Beamer wrote on Sep 27, 2012, 16:20:

Creston wrote on Sep 27, 2012, 16:05:

Beamer wrote on Sep 27, 2012, 15:26:
Actually, tablets are the reason that corporations have to move to Windows 8. By this point most executives are carrying around tablets, but they can't do most of what they need to on them.

Behold: Surface Pro.

Do you even WORK in a corporation? Most corporations have their execs try out tablets, and get rid of them again in a few weeks because they can't get any serious work done on them.

Every single one of our execs wanted an iPad 2. Every single one of our execs has turned it back in, save one (who just gives it to his kid anyway) and have gone back to laptops.

Nobody who does any serious amount of work can get said work done on a tablet. A tablet is a toy, not a device to work 10 hours a day on.

Creston

Beamer wrote on Apr 24, 2012, 07:39:

iPads aren't quite there yet, to me actually really far, but I've never once met a person that thinks it can replace a computer. Not in real life. I've only met people that think they can be used for media consumption (which is how I use mine) or note taking (which is how everyone in my office tries to use theirs, though most people make it no more than two weeks before giving up.)

And that's me being more polite. The week before the iPad came out my boss at the time got his hands on one. He described it to me as the best note-taking device in the world. He then complained about it not having an arrow-up key, complained about a few other things, then said it needed an external keyboard. Best note-taking device my ass.

Much more recently, every damn exec at my current job bought an iPad some time in 2011. You'd see the stupid thing at every meeting the first week, a few meetings the second week, then never again.

But a funny thing happened - the company started giving them to executives. And it started "going green," meaning no more paper handouts at meetings. Execs were forced to bring their now-free ipads to meetings to read along with the discussion materials. And they started finding more uses for them. After a few weeks of being forced they were dependent. Our company isn't alone - this has become extremely common in larger corporations.

The thing is - iPads suck at this. You can't mark up the document you're following along with. You can barely even take notes, especially not without a stylus.

Surface Pro, being a full-fledged laptop in a smaller form factor, can change this. Hopefully the stylus issue is resolved, but more importantly they'll have access to the software they need. They'll be able to hook a mouse and keyboard up to it. It will be the only thing they'll need to travel. Rather than simply having a device to augment their laptop in meetings they'll actually have their laptop in meetings (something not really viable right now as you're then hiding behind a laptop.)
Will this work out? Who knows? We haven't seen anything but potential yet, but that potential is certainly far above what iPads are doing right now.