windows 8 pro surface tablet

Amp34 said:
from a website that seems to be set up to dislike MS... :
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You are joking aren't you. Fred Langa, Woody Leonhard (author of Windows 8 All-in-One for Dummies), et al, have probably done more to sell MS products than the whole of the MS publicity department. From the early days of WOW (Woody's Office Watch) I've used these guys for all the in-depth info I've needed on MS products. Just because they don't automatically pucker up every time somebody from MS bends over, doesn't make them anti-Ms.
 
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H2O said:
I stopped reading after this.. You do realise surface RT completely sold out on release don't you?
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AFAIK the 32GB model with no keyboard cover sold out. The 32GB + cover and 64GB + cover models didn't....

I'd be cynical and suggest that the stock level for 32GB, no cover models was somewhere in the region of however many they'd sold after x number of hours.
 
hollis_f said:
You are joking aren't you. Fred Langa, Woody Leonhard (author of Windows 8 All-in-One for Dummies), et al, have probably done more to sell MS products than the whole of the MS publicity department. From the early days of WOW (Woody's Office Watch) I've used these guys for all the in-depth info I've needed on MS products. Just because they don't automatically pucker up every time somebody from MS bends over, doesn't make them anti-Ms.
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I read the logo and, I admit, assumed it was a negative site... :bonk: "Everything Microsoft forgot to mention":shrug:
 
Don't forget the surface is not the only tablet that will offer RT. I believe any tablet running android 4 can run RT, it is just the drivers needed. Asus will be releasing the transformer tablets with windows RT.

Metro or Modern is the new interface and will be here to stay and nothing anyone can do will change that. Any application that runs on RT will also run on the full windows and will make life easier for users (updates, settings etc.).

There will be a new breed of software arriving in windows that IOS and android users will know, this new breed could replace some of the older more traditional companies due to cost and ease of use.
 
Dale_d3100 said:
Metro or Modern is the new interface and will be here to stay and nothing anyone can do will change that.
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Fortunately there are ways of banishing it to the background in Windows 8. Just like it was easy to remove all traces of Aero from Win7.
 
Why though it works really well. We have it on all office machines but 1 and all the laptops.

I'm looking forward to all the apps coming out.
 
Thorburn said:
AFAIK the 32GB model with no keyboard cover sold out. The 32GB + cover and 64GB + cover models didn't....

I'd be cynical and suggest that the stock level for 32GB, no cover models was somewhere in the region of however many they'd sold after x number of hours.
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32gb sold out first but I'm pretty sure the 32 with cover sold out as well a day or two later. (might've just been the US store though) Not sure about the 64.

[edit: all 3 models on back order in the US,
http://m.cnet.com/news/at-the-moment-microsoft-surface-is-hot/57541579 ]

I ordered the 32 + touch cover & I'm going to expand it with a 64gb micro sd card.

Unfortunately I can't comment on how good it is yet (looking forward to trying out Xbox smart glass) as I had an email on Friday saying it'd been delayed. :-(

Expecting delivery Monday or Tuesday now.

hollis_f said:
Like I said, because of the way that they refused to supply even rough estimates of the number of units they'd sold. If the number had been large then they wouldn't have missed out on the PR points they'd earn by showing how popular it was.
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Depends. Anything less than apple ipad sales figures would be slated but not necessarily bad.

It's amazing how people will twist anything they can in a negative way to fit their agenda. ;-)
 
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just installed win 8 on my laptop. got it for £15. bought it twice. going to buy another later tonight
 
Metro does not support silver light or .net. Ie does not support plugins, certain companies have managed to get their sites to work, but ms will block the rest.

.net libraries are written for x86, arm would need a different set of libraries. It won't work.

Anyone gone down the silver light route is now ****ed off, doing a big u turn and embracing the world of html5.

There are diagrams showing what works in what environment and the basic answer is only c++ and html will work across all interfaces.
 
Dale_d3100 said:
Metro does not support silver light or .net. Ie does not support plugins, certain companies have managed to get their sites to work, but ms will block the rest.

.net libraries are written for x86, arm would need a different set of libraries. It won't work.

Anyone gone down the silver light route is now ****ed off, doing a big u turn and embracing the world of html5.

There are diagrams showing what works in what environment and the basic answer is only c++ and html will work across all interfaces.
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No. .net l;ibs are for ARM as well as x86.

.net is a framework that contains many languages embeded inside it. The first Metro UI was developed for win 7 devices over a year ago using .net framework.

my friend who is a .net developer sued silverlight and other .net tools to create mobile apps.
 
Some interesting videos here: http://ozar.me/2012/10/why-im-returning-my-microsoft-surface-rt/

I could be looking for a new tablet and the Nexus is tempting (I'd want 10" screen) but the Surface Pro seems pretty ideal. I find the iPad very restrictive and although it's supposed to 'just work' more often than not I find it just works.
 
No silver light in ie10.....

