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Polaris or iPhone

Hey guys,
In Switzerland, the Polaris (Touch Cruise) is now available and the iPhone should be available in 2 months.
From those that have the Polaris already, what is the general feedback - despite the video playback issue? Would you trade it for an iphone or is it really all you want it to be?
Should I throw down the money and get one?

Personaly... I couldn't live whith iPhone becuse it's very serious limitations, and lack of programs... (I know, the SDK came out... so what?)

But what about the painting of the dial screen with the polaris. I heard it can take between 1 and 5 seconds to make a phone call if you are surfing the web at the same time.
Seems the graphic chip is way underpowered. Is there a fix for this?

I am not crazy about the graphics performance of the cruise, but IMHO, the phone is VERY usable. It is still a powerhouse smartphone, and a very good business tool. Having a dedicated talk button means you reach the dialer FASTER then on the iPhone, and smart dialing is 10 x better than the Iphone when you have many many contacts. The iPhone is definatly slicker and faster, but it is NOT a business phone. At least not now. I had it (as well as the E90, P1i, E61 and many many others before) and returned in after a month.

I have the TC. To be honest, if the iPhone had GPS, I'd have bought one instead. However, gfx performance aside I am still very happy with my TC.
I mainly use it for connecting to work exchange email,calendar,contacts,tasks / phone, internet sharing for laptop, RSS news, GPS and music player. For all those it's perfect.
I may consider an iPhone2... depends on what the state of WM7 is like...

a part of course the lack of of drivers, and despite the crippled functionality of the Polaris, it manages to outperform the iphone for my everyday needs. Be it my appointments, alarms, contact managers, and what not, i am satisfied.
The iphone is a cool device, mucho slides and mucho wow factor, but in the end it's just a 8gb ipod with a phone stuck on top. I didn't feel at home as much as with a pocket pc. To be honest, even a blackberry is better that the iphone for what i do.

iphone is slick, very smooth fluid device. it has limitations but for the most part is good at what it does. it has the accelerometer which makes for some interesting applications, has a very high quality screen, multi-touch input. usually tied to an operator unless you jailbreak. software is very limited, SDK has been released and some good stuff might come out of that but still limited as compared to wm.
the polaris, other than the aforementioned video drivers issue and some lag depending on the rom, is a pretty solid device. as far as features go, it can't be beat. here are some that it has which the iphone currently lacks.
-3 megapixel camera that actually takes video
-2nd camera for video calls
-stereo bluetooth
-internal GPS chip
-3G
-removable battery / removable storage
those are the main hardware features, as far as software, there's always xda which is a huge resource, custom ROMs, a plethora of software. when it comes to modding and customizing wm cannot be beat.
there are tons of iphone vs <insert phone here> comparisons out there. just do a search. in the end you have to see what your requirements are and what's a priority for you.

hambola said it pretty clearly and I totally agree:
Get the Polaris.
-3 megapixel camera that actually takes video
-2nd camera for video calls
-stereo bluetooth
-internal GPS chip
-3G
-removable battery / removable storage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In addition to this list, there is
- a hot-swappable card slot so you can get as much storage space as you like
- lots of very good software, like on a real PC, that can be installed without cracking anything.

more programs i require for wm devices and many many freeware apps
iphone dont do gps or 3g(yet)
iphone dont have a frontcam (not that i would use video calls much)
iphone dont have SD expansion
iphone cant change batt unless apple does it for you
polaris is not as pretty
wm is not as slick and not as good audioplayer (imho)
htc dont want to pay for drivers and make poor ones themselfs
polaris got a smaller screen

current iphone is a piece of garbage...apple just loves their trusted computing stuff so they lock down the device and don't let you do anything with the software. also serious lack of functionality like A2DP, GPS, etc, mentioned in above post. Will the next gen iPhone be any different?
I'll wait and see...but just in my opinion i am very dissapointed with the polaris and i def. regret i purchased it

it all depends on what are ur needs.

confusedxx said:
But what about the painting of the dial screen with the polaris. I heard it can take between 1 and 5 seconds to make a phone call if you are surfing the web at the same time.
Seems the graphic chip is way underpowered. Is there a fix for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
should be sooner or later. its still very usable without it.

