Windows RT tablet?
 

Are those good for school work?


I want something cheap and can last until I can afford something better.

i thought about getting one but all the research i did say that the RT's suck, so i decided against it and went with a Nexus 10.


I guess there are windows tablets that are just window 8 now, but they are pricey.

What about the Samsung Chromebook?

As long as you know what you're getting (cheap chrome book), sure. Good enough for Google docs at least. Go to best buy and check it out

I have a Lenovo Tablet 2 with Windows 8... love it.

Windows 8 is an abortion IMHO

If you mean using office apps, the RT is perfect ( much better than an Android or iPad tablet as you get a real Office suite ). RT gets it's bad wrap because you cannot use all Windows software, a problem MS could have avoided with an Atom processor instead of an ARM. So you are restricted to Windows Store apps and .Net apps built for any CPU ( as you won't find many other types of apps built for an ARM processor ).

Btw, RT has a microSD card slot and USB 2 port, so moving files is as easy as with a PC, something Apple cannot say. And get a cover - so much better typing with it than any on screen tablet keyboard.

The problem with RT tablets is that nobody is buying them so nobody will be developing for them. Taking a class where you need to download some statistics software? You're out of luck. Taking a programming class and want developer tools? Out of luck.

They just slashed prices on the surface - both rt and full windows 8 versions.

Think im gonna get a full version surface when version 2 is released. The keyboard cover is so damn slick.

It's a slick device, but way overpriced and quite lacking regarding available software. I don't think it's a good value at all, but somebody might have use for it. It doesn't seem to be selling very well though..

Don't buy anything with Windows RT. It's not Windows. It just looks like Windows, and soon it will be gone, as it is being rejected by the marketplace.

If you want a Windows 8 tablet, go with Windows 8 Pro and install the start button available at classicshell.com. It fixes virtually all of the things about Windows 8 that most people hate.

I have both a Microsoft Surface tablet running Windows RT and a Dell tablet running Windows 8 Pro. After several months of ignoring both of them in favor of my iPad, I finally installed the classicshell start button on my Dell tablet and now I actually use it quite a bit. The classicshell start button will never be available on Windows RT, and it just serves as a reminder that the software available on RT is miniscule compared to a real windows computer or tablet.

I have a surface pro and I am pretty damn happy with it. I needed a laptop and wanted tablet for entertainment. Waited a long long time for anyone to address that at all, and I only have minor suggestions for improvements. It is great. I like it so much I switched to a windows phone too when the lumia 928 came out. Now I am fully synced at all times and I kind of laugh at the people still railing against Windows 8 (I get the RT complaints) because it is more than slick. There is no software limitation at all. I have all the PC only software I need for writing and collaborating for work, plus google too if I need it, and the tablet side has nearly all the apps I could want. I will admit there are a couple of apps I miss from Android, but for most I have found an equivalent that satisfies me, and in the case of file sharing between devices, my phone and surface are perfectly compatible.

All I need now is a bit of compatibility between my mac in my home office which is my editing suite. I expect to upgrade my 8 year old G5 when the new mac pros come out and hope it has more compatibility than the old G5 does, but at least the G5 has usb and so does the surface so I can share that way for now.

I dont understand why ppl dislike windows 8 so much, at least on a tablet. Its everything Ive been asking for. It allows me to use my Surface Pro as a tablet or a actual REAL computer and its programs. I think ppl just love to hate microsoft for some reason

Windows 8 is a piece of shit. Tablet or PC or otherwise. And M$ customer satisfaction(lack thereof) unanimously confirms that. People hate Win8 almost as much as they did Vista. Microsoft seriously screwed up this OS. Instead of building upon everything that Win7 did right, they tried to innovate and change everything just for the sake of change. Which has been met with very harsh criticism from just about everyone. The changes make the OS harder to use for the overwhelming majority. It's a complicated mess now, and the majority of users can't adjust to the new metro BS and the lack of a normal desktop at launch. So much so, that M$ is reportedly reverting back to the old Start button and desktop mode in the upcoming 8.1 update. That itself is acknowledgement that they ****ed up bad and they know it.

Under the aesthetics, Win8 is a solid OS. But they screwed up with the metro interface so completely that it negates the good things about the OS for just about everyone.

This. I can deal with the new OS, but people like my mother can't and won't. For gods sakes she is still on Vista and I can't get her to upgrade. This is coming though as her pc is on it's last legs and she is going to have to bite the bullet. I told her yesterday I will build her one and I for sure am going to put Windows 7 on it.

