After seeing yet another
“hands-on” review of the Microsoft Surface tablet, I thought it would
be interesting to shed more light on what exactly the journalists who
assembled in Hollywood this week for the Surface launch event actually got to do with the tablets. In short, not a lot. Come along as I explain the hands-off reality of what I saw.
Anticipation, It’s Making Me Wait…
When everyone checked-in before the event started, they were given
small plastic cards with a time printed on them. We weren’t told what
these were for. Mine said 5:50pm. The purpose became clear after the
event ended, though I think we had a pretty good idea what they were
for. These were to allow us some close-up time with Microsoft Surface.
When the event was over, I was really looking forward to when my
appointment would come around. I had about an hour wait, so there was
plenty of time for anticipation. I walked around, had some nibbles and
shot a few photos with my Windows Phone (I believe in accessorizing
properly). Look at how pretty Microsoft made the stage, just like a big
Surface:
Seriously, I was standing in the back of the empty hall talking with
the guy who helped design all this. He was rightly proud of making it
look nice.
The Surface Will See You Now
But enough stage dressing. My time approached. I gathered over near
the front, where we were allowed to go through in groups of about eight.
I had a chance to finally meet Ed Bott, a long-time Windows guru I’ve
followed, who promised me that he’d be delivering a piece to help me, a
Windows 7 user not liking with Metro-happy Windows 8, on how to fix all
that (and he
delivered). Bott’s own impressions of Surface from his tour is
here. Also in our group was, I realized today, Mary Branscombe, who’s “hands on”
piece today tipped me over the edge.
Branscombe is hardly the only journalist who came out of the tour we
were given and wrote a “hands-on” story. I’m looking at you
TechCrunch,
The Verge,
AnandTech and
Mashable,
among others. “Hands-on” was used in plenty of headlines, and that
irked me, because I know we weren’t given any real hands-on with the
device at all. That is, unless you believe holding an iPad or a Kindle
Fire that’s not turned on is “hands-on.” That’s pretty much what it was
like with Surface.
The Keyboard You Can’t Type On
After we entered, we went to the first station, where there were two
guys holding Surface tablets and telling us how awesome the keyboards
were. There were also a variety of keyboards spread out before us in
pretty colors. Here are two of them I moved together, one of the
super-flat ones on top of a more traditional keyboard with keys that
actually moved:
The flat keyboard is really flat. Those iPad covers from Apple? Those
are slightly thicker, I’d say. When you push on this keyboard, there’s
no give like you’d expect from a regular keyboard. It’s like trying to
type by pushing on a paperback book.
Now, the Microsoft guys were rambling on about all the awesome stuff
that makes these keyboards work as well — if not better — than a real
keyboard, all the same stuff we’d already heard about an hour before
during the main event. I wanted to try one of the damn things. You know,
like hook it up to a Surface and see it for myself.
Because, you know, the keyboard is the main feature here. Aside from
that keyboard, Surface just seems to be another Windows 8 tablet. The
keyboard is the edge that Microsoft’s apparently hoping will “wow”
consumers, even though you’d think putting a “real” computer in a tablet
would be “wow” enough.
I asked one of the Microsoft guys if we could try the keyboard with
the Surface he was holding, one that wasn’t on. Nope. Why not? He just
kind of shrugged and said he didn’t know.
What the hell? You’ve dragged 100 journalists out in the middle of
Los Angeles in the afternoon (with LA traffic, imagine crawling slowly
on broken glass), made a big deal about this keyboard on stage and no
one can actually try it? To see for ourselves how well it works? Yeah,
that wasn’t encouraging.
After seven minutes (according to the time stamps between my photos),
we were moved to the next station, where the innards of the Surface
were spread-out. That was to show us what we were being told, that
there’s this awesome material that’s awesomely wonderful blah blah blah.
Oh, and the kickstand makes a carefully engineered clicking sound.
My Bike Has A Kickstand Too; That’s Not Why I Bought It
Now I’m thinking seriously? We’re going to get excited over the
kickstand? Yes, my new iPad cover (and I mean a cover for the “new iPad”
not a new cover for my iPad) doesn’t seem to clip as well as the one
for my iPad 2 did. I’d like it to elevate the iPad more on those rare
occasions I’m trying to maybe eating and also reading the iPad. Usually,
I’m just holding it in my hand. That means I don’t care that much about
a kickstand, much less one that has perfect-pitch sound.
What I did care about was that this station had a keyboard hooked up
to a Surface. Of course, the Surface wasn’t actually on. But at least I
could get a sense of what it was like to open it. In fact, I
was desperately trying to open it as we were being ushered away, because
I kept feeling like it opened “backwards” from what I’d expect:
See, the keyboard is light, unlike the keyboard of a regular laptop.
So, you want it to be on the bottom, which means lifting a heavier
console up, and it felt odd, kind of backwards. But maybe if I’d had
more than 30 seconds to try, I’d have gottten used to it.
No Touching!
There was no time for that, however. You see, as the last group of
the day, there was absolutely no one behind us. That meant, oh — yeah,
there was no reason to rush us other than to keep our time as limited
with the Surface — well parts of Surface — as possible.
