with full support for legacy apps not this one.

I wonder why the author tried to treat this as a full desktop replacement knowing that this is ARM based unit and hence does not run full windows 8. The Surface Pro is the one that should fir the bill of a tablet that is a laptop replacement. The author is expecting things from the unit that it is not quite designed for.

This one focuses on the hardware for the most part. Which I think is quite comparable to other options if not favorable. When it comes to Windows 8 though, its a personal taste. I love it even on my non-touch laptop and am looking forward to using it on a touch based laptop when I upgrade my current machine.