Your personal downsides of the SurfaceRT?

drhoros said:

Support for older micro SD Cards. I cant my SD cards to work only the new SDHCX cards work

When will MSFT release the final version of its Office 2013 products to the Surface users ? I already have it on my PC but the Surface still has a preview of Office 2013

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The Surface supports MicroSD, MicroSDHC and MicroSDHX cards; I've tried all three in mine. What happens when you try? Are you sure you're pushing it in all the way until it locks?

As for the final version of Office 2013, it's waiting for you. But it's considered an "optional" upgrade, so it's not pushed automatically through Windows Update. Head for the Desktop app, and run Windows Update from there. There, you'll see it waiting as an Optional app, waiting to be selected.

I've got a few hangups, which hopefully time will rectify some. Some issues probably would be fine if I wait it out and get the Pro, but I want to see what reviews like it are for battery and heatbuildup.

Right now for me it is;
-Lack of apps, hopefully to improve
-Sound (haven't looked at the fix yet, but I will!)
-IE10 - Not a fan overall, I would really like my Chrome back
-Lag/Freezes. I've not had this happen as much as I see some of these reviews mention. Maybe it's because i'm not attempting to bog it down. If i get a freeze, i tend to close the app and reopen it with no issues. Had this happen the most on IE10 and AppStore.

Likes (I know it isn't a part of topic technically, but I feel its only fair)
-Screen- I didn't realize it had the widescreen aspect until i opened the box. I was originally a little put-off but now I love it.
-Type-pad- Surprisingly comfortable for a man with big hands. Never liked the keyboards on the ipads or other tablets, but it is easy to use on here. The ability to flip it behind and just hold the tablet for finger input is amazing.
-USB support - Can't plug everything into it, but i love that i can put a flash drive or a wireless mouse to it for use.
-Windows based!- I am a technician in a school district that stretches 1000pcs over 7 buildings. We just upgraded the buildings to finally have wireless and I have found a love for Remote App server off our Multipoint box. I can load all my x86/x64 apps right on my Surface as long as I have wireless connection to the network. It helps kill the initial sadness for not having a Pro, and it keeps the workload off my tablet and on the server. One software is inventory barcodes, so I can now easily do barcode scanning with my USB barcode reader and this light tablet. As compared to the laptop I was having to lug around for it Command prompt to map my Domain/AD network drives and I have a functional pc which is SO easy to carry around.

IE - no text reflow

Lots to like about Surface but:

Unless I missed this fix; There is no text reflow / word wrap on IE or on the news app!
- what gives? Sorely miss this coming from years on android.

other than this:- -lag , occasional multi-screen not working are just bugs I can live with .

Overall alot of potential for Surface.The same feeling when I had the Touchpad. Good intro to the tablet word but needs lots of improvements. I hope MS will continue to improve this and not solely focus on Surface Pro.
Luv the fact that someone else other the apple came out withe the touch keyboard (truly a smart tech - one of the best consumer tech's of 2012)

For me the killer isbthe music app. It just sucks in my opinion

Sent from my SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app

No gapless playback in the music app is my #1 annoyance right now.

severinca said:

For me the killer isbthe music app. It just sucks in my opinion

Sent from my SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app

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Does RT have the windows media player? Forgot to look for it the last time I test it...
IMO WMP is much better than music app, the downside is you cannot control the music with volume control.

what is driving me mad most is that my surface doesn't support mms:// links.

i was so proud of my htc hd7 with wp7, that was able to play stream video-files right out of the box. surface makes me sad from this prospective..

---------- Post added at 04:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:54 PM ----------

bountygiver said:

Does RT have the windows media player? Forgot to look for it the last time I test it...
IMO WMP is much better than music app, the downside is you cannot control the music with volume control.

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i think, no.

for any video files xbox player is used.

