The Windows RT Review
by Vivek Gowri & Anand Lal Shimpi on October 25, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Windows RT
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- Windows 8
- Tablets
UI Performance, Storage, and USB Compatibility
by Vivek Gowri and Anand Shimpi
With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft did a great job of taking generation-old hardware and delivering a great user experience in spite of any silicon-level deficiencies. So naturally, with the new Windows UI, we were expecting a very smooth UI regardless of the underlying hardware. And they’ve most certainly delivered on that.
Animation frame rates are consistently good all the way through the UI, easily delivering what appears to be 60 fps for UI transitions. When pushed, Modern UI seems more likely to completely drop animations versus dropping frames, which eliminates the choppy experience you sometimes find in Android. It isn’t a common occurrence, the experience is generally very fluid. This kind of consistently smooth UI is what Google has been striving for in every recent release of Android, dedicating the release of 4.1 to eliminate the dropping of frames in even basic interactions. Scrolling, swiping, snapping, app switching - it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing, RT is just really smooth. Combined with the fluidity of the gestures, the entire system just feels like liquid, there are just no real slowdowns even running on a no-longer impressive SoC like Tegra 3.
| Application Launch Time Comparison | |||||||
| Boot | Web Browser | Maps | Games Center / Xbox | ||||
| Apple iPad (3rd gen) | 32.0s | 1.0s | 2.4s | 1.1s | 1.9s | ||
| Microsoft Surface | 27.7s | 2.6s | 7.1s | 5.0s | 5.0s | ||
But there is one area that RT struggles in, and it’s something that was an issue in Windows Phone 7 too - application launch times. Anand included this table in his Surface review, and it shows that boot performance is decent, but the 3rd generation iPad just kills it in application loading. The new A6X-infused 4th gen iPad probably widens that gap too, so it’s a pretty stark difference. It’s something that Microsoft needs to really focus on when updating the OS, because it’s easily one of the most glaring flaws in an otherwise stellar interface.
From a storage standpoint, the OS takes up between 6.5 and 7.5GB of space (Anand measured 6.47GB on Surface, I measured 7.35GB on the VivoTab RT) and Office takes up another 750-850MB (830MB for Surface, 749MB for the ASUS), so you’re looking at 7.5-8GB of NAND dedicated to the OS. On my 32GB VivoTab RT, I had 25.3GB of storage to start with, so after Windows and Office, I was looking at 17GB left over for programs and documents. That’s....not a lot - a bit of music, a decent selection of applications, a couple of videos, and pretty soon I’m looking at less than 10GB of storage left over. Thankfully, we’re seeing microSD slots on a lot of the more prominent Windows RT slates, so if you run out of room, you could theoretically toss in a 32GB or 64GB microSDXC card. Depending on how much data you plan on storing, I think you can get away with the lesser internal NAND and some microSD cards.
It’s also pretty clear that there will not be a Windows RT slate shipped with less than 32GB of onboard NAND. If you’re holding out for a cheaper Windows RT device with less storage, like a 16GB tablet for $399, there’s almost no way that happens - it’s implausible to think that anyone would ship a tablet with less than 5GB of space left for data storage.
Another key detail in Windows RT is wide-ranging USB peripheral support. USB ports have been a common feature on 10” Android tablets, but device support was typically limited to flash drives and basic input devices. The goal with Windows RT was to bring the traditional Windows experience to tablets, so USB driver support is pretty important. It’s not as easy as on an x86 system, where most USB peripherals would just work, but even with more limited Windows-on-ARM drivers, it’s pretty decent overall.
USB drives obviously work as you’d expect them to. Even SATA to USB adapters worked fine when plugged into Surface. Other smartphones and tablets also worked, although their level of support varied. For example, you can plug in the iPhone 5 and have it come up as a supported device for moving pictures to/from. However USB tethering is not supported by the class driver included in Windows RT. You can even plug an iPad into Surface and get the same level of support. The few Android phones I tried to connect in MTP all worked as expected, though transfer rates off my Optimus 4X HD seemed on the slow side, likely a function of the phone’s internal eMMC.
Printer support is pretty decent, although the Epson Workforce 910 Anand tried didn’t actually have specific driver support under RT. Although development for the desktop side of Windows is limited, manufacturers can supply Windows RT drivers to enable support for some more obscure devices. Unfortunately when it comes to those devices you’ll have to play the waiting game as there’s simply not a lot of third party Windows RT drivers available for download today.
