Microsoft Surface Unboxing with Touch Cover Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
5,026 words · ~25 min read
0:07
Welcome to my much awaited I hope unboxing and first look at the Surface
0:13
from Microsoft. This is a 10.6 in tablet
0:16
and recom recommends represents
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Microsoft's first foray into their own
0:23
branded hardware. So I actually went to the Microsoft store and bought this
0:28
today. If you follow me on Twitter, then you already know that um there was a bit
0:32
of a lineup, but I had like a reservation thing. I got the kit that
0:36
comes with the touch cover and the
0:39
Windows RT tablet. I got a 32 gig Surface. Remember, a 32 gig Surface has
0:44
a Windows operating system installed on it. So, even though it's 32 gigs, you
0:49
don't actually get really that close to 32 gigs of actual storage on your
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Surface tablet because the Windows OS is
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a little bit bigger than we're used to seeing from something like an Android or
1:01
an Apple mobile operating system. So, inside I have the Surface box itself
1:07
here and then I've also got a separate box that has the touch cover. So, touch
1:12
cover is one of the biggest innovations
1:15
that Microsoft has really brought about with Surface and that it's a nice little
1:19
kind of suedy cover that's actually yeah
1:23
quite quite nice. Wow. It feels really dense like it's a like it's a material
1:28
that's not just going to kind of crap out after a little while. And then the
1:33
keyboard itself, which is a touch sensitive keyboard. So, they've here Oh,
1:36
funny funny. Okay. iPhone size comparison. So the uh so the cover
1:40
itself is not much thicker than something like Apple's smart cover. It
1:44
feels very durable. It's quite rigid and then they've actually built a keyboard
1:48
into it. So the keyboard is touch sensitive which means that you type by
1:53
by touching the space bar or touching the keys and uh and it's pressure
1:59
sensitive but there's actually no tactile feedback. Now there's a separate
2:03
type cover available that does have a lowprofile keyboard. I'll look at that
2:06
one later as a separate unboxing. But for now, we're going to focus on the
2:10
touch cover. It has again kind of a velvety suedy feel to it, so it won't
2:14
scratch up your screen as long as you don't have any sort of rocks or debris
2:18
or anything caught in it, which shouldn't be that much of an issue. The
2:21
Surface uses a proprietary six pin connector for data and power for the
2:25
touch cover itself, and it uses magnets to attach to the Surface. Uh, it
2:30
actually has a touchpad as well, and then looks like left and right mouse
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click button. So, that's kind of cool. I haven't seen one in person yet, so I'm
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very excited about this. You've got proprietary keys up here, and you'll
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notice there's no F1 to F uh 12 keys.
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However, you can use the function key to enable those buttons. So, if you wanted
2:49
to press Alt F4, then you'd go alt function and then F12 34 in order to
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press that. Uh, okay. So, included pieces relatively, yeah, okay looking
3:02
power brick. It's around the size of the Apple one. and then uses a magnetic
3:05
connector here to charge the Surface tablet itself. Um, very, very slick
3:11
looking. There you go. Cameraman can have a look at that if he sees fit. Uh,
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the There you go. The prongs just fold up like that. Just a Windows RT sticker.
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You could even take that off and it'd be completely clean and just black all
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along except for the safety notifications and whatnots. Inside here,
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once we take out the Surface, don't worry, we'll look at that soon. We've
3:31
got Microsoft's included little brochure. Getting around in Windows RT.
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So, you swipe from the right to open up the charms menu. Uh, if you This is
3:42
French. If you move your, if you're using the trackpad, move your pointer
3:45
into any corner. Okay. To access charms, get around Surface. So, they've got
3:49
everything kind of labeled there. Hardware setup, software. Okay. So, this is a very, very basic guide. There's
3:54
really not a whole lot there. Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT. So, something to
3:59
note about Windows RT is that oh, look at this. Environmentally friendly
4:03
packaging. They're using u just kind of a paper like a see look you can tell
4:09
that it's like a recycled paper because it's well I'm assuming it's a recycled
4:13
paper because it's made of sort of bits and pieces of of other kinds of paper.