I really wanted the IPhone, but in the end I got the Touch Cruise...
My decisions was based on the iPhone having
1. No Copy/Paste
2. No Bluetooth Voice Dialing (anyone who drives know's this omision is ridiculous)
3. No A2DP
4. No MMS
5. No removeable battery
6. No Flash support
7. No option to save anything from the browser
8. No video recording
9. No 3G
10. No MS Office editing
11. No multitasking with SDK apps
To me the Iphone in current state is more of a webbrowser with a Ipod, and then some phone and pda features thrown in. I have no doubt that the SDK will fix the lack of software as the iphone could have a larger user base than WM6 by the end of year (thus far iphone is seriously outselling wm6).
I have faith that Apple will fix the majority of their issues. However, I do not know if they will fix them in the current iphone, or wait for the next iphone. HTC on the other hand has issues with multimedia on the Touch Cruise...and I really doubt they will be fixing that issue.
All in all, if you're a power user go for the TC, as you can make it for for you. If you just want some tunes, movies, and a phone in a really well put together package then go for the iPhone. The real killer will probably be the iPhone 2.0
//Rant: Microsoft is the most shorsighted company that ever existed. Its the most ridiculous thing that WM7 is going to be coming out in a year, when the iphone is here now. Furthermore, have any of you seen Origami? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/umpc/demo.mspx
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It is an awesome set of interface and multimedia integrated apps that they developed for the practically 0% market share Tablet UMPC platform. If only they worked putting that kind of functionality on WM instead...idiots...
Origami has features that are begging to be on our phones
-Picture password
-Origami Central
-Enhanced Windows Media Player
-Enhanced IE
-Enhanced Picture viewer
Ahhh, it makes me so mad to see these features in a product that will likely never take off, while Windows Mobile that has a huge base is left w/o updates and with a market share whitering away to Apple.

don't get me started on Microsoft. that company has some serious lack of innovation recently. aside from the surface i haven't seen much practical innovation coming out of there. the whole vista gadgets (wanna be widgets) is such a knock-off. yeah it works but i mean come on it took osx to implement for you to realize to build one in vista?? for the longest time on any windows box if you wanted to check a calendar and didn't have outlook, you would have to double click the clock in the systray and pretend you're changing the date to see a date several months in advance then make sure you click cancel so that you don't change your date. the calendar app in vista is much smoother now, why couldn't this have been implemented before.
back to windows mobile, it's a sad piece of work. it just looks very outdated. PIE isn't worth the space it's using.
small solace can be found in the fact that at least they acknowledge the shortcomings and want to improve it in later features.
until then....<sigh>.....

and their instant search fields are also appleRipoffs

WM has been basically the same (minus a few enhancements and UI changes, nothing spectacular) since it first came out in the 90s...
it's rediculous; the interface and usability resembles windows 3.11
My god.......that origami looks awesome...
but seriously, how many people have / even want a UMPC?
That's rediculous...god why can't they just port that to WM
they did it on purpose to torture us!

hambola said:
back to windows mobile, it's a sad piece of work. it just looks very outdated. PIE isn't worth the space it's using.
small solace can be found in the fact that at least they acknowledge the shortcomings and want to improve it in later features.
until then....<sigh>.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree. It seems everything they do these days is in response to someone else. From the Zune (another waste of effort and talent that should have been focused on making Windows Media Player in WM better), to IE7, to Vista.
Seriously Origami, and the Zune piss me off the most....clearly if MS focused their efforts on their already developed WM platform instead of wasting time with those toys that don't sell, the iPhone would be nothing more than a glorified LG chocolate.
And as for as PIE, this is what it should look like if MS got off their lazy pedastool...but nope again another wasted concept on the Origami platform.

the only reason imho wm is worth anything is because of the modding community and htc. without both it would suck. htc is doing a nice job making the phones we buy very usable with stuff like opera and recently touchflo. it took the release of the iphone for most of the things to come though
opera 9 gives u a similar browsing expirence to the one above though. wm7 finally will be what we are looking for and it actually looks like they are bringing some inovations to the table.

Also there is Google's Android... so far there have been only a few demo videos and some small stuff, but it's been announced that it will run on MSM 7x00 chipsets, also some useable driver is being developed for it. In regards to the functionality based on the existing sources (Videos, SDK Emu,...), it will have all the functionalities, capabilities, and much more than the WM.
WM7 will have very tough challangers on the market once it comes out... and is not sure to win against them... unless they come out whith something ground shaking...
Still, I hope that the iPhone gets what it deserves... WM and Android ported to it

I say Touch Cruise anyday! It's feature packed but it again depends how many of those features do you actually use daily.
Windows Mobile can be customed cooked - iPhone (thw PWNAGE Tool) is out for you to do the same for the Apple firmware.
Speaking of Multimedia Touch Cruise is surely ahead, as it supports all Audio and Video formats with the help of TCMP or CorePlayer. Whereas the iPhone is redundant on MP3 & MP4.
The TouchFlo aspect resides in both the phones along with the 'iPhone' like interface can be used in both the devices.
So once again Touch Cruise does have it's PRO's over the iPhone. Rest is your call and your phone where you wanna put it.
All the best!

