You simply have to spend a bunch of time playing with the multi-touch and Start Screen and all the applications to really "get" semantic zoom - it's fantastic.  Some apps do it better than others, but the whole concept works great with multi-touch.  The animations in the apps are great and in IE for example, the divs bounce around and it's just fun to play around with bouncing stuff around.  Try "pinning" down part of the app or Start Screen with one thumb while pushing things around with the other thumb ... try moving an app tile with one thumb, by positioning the Start Screen over the thumb first, then hold, drag up slightly, and then while holding the tile down, semantic zoom out, slide the screen, zoom in, drop ... lots of fun, works well, but takes a bit of practice.

I'm literally learning new ways of using the different modalities every time I play with it.  Combined with the Kinect and Smartglass, you have the option of switching back and forth between gestures, touch, and voice - and/or keyboard and mouse and/or Xbox controller.  I find myself switching a lot and it's becoming more and more fluid to do so. 

I am truly blown away by the Surface hardware.  Any performance issues I've heard about, I haven't really experienced except when data is loading in some applications that haven't implemented progress indicators as well as others.  Sometimes IE does freeze up a bit on certain pages, but less than IE9 ever did ... it's not often a problem, but not perfect.  Sometimes things slow down a bit because you tend to leave apps open, but I am surprised at how well it works to just leave things running.  If things get slow in one app, I just flick the left thumb to switch apps and do something else for a little bit and go back ... if it's still hung, I close it.  I've only had to use Task Manager to kill a process 3 times since I got the Surface a week ago (and those problems were mostly with Word and Excel and once with IE that I had to kill it).

Xbox Smartglass is fantastic, and I see a lot more potential.  Some of the features are not as discoverable, like being able to search YouTube with the keyboard on the Surface - that's because YouTube made it hard to find out how to pair the devices.  But it is possible in fact to do that.  You can, however, type directly on the Surface to control IE on the Xbox and use Surface as a touch pad to control the browser with multi-touch.  So you should be able to use YouTube outside of the Xbox YouTube application just fine (but I haven't tried yet).

I'll try to find time this week to give a full report on //build/ (which was awesome), but I'm catching up at work after paternity and the trip to build, and we have a hard deadline to meet, so I'm swamped with work (and my newborn).  Let's just say for now, that I haven't seen Windows devs this excited in a long time ... and I haven't been this excited about development since .NET came out over 10 years ago!

Buy one.  Buy two.  One for the wife ... she'll want it.

Probably not an actual leaked ad, but this is still how Surface advertising should be done. Awesome.

At first I was set on the Pro, but after a couple of weeks, I'm not so sure that I need or care about x86 and a pen. My Samsung has an active digitizer, but I've been surprised at how quickly I was able to wean myself off of it and just use the onscreen keyboard.

1 hour ago, kettch wrote

@Richard.Hein: I've currently got the Samsung Series 7 Slate, but I'm really looking hard at the RT. I ended up getting one for my wife, and it's all I can do to pry it away for a few minutes to play with it.

At first I was set on the Pro, but after a couple of weeks, I'm not so sure that I need or care about x86 and a pen. My Samsung has an active digitizer, but I've been surprised at how quickly I was able to wean myself off of it and just use the onscreen keyboard.

I've had the same experience with my wife and the Asus VivoTab RT. I'm not going to be playing any big 3D games on a tablet, and the only other x86 software I really use is Visual Studio. It really surprised me how much I could stay in the Metro world and be fine.

1 hour ago, kettch wrote

@Richard.Hein: I've currently got the Samsung Series 7 Slate, but I'm really looking hard at the RT. I ended up getting one for my wife, and it's all I can do to pry it away for a few minutes to play with it.

At first I was set on the Pro, but after a couple of weeks, I'm not so sure that I need or care about x86 and a pen. My Samsung has an active digitizer, but I've been surprised at how quickly I was able to wean myself off of it and just use the onscreen keyboard.

Yeah, with the newborn, I have had a lot more time with the Surface RT without the keyboard attached than with it, and it's taking some getting used to but I feel like I'm getting skilled at using it one handed and with the baby in my other arm.   The onscreen keyboard modes are great, because you can switch between them depending on what you are typing and how you are holding it ... the Remote Desktop app also has a "touch pointer" mode that you can switch between, so that you can control a mouse cursor with acceleration from just the edge or corner of the surface, and get higher precision for the times you need it.  Then switch back to touch for other things. 

I've had some good success with custom CSS in getting them to fit better into the viewport.

2 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

@Richard.Hein: Was waiting for the Pro, but that Levovo one is properly tempting.

 

Indeed, and also the VAIO Duo 11 Ultrabook looks nice too:  http://store.sony.com/c/VAIO-Duo-11-Ultrabook-Laptops/en/c/S_D_SERIES_PAGE 

45 minutes ago, wkempf wrote

@vesuvius: Which Lenovo one? I've sort of been eyeing the Asus Vivo Tab (not the RT). Biggest thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is I want to be able to do development work on the device, and I don't think that would work out so well with the Atom processors.

Yes, it's kind of a pain to see that csc.exe is there, but when you run it, it says it's missing some dlls, such as System.Data.Oracle.dll .... 