4:18
You know what? Let's not make any assumptions. Let's just say that it's
4:21
made of paper and is therefore recyclable if nothing else. And I can't
4:25
get that to go back together. So, surface
4:29
plastic. Here we go. I'm very excited
4:32
about this hinge, the kickstand as they call it. Okay. It's not light. Actually,
4:39
it's not light, but Microsoft spent a lot of time optimizing the weight
4:44
distribution inside the Surface to make it so that however you're holding it, it
4:49
should be comfortable and it should feel similar regardless of which side you're
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holding it from. So, the idea is that even though the weight is a little bit
4:58
on the heavier side for a tablet, it's not like a Galaxy Tab 10.1 or even the
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ASUS Vivo Tab, which is very light, also a Windows RT device. It feels okay to
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hold. I also like the squared corners. These are a 22°
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um angled edges all around the entire
5:16
outside of the tablet. Rounded corners are nice in theory. However, you can
5:22
slip off them. And this has a bit of a catch to it. So you can see it's not
5:26
quite just rounded and smooth, but you can actually hold on to it. Okay, so I I
5:31
like that so far. The kickstand itself, I have not sure how to operate it yet,
5:35
but there you go. So you pull it out there, makes that noise, I guess they
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they apparently spent a lot of time on the noise of the kickstand. And when you
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close it, they're comparing it to a luxury door luxury car door closing. I'm
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not quite sure I'd make that comparison, but I do like the way it slows down
5:53
before it hits it so that it doesn't close too hard. Very nice. Uh, yes. So,
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the reason for the 22° edges here is so that it'll actually sit flush when you
6:04
have the kickstand out and when you're using it. It's nice to have this integrated as opposed to being part of
6:08
the smart cover. if you guys have a smart cover or a similar type cover for
6:12
your iPad. I have a smart cover clone. And what I don't like about it is that
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it has over time become far less rigid.
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So, it's much harder to prop the device up on the smart cover. Whereas something
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like a kickstand I don't think has the potential to ever really become rigid.
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You can see the actually you can hear you can see the design that goes into
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these hinges. It's got one, two, three
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hinges here that are all look very, very robust. I'm just going to angle this
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towards the light a little bit more so you can see in there, I hope. Okay. All
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right. There's the connector down here.
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Okay. Yeah. So, let's do the physical tour. There's your charging spot. USB
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port. That is a USB port, like U with an S and a B, and you can plug in pretty
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much whatever you want as long as there's driver support. So, things like
6:59
printers are going to be quite limited at the beginning. However, any kind of
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input devices, keyboards, mice, um
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webcams potentially, again, it'll come down to support should work in this USB
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port. Uh right there, we've got what appears to be micro HDMI out, speaker
7:14
here, and a speaker here. Yes, stereo speakers. Take that, Apple. Um and not
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positioned such that they'll be covered when you're operating the tablet. The
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tablet is clearly meant to be used in a horizontal uh landscape orientation. So,
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there's your light sensor. There's your webcam. There's something. I don't know
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what that is. Um, and then the Windows
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uh button is right here. So, if you use it like this, it'll be kind of weird if
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you're using uh like a Skype video chat or anything like that. Power buttons
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here. And I am afraid I don't actually
7:48
quite know what these are. So, we'll have to Ha. Oh, it doesn't even say.