You can search the app store and sort by ratings or newest just by using * in the search box. I find mine fast, responsive, the right weight and I have literally no complaints. Thanks to this forum, I've found tweaks to fix any concerns I had. I am angry that the citrix app is so limited because we use it here and it should work with a broader array of servers but it's quite limited. Other than that, no complains. I am patient and know that it's new and growing.

severinca said:

For me the killer isbthe music app. It just sucks in my opinion

Sent from my SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app

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For me, this was the biggest frustration. Yes I did the SD card / Disk Management work around to get Music Library working. However, if you pop-out the sd card or add more music files on the SD card later, the Music App doesn't automatically refresh to show those new tracks that you just added. In order to get it to show those new tracks, you'll have to repeat the whole process (trick) again and even worse, you'll have to slightly change the C:\folder names\ and also remove the old ones.... <<<<< This ...is the biggest frustration for me. I tried the Multimedia 8 and it was just ok.

It is as if Microsoft decided to push commerce (wants us to buy music from the Xbox Music store) over usability (most of us already have our music that we've acquired over donkey years). It takes a while to get pple to start buying music from the store.... It's as if they don't want you to play your own music..all the engineers cared about during their design was for us to buy music from them and not so much thought about how we'll play our personal collections. The scrolling up and down is quite annoying. No way to do a quick jump to an alphabet or search. What were the software designers thinking? It looks nice at first but once u start using it, it's garbage....I was so frustrated to the point that I uninstalled the Music App.... I'm still considering returning the Surface and perhaps re-purchase it on the 2nd iteration.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ MS software engineers.

a real pain is: i've just come to microcenter, and sundisk microSDXC 64Gb happened out of stock. this is a real pain!

xirsteon said:

For me, this was the biggest frustration. Yes I did the SD card / Disk Management work around to get Music Library working. However, if you pop-out the sd card or add more music files on the SD card later, the Music App doesn't automatically refresh to show those new tracks that you just added. In order to get it to show those new tracks, you'll have to repeat the whole process (trick) again and even worse, you'll have to slightly change the C:\folder names\ and also remove the old ones.... <<<<< This ...is the biggest frustration for me. I tried the Multimedia 8 and it was just ok.

It is as if Microsoft decided to push commerce (wants us to buy music from the Xbox Music store) over usability (most of us already have our music that we've acquired over donkey years). It takes a while to get pple to start buying music from the store.... It's as if they don't want you to play your own music..all the engineers cared about during their design was for us to buy music from them and not so much thought about how we'll play our personal collections. The scrolling up and down is quite annoying. No way to do a quick jump to an alphabet or search. What were the software designers thinking? It looks nice at first but once u start using it, it's garbage....I was so frustrated to the point that I uninstalled the Music App.... I'm still considering returning the Surface and perhaps re-purchase it on the 2nd iteration.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ MS software engineers.

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It may be a bit of a workaround but you could put your new music on an sd card then copy it to the linked drive from there. Then you wont get disconnected from the drive and the media player will pick up the new tracks. Its a right pain that it means you can really go about swapping out cards etc but if your happy with one then it should work (did for me anyway I wont take the card out till I need to upgrade it though ie when they bring out a 120gb micro card).

xirsteon said:

For me, this was the biggest frustration. Yes I did the SD card / Disk Management work around to get Music Library working. However, if you pop-out the sd card or add more music files on the SD card later, the Music App doesn't automatically refresh to show those new tracks that you just added. In order to get it to show those new tracks, you'll have to repeat the whole process (trick) again and even worse, you'll have to slightly change the C:\folder names\ and also remove the old ones.... <<<<< This ...is the biggest frustration for me. I tried the Multimedia 8 and it was just ok.