24 Hour review

Coming from my TYTNII yesterday
Based in part on answering other comments and my own observations......
Criteria - it has to earn a living - it has to be a miniature office on the move 24 x 7 x 365. TYTNII worn out after 14 months - replacement needed.
WARM - yes - a lot of electronics packed in a small package to make space for the large (relatively) 1340mAh battery.
Battery life - less than my TYTNII but not dangerously so in a 07:30 - 18:00 business day, lot of Direct Push, long calls, Bluetooth all day, WiFi OFF, Screen brightness higher than default, 4Gb SD card in standard power management, 10 minute top offs in the car when driving. Finished at 30% instead of my more normal 40%.
Stylus - nice magnetic "snick" as it is sucked into the holder. You would have to work hard to lose it. "Soft" feel top - nice.
JETCET printer configuration tool - Wow! If you are Canon or HP there seems to be a good range of drivers. It WORKS too if you know how to set up printing on a network.
Screen - STUNNING with the higher resolution. Looks Cleartype without the cleartype turned on (which only makes it better).
Bluetoothed to the car (BMW I-Drive setup) with no problems and the address book synched to car FASTER than TYTNII. Sound quality slightly poorer than TYTNII but still very acceptable and streets ahead of the old i-Mate K-JAM.
Touchflo - very nice, very cute, very hard on my big stubby fingers and disabled. Probably helps the battery life. I would prefer HTC Home but available CABS don't work on the screen resolution (well they work but look too small!). Anyone working on one?
MS Voice Command - I'm working the threads and registry hacks on this. There is an error on install which I'm trying to figure. (edit) - Just discovered it is non fatal. VC works fine to make calls - I don't care about the rest. Used the extracted 1.6.19209 CAB you can find on RapidShare (end edit). Hah! For the first time EVER with VC when I asked "What is the time" it told me the time - instead of the date!!!!
Only one assignable button folks. Button 1 (HOLD). Rest are presumably used to create the various actions on the zoom and shrink touches on the buttons and cannot be made available.
YouTube - well get hooked to WiFi first!! It will do it over Edge but only really in Low Quality mode. HQ mode (if availble) is a matching 640x480 and looks super.
Ripped 320x240 pixel DVD's in WMV rescale to the screen and look great.
Teeter game - addictive!
It is small, slightly heavy and smacks of quality. Build Quality is good. A good "heft" in the hand and good in the landscape belt clip (T-Mobile accessory for the Wing). Already got a lot of questions from those who noticed - "New Phone?" followed by "Nice" .
Overall - The extra horsepower and RAM, turn off the "fluff" and this is what the TYTNII didn't QUITE manage.
Build 19965.1.2.3
ROM 1.90.401.1 WWE
ROM Date 8/1/08 (US)
Radio 1.02.25.19
Protocol 52.33.25.17U
Keeper.....