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Look at that. It doesn't actually point at the speakers on this thing. So, there
7:56
you go. Uh, I'm going to assume there more. Check this out, though. So, the uh
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the rearfacing camera is actually oriented a little bit strangely. If you
8:06
can't see, then sorry, but it's also
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oriented 22° off. So, what that means is
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if you pull the kickstand out and place the surface down on something, that
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camera will be looking out level now, which means that if you're walking
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around sort of, you know, using it as a
8:24
camera in order to take a picture straight ahead of you, you wouldn't hold
8:28
it out like this. Instead, you'd hold it more like this. So, you're looking down
8:32
at it so that it'll take a level picture. Okay, moving right along. We've
8:37
got another headphone jack, volume rocker, and really nothing nothing
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extraordinary in terms of IO other than that USB port. So, the setup process is
8:48
doesn't take that long, but I don't know if I'll bring you guys along for the
8:52
whole thing. Of course, we're reading the ULA very
8:56
carefully. Um, Microsoft spent a lot of time on the screen as well. So, even
9:00
though the screen is only 1366 x 768, it
9:04
is using a bit of a special technology
9:07
that allows the panel itself to be much
9:11
closer to the to your eyes than Okay, so
9:15
there's a there's a few layers. There's your glass layer, there's your uh there's your touchcreen interface layer,
9:20
there's your actual LCD panel layer. And
9:23
what they're trying to do is they're trying to minimize the air gaps in between, get them as close as possible
9:28
because what that does is it reduces reflectivity. So while the surface is
9:32
reflective, it'll be more difficult to make out the details of the cameraman
9:36
based on what I'm seeing already in it than it would be with something that had
9:40
a bigger air gap. That's where that's where that innovation comes from. So
9:45
give me a sec, guys. I'm just going to get the wireless setup and we'll be back. I missed a small detail before.
9:51
Actually, a pretty major detail. Um, the micro SDXC port is here under the
9:57
kickstand. So, not around the edge. It's something you'll never see once you put
10:00
it in there. It'll be completely covered. Just like that. I wonder if you
10:04
can pry the kickstand up without Oh, yeah, you can. That's not That's not
10:07
actually too difficult. So, I want to show you guys how the touch cover
10:11
attaches. So, cameraman actually did this when we were off camera, so I don't
10:15
Oh, okay. Wow. Um, okay. Okay. So, it actually
10:21
aligns itself pretty easily even though, see, you can see the orientation is not
10:25
even close and it just kind of kajjiggers
10:30
itself correctly without any difficulty. Now, you've seen people doing this on
10:34
the internet, but I'm actually going to do it live here for you guys just to
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show that it's not going anywhere. Now, cameraman's take on this form factor,
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and we're going to do the iPhone comparison again. That's how thick it is. Um, with the touch cover, is that
10:47
it's bulky. To which I would reply, okay, yes, it is bulky compared to your
10:53
iPad 2 or your iPad 3 because it is a
10:56
slimmer device and this does weigh more. The touch cover, what I didn't realize
11:00
about it is I was kind of going, "Yeah, it's really thin. It's really thin." It does weigh more than, you know, most
11:06
tablet covers will. But if you compare
11:09
this not to a tablet but to a notebook because remember this device is actually
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capable of being a productivity tool unlike most notebooks which aren't even
11:18
close to that because of the fact that it does have a
11:24
notebookable notebook ready resolution of 1366 x 768. You can attach a full
11:30
keyboard to it. Um and it does have Microsoft Office. That to me makes a
11:34
very big difference. Now, this is my very first time with the Touch Cover.
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I'm going to fire up Word. And there's been a lot of talk about how does the
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Touch Cover compare to typing on a real
11:47
keyboard. So, let's go with Hell. No, that's not what I meant
11:52
to say. Hello world. This is me. Wh
11:55
Okay, I missed one. This is my first attempt on the touch cover. I think I'm
12:03
Okay, missed an M. doing pretty well.
12:06
So, is it perfect? No. But there are bumps here. Well, they're not bumps.
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They're actually gaps in the letters that will give you some idea. If you
12:14
just kind of go like this, it's not going to detect any button presses cuz
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it's pressure sensitive. So, the pressure Whoops, that was just a typo.
12:24
Sensitive touch cover may take some getting used to.
12:31
Very responsive though. Um, so there's no there's no delay. There's no there's
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no lag. There's no weirdness that's been associated with some Bluetooth keyboards
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uh in the past. The touchpad's not bad. I wish it was a little bit bigger, but
12:44
there's only there's only so much you can do. Um, accuracy when you're moving
12:48
really really slowly, I'd say, is not as good as I'd like. You can see it kind of
12:52
drifting a little bit there. And I I
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don't know what they can do about that because of sort of the fuzzy felt kind
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of material that they're using. I don't know how you maintain that kind of accuracy without a more um without a
13:04
more smooth surface that to use. So,
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Metro UI uh start button will do that.