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-rt-have/958c5717-3b7d-4cfc-b5c2-150437b9f055

.net is there, but not backward compatible. So no current .net applications will work. So although .net in name, it is different to previous .net, different libraries etc.....

http://geekswithblogs.net/simonc/archive/2012/03/28/.net-vs-windows-8.aspx

So nothing existing will work and It all needs rewriting for the new .net. I'd class that as not supporting .net personally and they've called something else .net for marketing purposes so people think they haven't abandoned it.
 
neil_g said:
i think we've had this discussion before (?) but 4Gb should be fine, its CPU that LR uses the most.
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No it's not. 4GB is barely adequate today, I would expect the laptop to serve a few years, not a few months (like the ipad :lol:) before we get bigger files and new version of RAW converter.
 
Lightroom on my computer uses CPU and Hard Drive more than anything else and doesn't seem to use much memory (from checking Performance Monitor). I'm guessing it must load each image into the memory in realtime as you access them (hence the high CPU and HD usage) whereas Photoshop, which does seem to eat into memory, must load all the images into memory from the start. Perhaps ths is why when you change image in Lightroom it is pixelated for a second as it renders, whereas Photoshop is instant.

It makes sense to me as photographers could be loading several hundred images into Lightroom just from a single shoot. Doing this in Photoshop would be a killer, but in Lightroom it's a breeze so I really can't see how it can be shoving them all into memory?
 
gman said:
Lightroom on my computer uses CPU and Hard Drive more than anything else and doesn't seem to use much memory (from checking Performance Monitor). I'm guessing it must load each image into the memory in realtime as you access them (hence the high CPU and HD usage) whereas Photoshop, which does seem to eat into memory, must load all the images into memory from the start. Perhaps ths is why when you change image in Lightroom it is pixelated for a second as it renders, whereas Photoshop is instant.

It makes sense to me as photographers could be loading several hundred images into Lightroom just from a single shoot. Doing this in Photoshop would be a killer, but in Lightroom it's a breeze so I really can't see how it can be shoving them all into memory?
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I don't think it's that simple. I'm guessing LR keeps the last 2 or 3 open files from the session in memory, but the way it handles files must involve some very heavy layers. Dust removal, CA correction, perspective, distortion each double memory used. I could only imagine how much fun D800 or Hassy files are to edit.
 
I'm sure I downloaded some D800 RAW files recently and popped them into Lightroom and didn't find any noticeable difference with performance - which I have to admit surprised me as I thought it would be slow. It could be in that monster D800 thread....

Perhaps it's not as straightforward as first thought. I've just opened Lightroom with 928 RAW photos loaded at standard render previews. These photos were taken with the 5D classic and it's showing 435,716KB. I've clicked through five different photos and it's jumped to 948,544KB. I've now clicked through loads of photos and it's now 1,458,580KB.

So I think it does cache a few images but perhaps that's the extent of it?

I've now opened Photoshop with 30 JPG images and it's used 2,228,100KB and it hardly changes as I switch between images. I've opened another 20 JPG images and it's now using 3,375,076KB!

I've now opened 94 JPG images in Photoshop and the memory used is 5,242,848KB. Switching between images in Photoshop is instant unlike Lightroom which takes about 1 sec to render. I think this would convince me that having 2GB spare RAM after OS requirements would be more than enough to run LR. :)
 
daugirdas said:
I don't think it's that simple. I'm guessing LR keeps the last 2 or 3 open files from the session in memory, but the way it handles files must involve some very heavy layers. Dust removal, CA correction, perspective, distortion each double memory used. I could only imagine how much fun D800 or Hassy files are to edit.
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No matter how you wrap it up... Lightroom barely uses 2GB of memory - 2.5 at a maximum. What you guess and how Lightroom operates are two very different things ;)
 
It doesn't store multiple copies of the image, it stores the base image and then the changes made to it at each step, then processes the complete image as it's loaded - so changing image involves a RAW file load (I/O and CPU intensive) and then the processing for all the modifications (CPU intensive).
Also explains why if you click back through the history the changes aren't reverted instantly - they're processed rather than stored in memory.

I believe in Library mode it will try to pre-load a few images ahead to minimise loading times for each images as you're going through and making picks, etc.
 
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Makes sense to me though as I see Lightroom as a digital darkroom where it's expected to have large amounts of images open, whereas Photoshop I see more as a manipulation and design tool so only a few at a time is all that's necessary :)
 
I'm guessing that will have it's positives and negatives though. Good for RAM, a killer for the battery as the CPU gets a lot more work?!
 
Got mine last week at the launch here in HK. Really is a very, very nice piece of kit.

Definitely fits in it's own niche right right now. The touch keyboard is excellent, and the touch wedge mouse I got as a freebie. Really does work nicely as a tablet, then just flip out the kickstand and you have a usable keyboard, mouse, screen setup, with i5 grunt running Lightroom, eclipse, even some games like xcom, Portal etc. Digitiser pen works great.

Very very nicely engineered, feels as good if not better than apple kit in the hand. Touch keyboard attaches very securely......one thing that really impresses me is the power supply, it's made of the same magnesium alloy as the surface itself, and IT HAS A USB SOCKET ON IT! Why does everybody not do this? One socket for your tablet/laptop and mobile charger (plus another one if you use the USB3 port on the surface).
 
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