Buy An iPad Now Or Wait For Microsoft Surface?
ZNet’s David Gewirtz says that even though we still don’t know a whole lot about Microsoft’s Surface tablets, including price, availability date, or even how long the battery will last, Microsoft seems to have made a big enough impression with its tablet announcement that some people, particularly enterprise users, are in a quandary as to whether to buy an iPad now or wait for the Surface.
He contends that the case for waiting depends entirely on whether you want a full-powered Windows 8 tablet. Giving a concrete example, Gerwitz says that to connect to his corporate servers, he needs a specialized VPN client that only runs on Windows, and he can’t open a path to his servers unless he have a Windows computer, meaning that even if he takes his iPad, he still needs a Windows laptop to open a gateway to do company work. So a full Windows 8 Surface would be nice to carry and eliminate needing to carry the laptop.
An alternative would be to go with one of the thinner, lighter Ultrabooks, and there’s the question of a pointing device on the full Windows 8 Surface, for which touchscreen input won’t be adequate, and no one is going to live in Metro, so you’re going to need either a stylus, or to hook up a mouse.
But if what you really want is a production-capable tablet, the Surface has an advantage that the iPad can’t (more precisely Apple won’t) touch: a real USB port. Gurwitz notes that with a real version of Windows and a USB port on the device, you should be able to make a Surface into just about anything you want.
On the other hand, he advises that if you just want a tablet and are not interested in running a full version of Windows 8 on it, buy an iPad, and don’t wait for Windows RT on a Surface, noting that he’s not sure there’s any case to be made for Windows RT, based on Metro, running on a Surface, and all you’d get for waiting would be far fewer apps, an unproven system, and limited aftermarket support, with the Windows RT Surface falling into the same class of not-quite-right tablets as the PlayBook, the TouchPad, and every Android tablet out there.
Gurwitz says that despite how annoying he personally finds the iPad (“and I can’t pick it up without being annoyed by something from the stupidly-placed Home button to the constant, never-ending need to log into the App store for everything”), its a solid, proven machine with an almost uncountable number of apps available, plus an ecosystem that will sell you everything from keyboards to cases.
I pretty much agree with Gurwitz. I like my iPad, but I do find it abidingly annoying in many aspects, notably its shortcomings and angularities as a serious productivity tool. Consequently, the prospect of being able to run a full desktop OS like Windows 8 on a tablet intrigues me too. I’m not sure that Microsoft will win me over, but I want to know more.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://zd.net/N7xdiW