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Um oh, in theory, will
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it What are we doing here? Start button.
13:17
There we go. What does that one
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do? Okay. Well, that one does it. Um the
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modern UI. So, what apps can you use on
13:27
this thing? You will have to shop in the Microsoft store because this is an ARM
13:32
architecture device. This is using a Tegra 3 processor which is a quad-core
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processor but not like like the fastest mobile processor in the world by any
13:40
stretch these days. Um what that means is there's no backwards compatibility
13:44
with your normal Windows devices. Surface Pro is coming and Surface Pro
13:48
will be an x86 device which means you can install anything you want in this
13:52
one. The desktop is Whoops, that's weather. Uh the
13:57
desktop is available, but it's almost uh
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the only things you can really do are things like accessing your classic task
14:06
manager, your per your resource monitor,
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your um your office suite, which they haven't
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really changed the interface much um compared to what we've seen on desktop
14:18
versions. You can use the file explorer and you can actually use that with the
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USB port. you have access to where Windows is actually installed. So, you
14:26
can see there's 17 gigs free out of our uh 32 gigs total. So, you can, you know,
14:30
users and you can browse and you can move files around just the way you would
14:34
on a real computer, but you can't go and install like CPUZ to tell you about the
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processor in here. It just doesn't work that way. So, the Pro will be x86. So,
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you're going to be doing mostly everything from this UI here. And the
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animations are very, very smooth. Microsoft's worked very hard on making
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sure that they don't have some of those early Android sort of
14:58
uh awkwardness things going on where the
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animations start to look very jerky if you do certain things. So the store,
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everything will be through the store. An app written for the modern UI or the
15:09
Metro UI, whatever you want to call it, should be compatible with Windows 8 and
15:13
with Windows RT, even though they're really not the same thing, just with a
15:16
recompile. It's just older apps where you're going to run into that difficulty
15:20
and it'll take time for things to get updated. I mean, you've got your
15:23
Netflix, New York Times, it'll take, again, it'll take time, but it's
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Microsoft. They'll find a way to get the right things released. Uh, people are
15:30
complaining, especially reviewers, about the lack of a Facebook or a Twitter app.
15:34
Um, especially from the start. There's a new egg app. Come on, guys. Um, got to
15:39
go getting in my video here. And I think that pretty much
15:44
covers it for now.
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Now, it's possible cameraman and I screwed something up because while it was setting up, we were playing around
15:53
with the keyboard. Uh, but now that we've done a quick reboot, everything is
15:57
working correctly. So, the Windows button now works. Swiping in from the
16:01
right. Aha, charms menu. So, that is where you'll access your search.
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Although it's totally unnecessary to do that because you can just
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type control panel and you don't even
16:13
have to open up the search in order to search for something which I think is
16:16
fantastic. Sharing is uh going to be well for sharing things. Nothing can be
16:20
shared from the desktop. It's contextual. Um let's go back to the
16:24
metro modern UI. Modern UI um settings.
16:28
So these are really smart the way they've got this implemented. I love the
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way that they've done volume and power where it actually just readjusts where
16:36
it is to where you left it off and then you can go up or down from there. Same
16:40
thing with screen brightness. So, you can always access settings like screen
16:43
brightness without digging through your menus. If you're someone like me who's constantly tinkering with screen
16:47
brightness, you're going to appreciate stuff like this as you move from, you
16:51
know, darker rooms to brighter rooms or whatever else the case may be. Swiping
16:55
from the bottom and from the top are things that are going to be uh specific
17:00
to given applications. So here we're in Internet Explorer 10. You can change a
17:04
lot of settings in IE10 through the modern UL. Actually, you can't really
17:08
change any settings in IE10 through the modern UI. See, there's a few internet
17:12
options here, but most of them are going to be changed anything more advanced
17:16
from the desktop Internet Explorer. And you
17:22
can use this one if you prefer. Remember this is Internet Explorer 10 fully flash
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enabled unlike other mobile platforms now. So that's something that may matter
17:30
to certain people like me for example. So let's go back to our modern UI. So
17:35
let's go ahead and open a couple things in open a new tab. Hold it down. Open a
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new Whoops. Copy link. Nope. I pressed the wrong thing. Open link in new tab.