It is as if Microsoft decided to push commerce (wants us to buy music from the Xbox Music store) over usability (most of us already have our music that we've acquired over donkey years). It takes a while to get pple to start buying music from the store.... It's as if they don't want you to play your own music..all the engineers cared about during their design was for us to buy music from them and not so much thought about how we'll play our personal collections. The scrolling up and down is quite annoying. No way to do a quick jump to an alphabet or search. What were the software designers thinking? It looks nice at first but once u start using it, it's garbage....I was so frustrated to the point that I uninstalled the Music App.... I'm still considering returning the Surface and perhaps re-purchase it on the 2nd iteration.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ MS software engineers.

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Just one thing. I don't know if it can help you solve your problem but did you specify the folders to be "indexed" by windows ? I don't have the surface yet so I can't tell but I saw one step of the process where you set the folders as "indexed" and I thought it was for windows to automatically see changes in the folder.

But then again maybe I just say nonsense

IE lag especially in metro style. It lags in opening up. Sometimes, it just refuses to open. It lags on a bunch of web pages.

I thought since all windows 8 rt tablet doesn't have fragmentation, the apps would be optimized fully.

now I've tested riptide gp and joypack rider, both of them has highly notice-able frame drop. I've tried closing all apps and re-launch, the frame drops are still highly notice-able. so it's either the windows 8 fault or the apps are not optimized enough

the other big annoying thing is the frame drops when playing video. I only tested with 480p avi file, it' not even 720p. Sometimes the screen and the frame dropped. there are some codec that is not supported so it's kinda annoying and un-reliable.

now i'm in the dilemma of love and hate. I love the UI but the apps choices are very limited now and laggy at that. I love the usb plug, microsd support, and cool touch keyboard but the video playback is just horrible. I think I will just return it for now before 15 days limit expired. I would love to buy it again sometimes in the future, maybe the 2nd surface, but as of now, I don't think windows 8 rt is ready for a user like me.

The touchpad on the cover takes too long to recognise that I want to scroll and then too long to recognise that I don't want to scroll any more. Try it. Two finger scroll on something and the mouse will move a few cm before it starts registering a scroll command. Then try and move the pointer immediately after scrolling and it won't move for a second. Very annoying.

Lack of app support. Yes, about 500 apps per day are being added to the store but 99% of them are dross such as "3 famous hindu chants" and "Top 7 automobiles". It will get better in time but for now it's not good at all.

Awful Videos, Photos and Music apps. They are horrible to use and everything feels counter intuitive.

The feeling that RT really isn't going to be around for very long. I dunno, I just can't help feeling that Windows on ARM is going to end up being remembered in the same way that Vista Basic and Windows Me are. Ie. products that shouldn't have happened and were largely ignored. With the strides Intel are making with the Atom SoCs I can't see why the general consumer would purchase an RT tablet over one running x86 windows when both are offered side by side.
Everyone I've shown Surface to has loved it until I tell them that it can't run normal Windows apps at which point the response is usually "I might as well have an iPad then" People seem to want to be able to use the Metro apps when just going around but then want the power a flexibility of full windows once they fold the keyboard out and stick it on the desk. Surface Pro will deliver what people want and unless it's priced way outside of the realms of sensibility then it will be the one that everyone buys.

rilot said:

The feeling that RT really isn't going to be around for very long. I dunno, I just can't help feeling that Windows on ARM is going to end up being remembered in the same way that Vista Basic and Windows Me are. Ie. products that shouldn't have happened and were largely ignored. With the strides Intel are making with the Atom SoCs I can't see why the general consumer would purchase an RT tablet over one running x86 windows when both are offered side by side.
Everyone I've shown Surface to has loved it until I tell them that it can't run normal Windows apps at which point the response is usually "I might as well have an iPad then" People seem to want to be able to use the Metro apps when just going around but then want the power a flexibility of full windows once they fold the keyboard out and stick it on the desk. Surface Pro will deliver what people want and unless it's priced way outside of the realms of sensibility then it will be the one that everyone buys.

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Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing myself... At first, I countered this argument with "It doesn't matter - applications can easily be recompiled for ARM/RT. The real use for Surface RT is going to be for custom Windows applications businesses already run that will simply be recompiled for RT."

