Introducing... Me

[gytrr1]

Hey Folks

I found this site whilst looking for Surface RT tips.

A touch of background on me: I'm a network engineer, and have had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft products (and Cisco and HP) since Win 3.11. I can't complain very much though, as over the years they have kept me permanently employed working with diverse infrastructures, from large multi-nationals through to home users and government agencies.

Earlier this year, after struggling to like Win 8 Beta, I bit the bullet at home and rolled it out in my development network (which is complex, meaning there are more VM servers than clients) and used my family for User Acceptance trials... Please, feel sorry for them, as the environment is pretty much in constant flux lol

After a month of running the RTM version of Win 8, and running the fall beta Xbox firmware on the #1 Xbox, I convinced my wife that we should swallow the blue pill, and dive fully into the Win 8 experience, meaning replacing the mobiles and buying a Surface RT (replacing her buggy eeePad slider).

With the delivery of the RT, Win 8 started making more sense. Mind you, the 7 year old took to Win 8 Pro like a little champ, as she preferred the tile "not metro, but modern" interface to the sterile standard desktop. For me, the jury is still out on non-touch enabled devices. I like the more efficient networking, Hyper-V, and a few more in-depth components that the average user won't even realise occurs under the skin, along with the impact of full screen apps is at times better, but on a touch pad only laptop, every now and then your fingers cramp as they contort into shapes that just aren't natural.

So, enough about me...

Cheers

[Phases]

Welcome, glad you joined up. Do you like the RT?

[gytrr1]

Hi Phases, yes I think it's a quality piece of kit. I can only hope app developers jump on board quickly, and I mean quality app developers. The RT is a little restrictive for me, but given its closed OS, ideal for a lot of people less adept with keeping their PC clean, at least until the first lot of exploits start rolling out. I'd see an advantage with it corporately as well, as assuming you can set up an in house store, you can seriously restrict what gets installed, which makes sys admin a bit of a breeze.

It's a hell of a lot more stable than the droid tablets...

[Phases]

Hi Phases, yes I think it's a quality piece of kit. I can only hope app developers jump on board quickly, and I mean quality app developers. The RT is a little restrictive for me, but given its closed OS, ideal for a lot of people less adept with keeping their PC clean, at least until the first lot of exploits start rolling out. I'd see an advantage with it corporately as well, as assuming you can set up an in house store, you can seriously restrict what gets installed, which makes sys admin a bit of a breeze.

It's a hell of a lot more stable than the droid tablets...

I've managed to lock mine up a couple times. I just kinda chop it up to you know, being Windows. :P All in all I love it, but I really want the Pro. That is, if it has more of a tablet feel than a laptop feel. I'm afraid it'll be one of those deals where you will want to shut if off when you're not using it, and you'll need to keep the fan or intake unblocked, etc etc.

But being an open OS I really feel like I need it. I know I can just RDP to my main but.. I would really like to install several full blown programs on that thing. If I could, I'd be happy as can be.

[gytrr1]

LOL... I did trawl through the application and system logs, cause I've added sym-links to my docs and videos to the file server, just to see if there was any effect. There's some interesting errors and warnings. But being Windows, all the iterations of windows from 3.11 on, you know there's going to be some stability updates coming , a bit like owning a Nokia... You know it's a quality piece of kit, but dammit, the software sucks for the first 6 months... By more stable than the droid tablets, I'm talking specifically about the Asus (Slider) and Acer (501) ones we have at home.

We also had a bit of an epiphany today... We can't get Netflix here yet (unless you buy VPN services and so on) so last night we thought we'd try the Xbox Movie service... Rented a HD release... Well, it's certainly HD... Better quality than the offerings from foxtel and Bigpond for the same price (once you convert the stupid points system to actual $). Now, buying a digital copy outright works out cheaper than buying a new release blu-ray by about $6.00 here. Bare in mind, we live in a very remote, small mining town, so we resort to buying online or planning a trip to the next major town (1.5 hours drive away).

The RT is made for watching movies. So, the child has expressed an interest in getting one for Christmas after seeing one of the HD movies stream to it from the file share, and we currently have a portable blu-ray player strapped to the headrest in the car for her. We've decided to stop buying discs, purchase movies from Xbox, sync them to a USB drive and the file server, and see how they look. That way, we can buy a 2TB USB drive, plonk her in the back seat in the car, with a car charger and the drive plugged in, and hey presto, no more discs getting damaged...

For DRM, the WiFi hotspot in the car should enable the transfer of license...

[Joe F.]

Welcome!