I do find it quite frustrating that MS are forced to Rebrand their UI again. However I would happily berate Microsoft for yet another pointless name changing exercise of their software but this time they have outside parties saying they cannot use the term "Metro UI"

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57...he-name-metro/

Bit of a bugger for MS IMO, this time they are actually trying to unify their branding and now they have to contend with this..

It's all about MicroHard's anti competitive practices. In this case infiltration and then subversion. Killing the competing OS's, selling off patents to Vringo (which has decided to become a patent trolling company) and Mosaid so they can patent troll linux based software via proxy (put pressure on the competing OS's without actually getting their hands dirty) and if it comes down to it MS will just get up in a companies face and tell them pay or try to fight off our billions in court.
When you look at MicroHard, its former executives start companies that are trying to infiltrate linux software and add Microsoft code to it like Mono.


This move by MS, infiltrating and destroying Nokia's competing OS's and selling off patents to linux hostile patent trolls has made me anti-microsoft and I've been buying their products for years. I was there (as in that time period) as an office worker since the first windows products and I've bought PC's all the way up to the current 8 core 64 bit Windows 7 computer I have now. But now, you know what, I'm studying linux. I Just started a few days ago and plan on using linux software from now on as soon as I get it installed.

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“The patent danger to Mono comes from patents we know Microsoft has, on libraries which are outside the C# spec and thus not covered by any promise not to sue. In effect, Microsoft has designed in boobytraps for us.

“Indeed, every large program implements lots of ideas that are patented. Indeed, there’s no way to avoid this danger. But that’s no reason to put our head inside Microsoft’s jaws.”

–Richard Stallman
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And check out this article about Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft chief technology officer who founded “Intellectual Ventures" which is another patent trolling company. And this one too.

Remember the failure SCO group that tried to claim property on all of Linux?
That was Microsoft backed by proxy

From:
http://www.usenix.org.uk/wiki/200906...-Linux_Lawsuit

"On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO's strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO's financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital."

Switch to linux join me
http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

WARNING, this turned out to be pretty long rant, longer than I originally thought.

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Allright, so I bought an Asus Vivotab RT for my wife as a Mothers Day present. Previously I had warned her against it but she was quite sure she wanted a windows tablet. I thought it cannot be really that bad, at least HW wise Asus seemes to be pretty decent and I had prior experience on Asus Nexus7 which is a good value for a tablet.

The first impression of the thing was pretty nice, It's a solid build, feels nicely balanced on hands and the specs are OK.

On first turning it ON, however it threw a "GPF: Windows has encountered an internal error and has to shut down",
"You may need to reinstall some components".
WTF, I just turned this darn thing ON, how on earth do I reinstall it???

Well, the second time was successful, and it went to the startup routine, asking all kinds of questions and setting up the accounts.
During the end of the setup, however it gave another GPF. Luckily that was also solved with a reboot.
(When I talked to people about that, some thought that this looks fairly normal, and that maybe some people EXPECT windows to throw GPF's now and then...)

OK; I have never used the Metro UI before, and it DOES look and feel really odd first, but it's not that bad, its pretty responsive to use but I'd only expect that given the device is pretty powerful.
It takes some time to get used to but I don't think thr UI itself is evil.

So, one of the reasons she wanted windows tab, was that one popular televsion internet channel in finland, MTV3-Katsomo uses a proprietary interface that requires you to have Silverlight on your your device to watch the content, thing which bugs her as she uses an Ubuntu laptop normally. So, I figured that since it's an windows device, surely Microsoft internal protocols are implemented on it. Boy was I wrong there.

It turns out there's no Silverlight for WIN8RT, and nor is there Java. (some sites she uses have Java components...)
As far as I know either of those are not coming there, ever!

OK, lets forget Java for a minute, maybe you can install an another browser to the tablet, Chrome for instance? No way, you cannot and propably never will. You are stuck with IE forever

Actually there's some specific loophole built for Apple devices to use the MTV3-Katsomo site, and also an experimental GW for Android devices but guess what, none that works for Windows

My woes ended not here... She was going on a trip and wanted to have videoes for the device, to watch during the flight. I spent 2 full days trying to transcode videos from our DVB-box to a format that the poor tablet could digest... Imagine a device meant mainly for video consumption, it cannot play simple MPEG2 videos, not PES, PS, TS, nada!!
Finally managed to use some MPEG4/AVI-wrapper combination that it played, but at an ugly resolution
I tried installing alternate Video Player applications, but they are more or less useless. I tried several free ones and even 2 paid apps, but they are as clueless as the default Media Player on video formats. None of them can even recognize normal VOB from a DVD!!!

