I picked up a Windows Surface a few weeks back. I got it mainly to read in bed, because the books are cheap and small, and the Surface's screen is just barely big enough to work for my weak eyes. I tried a few books on the Kindle, but the reading area was just too small to make it work. I spent as much time turning pages as reading.
For the Surface I went ahead and got the upgraded keyboard, which had the raised keys. It cost an extra 50 bucks, but since I type much better on a regular keyboard -- where you can feel the keys -- it was a good call. The Surface does not come with a keyboard, so even the cheaper keyboard is around 100 clams. So they sell the product with the keyboard in their adds, but don't mention the fact that it's a purchased accessory. And, wisely, they set the price point such that once you get your hopes up to get the keyboard, well, you might as well get the good one. And now you're into the device for $450. Well done, I say. Well done.
As long as everything works as advertised.
I spent a little bit of time going through the tutorials on the Windows Surface, because the navigation was not obvious, and because I might be using the device for business. Here are my initial assessments, purely based on my own personal experiences:
The Surface works well enough, given its technical mandate. I was able to get to most of the apps that I used in just a few hours, and was able to figure out how to control the privacy rules in just a few days. That being said, none of it was obvious, since it cut a neat cord from all other Windows OS interfaces. This stuck a bug in my craw, but that's my problem.
It does have an OS bug that occasionally will lock up the computer on certain combinations of commands. Moving back and forth through apps, and within the OS, requires funky Surface-specific gymnastics, which are not intuitive, don't make sense to me, and are not entirely trustworthy. But most common activities seem to work. Since all the disk memory is flash-based (like all phones and tablets) it is much faster than any older generation PC. But that's all geek-speak.
What are you really saying?
All new tablets, PC's, laptops, phones and consumer operating systems are designed around one guiding principle: route the herd down the slaughter chute to the purchase-mill. This is not new news. It has been documented in countless essays, articles and books since the inception of the internet. At the end of the queue-rope, behind every shiny new object, free piece of software, mindless computer game, or time-wasting maze of useless information, there awaits a Hawker in a frayed, black suit and top hat, smiling like a monkey on a chain.
To some extent, Microsoft solved the navigation problem with Windows 95, which based its navigational scheme on a set of logical menus and short-cut keys. The design was so well conceived and executed that many of my colleagues could work faster and more elegantly using their keyboard than even the fastest of their mouse-burdened cohorts.
Alt-tab works you through all open windows. A touch on the Start (Windows) button will open the Programs menu, where the arrow keys (or sometimes a letter), and a few tabs (or enters) can get you to any location on the computer. Once a program is opened, they all had the same menus which worked off the Alt-<key> rule, so that Alt-F opened the File Menu, and then if you hit the letter of the command under that menu you invoked that command (Alt-F, S will save any Windows file, just as Alt-S will send any email in Outlook), and so on. In 7x you can press the Windows button and type something and Windows will find it, whether it is a file, a program or a website on the internet. It's a great innovation, but there's no money to made in that.
Foot Note?
[I also have worked with purists who would refuse to even use the Windows shortcuts to execute commands, but instead had multiple DOS command windows open (on a Windows PC) where they could navigate across both the local file system and all other navigable servers with just a few keystrokes, much like working on a Unix/Linux OS. The tab, shift, space and enter keys work in DOS in a funky Unix-Windows convergence that can manipulate files, open and close applications and screw up a computer as easily as if one were clicking a mouse.]
Anyway, back to tablets, I guess. The point is: I don't care much for any of the touch screen interfaces. They are pretty, but massively inefficient. Their only purpose (or should be) to get the user to their destination. Instead, they introduce us to many additional touches, clicks and drags to do even common tasks. In the end, they route us into a rope-queue that leads to a Carnival Hawker with a complimentary stuffed rabbit; but first we'll need your email. And then, since you've gone this far -- and we can tell that you really want that stuffed rabbit -- go ahead and give us your credit card info. Why not make life easy for yourself, and remove this imaginary wall between us, since we're all friends here, in the carnival. And here's your rabbit.
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