Right now TouchDevelop is the only IDE I know of that runs on the Surface.  It does work in offline mode as well, and generates JavaScript.  It's also fun, but I haven't spent too much time in it yet.  I used the phone version to make a simple app that plays songs rated > 4 when you shake the phone, that's about it, aside from exploring other apps.

To do real dev, you'll want to RDP or just use a more powerful workstation, until the Pro comes out.  I'll almost 100% sure I'll get a Pro ... we'll see ... and will give the RT to my wife.

35 minutes ago, Ian2 wrote

@wkempf:The Remote Desktop is surprisingly good, even on a low grade atom processor (or an RT device).  Consider a chunky & cheap desktop machine for development via Remote Desktop - then set up the Win8 slate as your build target and maybe get the best of both worlds.

Yes, it's good and I like the touch pointer mode for precision moments, as mentioned earlier ... I intend on trying out the build target thing as soon as I work out things on the network here at the office ... also I have had a ton of trouble getting Mouse Without Borders to work, but if it DID work, I can control my PC which doesn't have a touch screen, with my Surface as well.  Or I can use my phone and control my PC to get multitouch, as well.

Remote desktop isn't a solution for several reasons, but the biggest is that you can't plug-in devices for testing when using a remote session.

19 minutes ago, Richard.Hein wrote

*snip*

Indeed, and also the VAIO Duo 11 Ultrabook looks nice too:  http://store.sony.com/c/VAIO-Duo-11-Ultrabook-Laptops/en/c/S_D_SERIES_PAGE 

I think the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T looks nice as well: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/tablet-pcs/XE700T1C-A01US-features.

Unlike the Vivo Tab, the keyboard doesn't have a battery to extend life, but the ATIV Smart PC has a full i5 instead of an Atom like in the Vivo Tab. Should be able to use this one for developing.

I see what you're saying. I guess, the question is: Are you willing to deal with more weight and less battery life for those "some situations"? If so, there are a lot of x86 tablets coming down the pike. One possibility might be the Surface Pro, since you can get the Touch (or Type) Cover and you'll have a built in keyboard and mouse.

If you move your finger at a slower rate on the Start screen you will see that the tiles jump by about 5 pixels instead of being a smooth slide. When you open a few apps and move to the Start screen, scrolling of the tiles starts to become sluggish. It was my assumption that as soon as you move away from an app Windows gives the app a little time to save state and then deactivates it where it is not consuming resources. This doesn't appear to be always true based on the sluggish performance of the Start screen.

I also hope they come out with a dock for this.

1 day ago, codedj wrote

Overall I have had a good experience. Remote Desktop itself has allowed it to be a laptop replacement for me. Performance is something Microsoft really needs to focus on. Animations, touch scrolling should be very very smooth but is not. IE is an exception and works very well.

If you move your finger at a slower rate on the Start screen you will see that the tiles jump by about 5 pixels instead of being a smooth slide. When you open a few apps and move to the Start screen, scrolling of the tiles starts to become sluggish. It was my assumption that as soon as you move away from an app Windows gives the app a little time to save state and then deactivates it where it is not consuming resources. This doesn't appear to be always true based on the sluggish performance of the Start screen.

I also hope they come out with a dock for this.

Interesting. I have not seen that on the Asus VivoTab RT, even though the core hardware is the same (Tegra 3). It did have some trouble with the Adera game, but it was still playable (I'd guess a low of 20fps).

BTW, NewEgg is offering the doc for free if you register the device, but I suspect that's an Asus thing.

2 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

BTW, NewEgg is offering the doc for free if you register the device, but I suspect that's an Asus thing. 

Yep, it's all through Asus' website. http://event.asus.com/Vivotab/Mobile_Dock/

To watch a video on the Asus you will have to dock it into the keyboard which may be more of a hassle than quickly flipping out a kick stand. On the other hand you cannot control the angle of the kick stand and hence you have to adjust your position to the angle of the kick stand. The Asus works like a laptop giving you more flexibility with the angle of the screen.

Overall I like the Surface because all the features of the hardware work really well. The build quality, the wide profile, kickstand are all well executed. Now it is up to Mr. Sinofsky and team to match the software to the hardware. Hopefully they are working on it .

9 hours ago, ScanIAm wrote

I looked at the Vivo RT last night, and it's pretty likely I'll own one by monday   I'd like to see a surface, but the Vivo has longer battery life with the dock.  I just don't have any need for the kickstand, but I'm open to any convincing arguments

BTW, NewEgg is offering the doc for free if you register the device, but I suspect that's an Asus thing.

 

The Vivo RT is nice, but battery life ... I don't see that as something that should matter to most users, because the battery life on the Surface RT is absolutely fantastic, I haven't hit 20% once, and I rarely have it plugged in.

3 hours ago, Richard.Hein wrote

*snip*

The Vivo RT is nice, but battery life ... I don't see that as something that should matter to most users, because the battery life on the Surface RT is absolutely fantastic, I haven't hit 20% once, and I rarely have it plugged in.

I guess I assumed it would be important, but I'm on the vivo now and have plenty of battery left after 4 or so hours.  Typing while lying down in bed is annoying, but overall, I'm digging it,

Seems to be quite biased, but some points seem valid.