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steven75 - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
iPad 4-finger swipe is pretty damn fast. I'm not sure how it could be faster.eaanders22 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Microsoft has managed to clutter up what could have been a decent tablet with remnants of an aging operating system. Can you imagine Apple putting a few hooks to the OSX desktop into its iOS tablets that don't give much of the functionality of OSX? A DOS prompt in a tablet, give me a break!Let's face it. Tablets are basically big phone technology. They're not computers in any real sense. Apple recognized this. They had a successful phone and they configured a tablet from it. Doing any significant input or serious analysis on a phone or tablet is a non-starter. You need a decent keyboard and special purpose software for many different kinds of tasks a full blown computer can do.
There is a third approach. Windows and OSX have become beasts of the tech world with complicated user interfaces to give the flexibility and power to do complicated tasks. An alternative to the phone/tablet approach, which is basic output only driven, are devices like the Chromebook which relieve casual users of burden of complexity by doing most of the work in the cloud. This dramatically reduces the learning curve for new users and frees them of the busy work of backups, updates, and security considerations. It can mean cheap, light weight systems with no moving parts that perform both input and output in the simplest possible way. Novice users are put off by the complexity of full blown computers and even by the complexity of modern smartphones and tablets.
Microsoft could have been successful by keeping RT a tablet version of Windows Phone and coming out with a web based verson of Windows like Chromebook. These devices haven't taken off like tablets due to the fact that the user experience with phones easily transferred to tablets, while Google didn't have a base in the full blown computer world to build on. But, there is an audience out there, particularly new users and older users that are tired of putting up with the complexity, lag, and busywork associated with bloated full blown operating systems they don't need to do a little writing, emailing, and multimedia watching. The new $249 Samsung Chromebook that just came out sold out everywhere in a couple days. The new RT devices are twice as costly and twice as complicated to get up to speed on for people looking to continue their quite simple use of a computer for a little emaling, writing, and multimedia watching. Who needs a touch screen for that. It just gets in the way.
The Windows 8 systems are another story. There you get full computing power and the functionality of a tablet in one package. This will fit a wide audience of sophisticated computer and smartphone users.
Dorek - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
"A DOS prompt in a tablet, give me a break!"Uh, I think it's awesome. It lets you do a lot that iOS could never, ever do.
Chromebooks are never giong to take off. Can you even sync an iPod to a Chromebook?
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Eventually someone is going to release either a compiler or binary translator or emulator or something that lets you convert a visual studio project to RT. Or even run the x86 executable itself. Right? I should be able to compile my own sleep.exe and launch it from a batch file. How can they stop that, and why would they?andrewaggb - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
They might require all apps to be signed to be run. Any apps in the store could be signed by them and any apps that come with windows could be.It would really make it hard to get viruses etc but it would also stop compiling your own without going through the store.
I don't really know what measures are active though.
Jugklutzz - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Hey Guys. Great review.Tablets play a huge base in cloud base storage. What are the options for mounting a NAS?
Best Regards,
Mike
mattlach - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
RT does nothing for me.Main reason I have not bought a tablet is because of both Android and iOS not being able to run full featured desktop software.
To me the brilliance of Windows 8 is what it does for x86 tablets, that can be both for full desktop use AND tablet use.
We don't need another limited tablet OS like Android and iOS. RT Is a complete waste IMHO.
THizzle7XU - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
"If you’re really concerned about the state of third-party apps, you just have to wait and see. I’ve seen a lot of snap judgements made about Windows RT in the last couple of days based on the dearth of good applications in Windows Store, and while I agree with that sentiment, I feel like it’s extremely shortsighted to write off the ecosystem already. Neither version of the OS has gone on sale yet, and we know that there are a number of applications that will go live on the official release date, as well as many more coming in the weeks ahead."Exactly what I was thinking when reading the complaints on The Verge and some other sites. They claim there are no apps, and I'm thinking...well, technically there is no Windows RT yet for anyone because it's not out yet! And as a developer, I know how they think. Why release something earlier than you have to? You want as much time as possible to work on code and QA. If no one but some media and beta testers don't have the OS yet, what's the rush to release a version 1.0 app? So these sensationalist pseudo-tech editors can rip your early app apart too?
nofumble62 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Apps launch time is too slow for my patience.Haswell convertible laptop would be a killer.
Tablet and laptop will converge next year.
gsurath - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
Fantastic review. From this point of view I can now clearly see corporate boardrooms across the world with RT based tablets sitting on the desks. I can see people carrying them all around the office. I think that is where RT will win big. I see corporates creating their own RT apps for employees to access. This review along with Anand's on Surface reconfirms to me that Windows has just paved the way to dominate the office market for a few years to come. Will this mean that people will then use this single device across all their needs? No so sure given the number of gadgets we tend to collect, I still think will find a space. With Office 2013 for ARM being made available, Android too will have the capabilities of RT in the future. All in all, the future is interesting.