Monday, March 16, 2015

Microsoft Surface RT and my family

I love my Surface RT most of all my computers and gadgets.

My Surface does everything I want from a tablet and much more. I have full access to the file system, I can mount network drives, I can use a file in one program, and then finish it in another. There is no limit on the machine except for one very brain dead lock that all apps must come from the Microsoft Store. But the same lock and many more are on the Android and iPad. The screen on the Surface is awesome. reading books, watching videos, doing work over ssh, email and web browsing is fantastic. And with the split screen function it becomes totally the best tablet on the market. Just think having Skype or a music player using 1/3 of the screen and your browser or other work uses 2/3. As the screen is quite wide, this works spectacularly well. The machine is actually quite fast. It does everything I want it to do and does it well. And it also has some excellent games. Games like Asphalt and others. Just plug in a USB controller using straight up standard USB port, and it just works. WHo would have thought that Microsoft obeyed and used standards ?

The Netflix client is awesome and really shows why Netflix is such a success.

All in all, my gateway into thinking about Windows, something I have disliked since Windows 2000, is a machine I purchased just because I was curious, and got it very cheap as a B product.

I have two daughters, aged 10 and 8 (this year). My wife and I decided to buy them their first laptops. I ended up getting Thinkpads X201 for very little money. They were good, fast and had a future, unlike my Surface. Had the surface had a solid future, my daughters would have gotten them. I installed Windows 8.1 on these machines, and put on the built in family plan and parental protection, and it works, and works great.

They can use all my software I have bought on the MS Store, I also get a report sent to my email about their usage without snooping. They also know I get this report. This just worked so well. I know the Mac has a family share, but they just recently started offering it and it isn't as solid.

Then at the same time, cracks in my apple usage started to appear. My wife's laptop hard disk is full, and it is full of family pictures, so no, delete is not an option. 256 GB disk wasn't enough. My own 512GB disk is filling up quite fast. And there is nothing I can do about it. There is no way to increase this. My work computer, the thinkpad T430s has no such problems. Replacing the disk in it is just 1 screw, pop out and pop a new one in. Adding memory is just as easy. And now here comes the kicker. By popping out the DVD drive with a click of a button, I can put in a second disk, any disk on the market. You can get 1-2 TB disk, or an SSD disk. And better yet, you can add a card in it with an mSATA disk. So you can have 3 disks, and you can get these extensions from anywhere.

So, Windows is kind of winning me over. They (Microsoft) are really trying and running on all cylinders. I think Windows 8 is great, and windows 10 will be even better,

Am I loosing it ?

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