No matter. At the last table were live, working units. As with the
previous tables, this station had two Microsoft guys behind it. This is
how we interacted with the units:
That’s not a journalist holding Surface. It’s one of the Microsoft
guys. They’d swing them around with a pretty picture on the front, I
guess so we’d go “ooh” and “ahh.” If we were lucky, we were allowed to
hold one for a few seconds. But if you tried to do anything with it,
bang, it was gone.
Believe me, I know. I tried. I had kept hearing everyone on Twitter
screaming about how no one at Microsoft was saying what the screen
resolution was. Since it was such a big uber-secret, I figured I’d try
to find out.
After asking repeatedly if I could hold one — I felt like a
seven-year-old, “please can I hold it, please can I try, would you mind
if I try” — one of the Microsoft guys gave me a shot. I brought up the
Start screen by hitting the Windows button on the front of the tablet,
hit Desktop to get to the Windows 8 desktop, did a long press guessing
that would bring up the Screen Resolution setting and it did — at which
point, the unit was literally jerked out of my hands.
Oh dear. Did I mention having a Windows Phone? Maybe I should have
waved it around more. Anyway, I don’t think Microsoft guy number one
quite knew what I was doing (you know, trying to actually use the damn
computer the way I’d use a computer), so Microsoft guy number two didn’t
catch on that by no means should I be allowed to hold one of these
devices again. After more begging — “please can I hold it please please
please can I hold it” — I got another maybe 10 seconds to repeat what I
did before. That got the unit jerked away again, with a “Nice trick”
remark.
The Hands-Off Museum
Nice trick? No, you know what’s a nice trick? Bringing out devices
that no one can actually use. I know they work. I could see that one of
the Microsoft guys was all logged into his. But why not let us actually
use them, especially when you’ve made us wait from 10 to 60 minutes
specifically, as we were told, so we’d all have some close-up time with
Surface.
No journalist seems to have really used any of these at the launch
event. None of the hands-on reviews that I’ve read, having been in that
room and toured the stations, have anything that reflects any real
hands-on activity to me. There’s plenty of careful photography that can
give the impression that hands-on was going on. Some of it doesn’t even
illustrate how the last station with the Surface tablets with keyboards
in them literally had a rope to keep us away.
I remember once taking my kids to a museum where you weren’t allowed
to touch things, something odd for them after years of being in hands-on
museums. One of them remarked, quite seriously, “I guess this is a
‘hands-off’ museum.” That’s what the Surface event was like, a hands-off
museum.
But Windows 8 Tablets Are Intriguing
Frankly, I’m far more excited about Windows 8 tablets coming than the
fact Microsoft has its own with a potentially fancy keyboard.
To me the distinguishing point of Surface is Windows 8 itself, the fact
that unlike the iPad, it looks to be a proper desktop computer tucked
into a tablet. Can I really take one of these on the road, use it like a
tablet, then plug back in at home or elsewhere to external monitors or
keyboard to use like a desktop? I see some awesome in that.
Again, like I wrote before, if I could have only two of three
tablets, I’d go iPad then Windows 8 and not Android, because Android’s
not offering me anything I can’t already do on the iPad but with (to me)
what’s not an elegant environment. Windows 8 is different, unique,
seems to offer some compelling features even without the icing of a
kickstand that goes “click” and thin keyboard.
At the SXSW conference in March, Microsoft had a non-Surface Windows 8
tablet out in its booth. It was fascinating to see a tablet with a real
file system:
It was nerdily amazing that I could even make a DOS prompt appear on it:
That was cool, and no one made me stop playing, not even Solitaire:
It’s a pity Microsoft didn’t have enough faith in Surface to let the
journalists there actually have the hands-on that we wanted.
Postscript: Mary’s done a follow-up
post
explaining more about her hands-on experience. I said before, and I’ll
repeat. My intent wasn’t to single her out. Her story was just latest of
several publications writing about a hands-on experience, even though
no one seems to have really used a live unit for more than a few
seconds.
To me, putting a unit in your lap and pretend typing on it isn’t
hands-on. Especially with this keyboard, that tells you nothing. I
pretend typed on it myself at two different stations. That didn’t give
me any sense of how typing on it really works, any more than playing
pretend airplane when I was a kid actually let me fly through the sky.
My experience at SXSW with a Windows 8 tablet was far more
satisfying, because it was just sitting there for anyone to use.
Microsoft Surface is just a Windows 8 tablet with a newfangled keyboard.
If people can really go hands-on with a Samsung Windows 8
tablet, or a Lenovo
one, or an Acer
one,
there shouldn’t be anything that secret about Windows 8 itself on a
Surface nor anything likely to crash, no particular reason not to let
the journalists you’ve assembled use it.
Reviewed by
Danny Sullivan
It's no secret that the
tablet is (finally) starting to become an accepted form factor in SMB
and enterprise businesses. To that end, HP is bucking the "bring your
own device" trend by introducing the HP ElitePad 900, which runs the
full Windows 8 instead of Android, Windows RT, or iOS operating systems.
