Surface - Interesting or Interrupting?

Surface - Interesting or Interrupting?

This is a review of the Microsoft Surface RT (1st gen)., mainly pointing out its negative features :/ if you would like to read the good bits go to Jacob's post or the Surface website and make up your own mind. These are entirely my own opinions and no others.

After many schools have started to think about purchasing tablets for use in lessons, some choosing iPad's others Microsoft's Surface, the benefits are all there but what is there if you see beneath that, what is the actual reality of their use? What are the issues schools will face, why choose one over another and my first impressions.

First Impressions

When I booted the surface one of the main things that stuck out to me was the long time it took to load up Windows 8 and then get to work. In comparison to an iPad it was slow but the Surface is running a slower, more processor intensive operating system so this is to be expected. I felt it should be more optimised for the device instead of being unique, maybe booting into the Metro interface (Modern UI) with less live tiles and completing other task as and when required rather than loading the desktop and all the icons etc. this would increase load time of apps but make it quicker overall. 

Then came to using the fabric attachable keyboard, it felt counter intuitive even though I was used to typing on touch screens this felt totally different. When it came to using the trackpad it felt unresponsive and I felt some feedback on the buttons would have been useful.

Overall I feel the Surface is a great tablet for work/personal use and is a great portable, although heavy tablet that could be used by anyone. I certainly found it a useful and interesting device to use. A huge reason for picking one up is that it has the full compatibility and full use of Windows 8, this means any program installed on your desktop can also be on your tablet, it also has a full desktop version of Microsoft Office.

Issues for schools

If this is going to be used in education certain features or bypasses need to be prevented, otherwise the devices will not be used for learning but instead students will find ways to waste lesson time, when this affects learning teachers may choose not to use them and replace them with the dreaded textbook!

From my experience students have chosen to waste time taking 'selfies' of themselves, photos of others, and with unrestricted downloads from the app store playing games with their friends. This leaves learning in the sideroad and hopefully with time the novelty will wear off but i fear it may not and students learning will be impacted.

Sadly there are few ways to block these features on the Surface and there is little in the way of third-party apps to provide this type of future, until then this will become an issue for the developers or Microsoft.

Why choose a Surface?

Firstly, the cost, when Microsoft brought out the Surface 2 they offered heavily discounted tablets (60% off the RRP) this swayed a lot of schools away from the the more expensive iPad. Along with the promise of pre-installed Office 2013 Home and Student the deal became even more tempting. Especially as most schools have IT systems which are Microsoft server based, this allows easy access to the servers from the tablet over the existing network.

Specs

Ben