No ****ing shit. I got a new laptop for my wife's financial machine for her business, and it has 8 on it. I've FINALLY gotten it customized where I can bear it... but holy ****ing shit. I've never been so frustrated in my life. The swipe touchpad drove me absolutely bonkers. I'd just be navigating the cursor with the touchpad, and suddenly I'd be at the metro screen.

Is there any other operating system out there for a tablet that I can use actual REAL programs on other than Windows 8 instead of just watered down apps? If so, I haven't found it. That is why Windows 8 is so wonderful.

Ya, I'm not a basher of MS and generally like their products, but even Ill admit 8 came with a bitter pill of out of the box intuitiveness severely lacking. Especially, for traditional PC use.
Metro is in no way faster or more convenient than the start bar. Just keep that and provide larger desktop icons that are live and you've got your "tiles" This whole corners hot zones to pull up menus and functions is really disjointed as this stage of its implementation.

And, yes I had both my mother and girlfriend confused as **** trying to use my laptop.

Now, count me as someone that actually thinks they're done some good things with their new mobile platform.

Yeah. I'm not an MS hater at all. I use a windows laptop daily for my work, and my wife has Macs for her work and at home. I'm fine with either platform for the most part... but wow. I felt like some old person techno-idiot when I was using 8 at first...and that should not be the out of the box experience for any user, much less for someone who knows his way around a computer.

Contrast that with the intuitive ease of use that Mac products tend to have out of the box. I found myself having to google simple shit like, "Where is the control panel in windows 8." It was ridiculous. I appreciate their effort to unite the their mobile platform with their PC OS, but damn.. the implementation was lacking.

We got a Tab 2 lol. Hopefully that's better.

Mac OS is not really that much more user friendly than Windows- at least til 8. Sit a pc user in front of a mac and there's still quite the learning curve. They may have held claim to that back some years but its just not nearly the case now. Not saying they have slipped per se as much as the competition catching up.
Its really all subjective as I know many would say the same as you about os x, and I'd say Windows is for me.

This of course omits 8- which they are scrambling to restore back to the ease of 7 and integrating 8 features. Am I the only one that felt like 8 was a band aid rush to introduce metro to help initiate people for their new mobile platform.

Well that all depends on your tablet. But it's a pretty safe bet that if your tablet runs the full version of Windows 8, then it would also run Windows 7 exactly the same way, but without the metro tiles BS. It's not the Win8 OS that makes the difference. There is touchscreen capability in all the Windows OSes, all the way back to WindowsXP.

I have an RT and love it...but I only use it for email, intarwebs, and Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote). For these purposes, it absolutely excels.

As someone indicated earlier, the apps are sorely lacking on the W8 platform. iOS and Android are dominant in the mobile app space right now. It will change; I expect M$ to make significant strides in that area, but it will take time.

Regarding W8 design flaws, those are well documented; the guy responsible (Steven Sinofsky, aka Lord Doucheknuckle) was canned/errrr "resigned", acknowledging his mistakes as the door hit him in the ass....errr, amicably parted company.

The Metro interface is a problem for non-touch devices. For tablets, it is simple and intuitive. On a desktop/laptop w/o a touch screen, it is NOT AT ALL intuitive and a real PITA to figure out. The total lack of visual cues is inexplicable.

Nice of him to fall on his sword and all but you dont just get to wing it on a redesign of the most used software ever without a shitload of people who could wipe their greasy asses with $100 bills and not give it a second thought.

Luckily the UI flaws that may seem major because of their level of annoyance are simple in terms of being easily corrected. But, whether they can be creative enough to introduce these new features in a manner that it actually means an evolution to the desktop environment is another question. Hell, 8.1 test build already slapped back on the taskbar and windows logo launcher - but thats more like a temporary stopgap because theyve yet to achieve mixing metro and the traditional desktop- it totally feels like they are competing homescreens.

I don't agree with this idea that having a Windows8 tablet allows for better apps just because it runs...windows. Why not just buy a cheap, nice netbook if that's what you need?

I at first disagreed with Apple's move to separate OS X from iOS, but in the end they are right. We should focus on having good apps for tablets, not having legacy apps that happen to run on tablets.

If you think that iOS isn't capable of "real work" or think it's crippled, read some of this review of <a href="http://www.macstories.net/stories/editorial-for-ipad-review/#more-32915">Editorial</a>. Built in Python interpreter with all kinds of scripting that can be applied to text.

I'm trying to take this in a little at a time. The author of that review has been using Editorial for six months already.

And if you're a college student typing all your notes and papers in Word format instead of plain text, you'll hate yourself in a few years.

199.99 in the Microsoft store right now for the Surface RT. Pretty good deal as long as you understand what you are getting.