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So we've got a few tabs. This is how it's handling tab browsing. You scroll
17:50
down from the top and then you navigate to whichever one that you want. You got
17:54
a nice little preview there. You can also add tabs this way and then just key
17:58
in manually what you want. So, for example, ponies. Uh we could look at
18:02
pictures of ponies on the internet very quickly on the Surface uh from
18:06
Microsoft. Swiping in from the left hand
18:09
side gives you access to a multitasking
18:12
sort of menu here. Since we've only got one Oh, yeah. Right. Screen sharing. So,
18:16
there's true multitasking on Windows RT. You could have um like Skype running
18:21
here with a video preview. You could have a messenger application. You can
18:25
have anything you want actually running from either side. Um oh, actually I
18:30
don't know. I don't remember how you do it this way. No, that's not right.
18:36
Uh wow. How do I do that? Ah, here. Okay.
18:40
So, here's task switching. Give me a sec. I'll figure out how that works. Give me one moment. So, let's fire up
18:46
the maps app and it'll just use GPS to
18:49
zone in on wherever we happen to be. I've seen a lot of complaints about
18:52
application loading time for me. I'm still using an iPhone 4, so it doesn't
18:55
bother me that much, but that's where we are. If you want to search for something
18:59
nearby, then you can just kind of go McDonald's.
19:03
And in theory, really, no results were
19:06
found for my search. I've never used Bing Maps before, so
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um it's possible that I'm doing it wrong
19:14
somehow, but uh let's go with NCIX and
19:18
see if it manages to find an Ah, yes. So, NCIX is more important to Microsoft
19:23
than McDonald's, apparently, which is awesome. So, it shows us a bunch of
19:27
different ones. You can browse between them like this. I promised to show you
19:30
guys how the how the multitasking or task switching works. So, what you do is
19:34
you drag in from the left and then back out and you can easily switch between
19:38
any of the apps that you have open. It's extremely fast and feels very smooth.
19:43
You can go all the way out to the desktop where we have a word document
19:46
that we're working on. And then you can also
19:50
um bring any of those applications out to the forefront like this. And then you
19:55
can also pin them to the side just like that. So that's how that whole thing
20:01
works. So, we're playing back Big Buck Bunny in
20:06
1080p. And the realization Oh. Oh, we
20:09
figured out how to put tasks over here as well. Is that it is a little bit on
20:13
the cho Well, it's not a little bit choppy. It is choppy. It's not quite
20:16
It's not quite able to do that yet. This is using the uh Is this using the modern
20:22
browser? Yeah, modern browser versus the desktop version browser. However, it's
20:26
watchable. It's certainly watchable. I do want to show you guys how to do this
20:30
though. So if you wanted to move uh let's say okay so there I think you guys
20:34
get the point. So we've got our photos app open and if we wanted our photos app
20:40
on the right hand side we open that first. Then we take maps and we don't do
20:43
that. We go to our photos app. Sorry I'm still getting used to it. This is
20:48
literally my first time sitting down with this. Then we take maps and we
20:51
bring it out here. Then we go like this. Now we can see our wonderful photos
20:56
which we haven't added any of here while we use the maps app in the foreground.