But now it turns out I'm hearing the recompiles are not as smooth as one would hope (haven't tried it yet) and the big problem - Surface RT doesn't support Active Directory? WTF? Most companies live and breath on Active Directory. Wouldn't you think a BIG advantage to a Surface RT over an iPad in a corporate environment would be seamless integration with all the crap on an Active Directory domain? For some reason this wasn't included.

I'm sure there might be workarounds/hacks/whatever, but my thought is there shouldn't have to be. It should have played out like this - a clueless executive says "I want an iPad!" The network guys say "well, you won't be able to do anything on our work network with an iPad, BUT with a Surface you can hook right in to ALL our work bull**** no problem!" Surface sold.

I dunno. Am I wrong on this? (Oh, and I guess I've sort of forked the thread a little... Sorry. Please let me know if this discussion should be somewhere else. I'm happy to move it/delete it or whatever.)

Personal gripe: the crappy music app. It's getting better, but it has a very long way to go still.
The lack of many installable drivers is annoying. I hope MS rectifies that soon, but for some reason they seem in no hurry to do so.

Responding to the poster above me: Windows RT (including Surface) can connect to Exchange servers via ActiveSync, which enables using the company directory (at the basic level, Active Directory is just LDAP). The problem is that RT doesn't support joining domains. That means no signing in with domain credentials, no use of Group Policy for central management, and so on. It turns out that the reason for this restriction is pretty straightforward, though annoying: domains frequently require that PCs which join them run some software. Since third-party desktop apps aren't allowed on RT, that means they wouldn't be able to join those domains. For that reason, MS prohibited domain joining (or so I was told). Of course, it can run scripts (which in my experience are the usual kind of "software" run after domain join) just fine, and there's already a mechanism for running corporate apps, and MS didn't *need* to make the restriction on desktop apps as tight as they did... but c'est la vie. RT does still integrate better with an MS corporate environment than iOS does, but it could certainly have been a lot better.

Lack of flash support for the webcam & microphone, lack of decent apps, having to put any flash websites in a list so I can access them,

GoodDayToDie said:

Responding to the poster above me: Windows RT (including Surface) can connect to Exchange servers via ActiveSync, which enables using the company directory (at the basic level, Active Directory is just LDAP). The problem is that RT doesn't support joining domains. That means no signing in with domain credentials, no use of Group Policy for central management, and so on. It turns out that the reason for this restriction is pretty straightforward, though annoying: domains frequently require that PCs which join them run some software. Since third-party desktop apps aren't allowed on RT, that means they wouldn't be able to join those domains. For that reason, MS prohibited domain joining (or so I was told). Of course, it can run scripts (which in my experience are the usual kind of "software" run after domain join) just fine, and there's already a mechanism for running corporate apps, and MS didn't *need* to make the restriction on desktop apps as tight as they did... but c'est la vie. RT does still integrate better with an MS corporate environment than iOS does, but it could certainly have been a lot better.

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Thanks for the explanation. I understand it, but honestly, I think MS made a mistake here. They should have worked harder to make the Surface "just work" with domains. Ok, a Surface can't run third party apps - but fire off a warning or something to the network guys, move on, and connect to the domain.

The biggest asset MS has is the fact that they are embedded everywhere - especially in mid-sized to large businesses. Every mid-sized to large business I've ever worked for has an MS domain with all sorts of network shares/printers/custom apps to perform some function. A Surface should be able to leverage all of that right out of the box with little or no BS.

It should work like this: Clueless executive is handed a Surface. He'll ask "Ok.. So now what?" IT Guy: "You just type in your same username password as your PC password. You'll be able to access all your same stuff." Clueless Exec: "Same username? Same password?" IT Guy: "Yes." Clueless Executive: "Do you remember what my password is?" IT Guy rolls eyes and says: "Uhh... Well... You'll have to fill out a reset request."

Anyway. It should work painless.