Well, sure you can BUY videos from the MS Store, right? Tried to get something for her to watch; OK, there's "Life Of Pi", prized something like £9,99 or so... Hmm, pounds, why on earth?
Turns out when she first activated the device she incorrectly selected UK as the location, and you had to create an somebody@outlook.com address to make the account...
Well, no problem, but when I try to buy the video, I am prompted to make an XBOX-Live account?? HUHUU, I already have an MS account now for the store, why do I need another?
Well, I create it and sure, it asks for my location and now I set it to "Finland". After that, I hit "Purchase" and guess, what, the bloody thing complains my location is wrong

I could not find an easy way to modify either of the accounts, it well might be you cannot change your location once you are done with account setup. So, no videos for the tablet.

Now, as I have undrerstood that WP8 is pretty much same as WIN8RT, is that really so, is the phone OS as useless, strange, crazy and cludegy as this? Are the Lumias similar to this Vivotab?
I am amazed, please tell me I have done something wrong, surely?

Same story with location on WP7 too. I chose UK as marketplace was not available for Greece but then it didn't accept my credit card as it assumed UK. The other awful thing is that it forces your account location language even if you explicitly set it to english.

As for the video, I just read that VLC are starting a port for RT so you might have some luck there. I also heard about Metro firefox but not sure if that is going to be available on RT.

I hope you can hack it and install plasma active on it

Wp 8 is slightly better than Rt lol but as far as changing locations go, you can do it online through a desktop. Just log into your outlook/Ms account and change it in settings.

Your first mistake was getting an Rt tablet. I would go regular windows if possible since pretty much any app would work on it

What I don't get is why do you need separate accounts to download applications and to download media, what's the big idea here?
It just looks like they have not thought this through, like it's some half-baked cludege. Have they made no usability studies at all?

VLC would be good, at least it can digest just about anything you throw at it. I am still struck about the MPEG2 thing... Its tha oldest thing you can have, and there's no support...

AFAIK it's locked down pretty bad, no other OS possibility there.
When my better half comes back from London the tablet's going back the way it came. Lucky I bought it off mail-order, I have 14 days to return it too get a refund.
Propably I'll try to convince her to swap it to an iPad, even tlhough I hate apple's guts. I have heard the user experience is better engineered on Apple devices.

For myself, I like something that I can tweak to make it work my way, but for her a simple device that just works is better.

One thing I did not like about the WIN tablet is that to transfer any files to it, I need to first copy the stuff to an USB stick, I cannot connect it doirectly to my PC. How is it with iPad, I think it's fairly deifficult to copy my media files there?

Using N9/N900 is so simple, I just sftp or rsync my files in and out of the device. Same method works over WLAN or over USB. Why can't everything in this world work so easily?

On another note, sometime back I argued it does not matter how fluid/smooth/whatever the UI is, if the thing undeneath is closed the overall thing is a failure.
Mind here, I am trying to set up this tablet as "user only" device, not a "developer device" and still it feels like I am anging my head against a brick wall...

Why I wanted RT, I assumed it has better protection against viruses and malware as you cannot install anything on it outside the store.
Seems it is also protection against normal device use

Also the longer battrery life is important.

Plex is what your after if you want afaik, the best dnla/upnp server/transcoder. The server software (win/osx/linux) is free, and the android app was a few bucks on the play store. They also have clients for windows phone os, ios, and a bunch of other devices.

Its not streaming mpeg2, since i can stream a transcoded video over a wlan to my nook color, which doesnt do that with other mpeg2 exclusive transcoding servers (twonky, UMS, PMS, etc, etc). Lots of customization as well, as far as video settings, and resolution, bitrate, etc.

Pretty well designed solution that allows me to stream any video i have, from mkv 1080p's, to avis, etc, to my nook color flawlessly. The # of devices they have client apps for is quite impressive as well.

def worth checking out if your frustrated with the all to common mpeg2 only transcoding/streaming not working on your client device.