21:00
And you can switch them back and forth like that or even swipe the whole thing away. If you want to close an app, you
21:05
just take it and drag it all the way down to the bottom and it will be
21:11
closed. So, it's not using up any resources. However, you do have 2 gigs of RAM. So, unless you're running heavy
21:16
duty applications, you shouldn't run up against that too often because you'll be
21:19
CPU limited in more cases than not
21:23
compared to being RAM limited. So, I think that pretty much wraps it up for
21:27
my Windows uh Windows RT and Microsoft
21:30
Surface first impressions. It's not that warm. It's a touch warm here, but it's
21:35
very localized. The edges are still quite cool, which is nice because that
21:39
means when you're holding it like this, you're not going to get that sweaty
21:42
palms thing going on uh that you do with some with some mobile devices. Uh, the
21:47
iPad 3 in particular I have a hard time dealing with, whereas the iPad 2 I find
21:52
is just just spectacular.
21:57
Um, so what's the point of all this? To
22:01
me, this isn't a tablet so much as it is a laptop replacement, and it's not quite
22:06
a laptop replacement because you can't do the same kind of serious work on this
22:10
that you can on a laptop. So, we're at kind of this um this point of of either
22:15
convergence or divergence depending on how you want to look at it where these
22:19
kinds of devices where you can use the touchcreen to interact here, you can use
22:23
the mouse and the keyboard to interact here are not going away. This is this is
22:27
here to stay and I really like the usage model. I'm just not quite sure where it
22:32
fits in with this whole RT armpowered thing and I'm really excited to check
22:36
out Surface Pro which is coming soon. And thank you for checking out this
22:39
unboxing and first look online is tech tips and don't forget to
22:46
subscribe. A cameraman sort of put it his way and he's more of an Apple guy,
22:50
but his comment is this is for people who don't want the lockdown restriction
22:55
of the iPad. They want more productivity than that, but aren't necessarily typing
22:59
5,000word essays on a regular basis. So, this is good enough. Also, I realized I
23:05
never did show the camera app. The camera app is pretty straightforward. So, you got your 720p camera on the
23:09
front. You can switch cameras like that. And like I said, see, it's looking
23:12
straight ahead in spite of the fact that the kickstand is out. Motion's pretty
23:17
smooth. Uh, camera options are pretty limited. So, you can adjust your
23:20
resolution or you can adjust your audio
23:24
device. That's about it. And then you can switch from video mode to cam. Oh,
23:27
that's fast. Video mode or not video mode. So, let's go ahead and point it.
23:32
So, this is this is how I'd use it to point it straight ahead. See? which is
23:35
actually kind of nice as long as you're filming at this level. But if you were like trying to see over a crowd at a
23:40
concert or something with your tablet and take a video, I mean people who take video on their tablets in public though,
23:45
no offense, but um yeah, I mean if you were trying to do that then it'd be kind
23:49
of awkward. But here, let's go ahead and we'll look at this plant. Uh not super
23:53
not super highlight sort of scenario here, but we can go ahead and uh you
23:57
just touch the screen in order to take a picture. And what I meant to do was take
24:00
a video so we can capture video of this. This frame rate is not particularly
24:03
high, but there's Ooh, the plant. And
24:08
there's the bottom of the plant. And we can stop it just like that. There's not
24:12
really a delay, though. That's kind of nice. So, let's see how fast the shutter is here. Let's take a picture of some
24:20
cars. That's nice. So, I'm going go ahead and go back to the main thing. And
24:24
then we can open our Whoopsy daisies. That's not what I was looking for. I
24:28
need that. Sorry. Like I said, still getting used to it, guys. Uh, and then
24:31
I'm looking for the photos app, which I have now lost. Uh, what? Yeah, there it
24:37
is. It's right in right in the middle. Right in the middle of like everything.
24:41
Pictures library now has all the pictures I took. There you go. Camera
24:44
roll. Just like that. There's the video.
24:49
Okay, let's see if what plays like on that. I meant to do was take a video so
24:52
capture video of this. Frame rate is not particularly high, but there's Okay,
24:57
we're done for real this time. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips
25:00
and my luxury car audio. Uh, luxury car
25:04
audio. I'm still sick. I'm still a little like, you know, not quite, you
25:09
know, uh, car door tablet that I got
25:12
going on here.