I have been anxious to get my hands on a Surface tablet from Microsoft since the company showed it off with Windows 8. It looks sleek and with that thin keyboard cover could be a "real" PC.
Microsoft is desperate to break into the huge tablet market currently owned by Apple's iPad. The company totally changed its flagship OS solely to crack into that market, even at the risk of upsetting a lot of people. There is no doubt that the objective for Microsoft was to break into the tablet market with Windows 8.
Windows 8 will come in two flavors, full Windows 8 and a lite version (Windows RT). The former will run all the fancy new Windows tablet apps (that largely don't exist yet)
and all of the old Windows programs. The latter tablets will only run the former apps. Make sense?
Further complicating trying to figure out who might benefit from a Windows 8 tablet is the lack (or not) of a keyboard. Even those in the know have assured me that to take full advantage of a Windows 8 tablet, to get much work done at all as a matter of fact, a keyboard is required. Not recommended, required.
That tells me that even those familiar with Windows 8 don't see it as competing with real tablets like the iPad or the Android models. Those are 'consumption' devices, not 'creation' devices and the obvious purpose of a Windows 8 tablet is to do both. Which requires a keyboard. And probably full Windows, not the RT version.
Microsoft has gone all-in with a complete redesign of Windows 8 for the wrong market. Windows tablets have been around for a decade and Windows users didn't buy them. Sure Microsoft will sell some tablets to the Windows faithful, but the mainstream consumer they really want will run screaming.
No comments:
Post a Comment