48 Hour Review added to 24 hour review

48 Hour Review additional thoughts
==========================
OK the 5 row keyboard is REALLY worth it. Was doing a comparision of a lot of HTC product in a side by side with a few clients on Fri. The 5 row keyboard was the most wanted feature by all those who type seriously for meeting notes etc. The ability to produce numbers with out having to ALT - won this hands down for a few who ordered there and then.
Backlighting on keyboard - good and pretty even considering it looks like a point source is used to produce it. Numbers 5/6 are slightly brighter - the rest - evenly illuminated.
Battery life - I wish to clarify/confess to using the SaveBattery HTC Juno cab in creating the battery life figures I quoted earlier in the 24 hour review. I never even waited to find out how I did before.
I've been tweaking today with - Advanced_Configuration_Tool_v3.1.cab. Useful fine tuning tool.
Biggest annoyance - backlight going out 5 secs into a call. Real pain if you need to enter keys after call connects. There is a regitry tweak in the tweaks thread I'm going to try.
Original 24 Hour Review Below
======================
Coming from my TYTNII yesterday
Based in part on answering other comments and my own observations......
Criteria - it has to earn a living - it has to be a miniature office on the move 24 x 7 x 365. TYTNII worn out after 14 months - replacement needed.
WARM - yes - a lot of electronics packed in a small package to make space for the large (relatively) 1340mAh battery.
Battery life - less than my TYTNII but not dangerously so in a 07:30 - 18:00 business day, lot of Direct Push, long calls, Bluetooth all day, WiFi OFF, Screen brightness higher than default, 4Gb SD card in standard power management, 10 minute top offs in the car when driving. Finished at 30% instead of my more normal 40%.
Stylus - nice magnetic "snick" as it is sucked into the holder. You would have to work hard to lose it. "Soft" feel top - nice.
JETCET printer configuration tool - Wow! If you are Canon or HP there seems to be a good range of drivers. It WORKS too if you know how to set up printing on a network.
Screen - STUNNING with the higher resolution. Looks Cleartype without the cleartype turned on (which only makes it better).
Bluetoothed to the car (BMW I-Drive setup) with no problems and the address book synched to car FASTER than TYTNII. Sound quality slightly poorer than TYTNII but still very acceptable and streets ahead of the old i-Mate K-JAM.
Touchflo - very nice, very cute, very hard on my big stubby fingers and disabled. Probably helps the battery life. I would prefer HTC Home but available CABS don't work on the screen resolution (well they work but look too small!). Anyone working on one?
MS Voice Command - I'm working the threads and registry hacks on this. There is an error on install which I'm trying to figure. (edit) - Just discovered it is non fatal. VC works fine to make calls - I don't care about the rest. Used the extracted 1.6.19209 CAB you can find on RapidShare (end edit). Hah! For the first time EVER with VC when I asked "What is the time" it told me the time - instead of the date!!!!
Only one assignable button folks. Button 1 (HOLD). Rest are presumably used to create the various actions on the zoom and shrink touches on the buttons and cannot be made available.
YouTube - well get hooked to WiFi first!! It will do it over Edge but only really in Low Quality mode. HQ mode (if availble) is a matching 640x480 and looks super.
Ripped 320x240 pixel DVD's in WMV rescale to the screen and look great.
Teeter game - addictive!
It is small, slightly heavy and smacks of quality. Build Quality is good. A good "heft" in the hand and good in the landscape belt clip (T-Mobile accessory for the Wing). Already got a lot of questions from those who noticed - "New Phone?" followed by "Nice" .
Overall - The extra horsepower and RAM, turn off the "fluff" and this is what the TYTNII didn't QUITE manage.
Build 19965.1.2.3
ROM 1.90.401.1 WWE
ROM Date 8/1/08 (US)
Radio 1.02.25.19
Protocol 52.33.25.17U
Keeper.....

Thanks for the review!

graemesmith said:
Keeper.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the review! i have a question.. the TyTN II is too big for me to slide out the keyboard and with one thumb reach the other side of the key board.. basically one handed typing.. how does the Touch Pro fit?
thanks!

Great review and I see you are in the US so I do have a question. How does the GPS work? Does the GPS updater work properly and does the A-GPS help with obtaining a lock? Just wondering how fast the unlocked version connects in the US right out of the box or if it requires tweaks to make it lock faster. Also, how long does it take to load a youtube on edge. I already know it degrades the quality like the iphone but I would still like to know how fast does it take and if it can stream on edge even with the lower quality. Thanks.

Jedidiah said:
thanks for the review! i have a question.. the TyTN II is too big for me to slide out the keyboard and with one thumb reach the other side of the key board.. basically one handed typing.. how does the Touch Pro fit?
thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well the form factor is smaller than TYTNII so my big (ex)sailor hands can push it open and single thumb type OK. Sitting in palm of hand, fingers curled around screen edge and keyboard nearest you. 5 row keyboard makes for smaller keys though - it is a good feel but I wouldn't want to do a lot of single thumb typing - but you can. Guess it depends on your hands!! But you are going to LOVE the 5 row keyboard - no messing around to get numbers anymore. This is already a HUGE plus for entering IP addressing etc.

Raspster said:
Great review and I see you are in the US so I do have a question. How does the GPS work? Does the GPS updater work properly and does the A-GPS help with obtaining a lock? Just wondering how fast the unlocked version connects in the US right out of the box or if it requires tweaks to make it lock faster. Also, how long does it take to load a youtube on edge. I already know it degrades the quality like the iphone but I would still like to know how fast does it take and if it can stream on edge even with the lower quality. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GPS - Yep this is the UK/EU unit through Expansys/Mobileplanet. GPS lock time in my part of the world (USA New England) is 30 secs after running HTC QuickkGPS to get satelitte updates. Comparable to TYTNII and tested with GoogleMaps "Use GPS" feature.
YouTube - Well - first understand that a lot of YouTube videos are available in Standard Quality and High Quality. I'm not 100% sure - but standard looks like HEAVILY compressed 320x240 or REALLY heavily compressed 640 x 480. High Quality is pretty much low compressed 640 x 480.
The player in the phone has an option to autoselect or force High Quality streaming.
In High Quality on Edge it takes about 5 mins to get a 10 min video (from the few I have tested). There is a clear "loading" icon that is a circle running around with a % indicator in the middle. When enough of the video is in - it gets to 100% and will start playing. 100% does NOT mean the whole video - just enough buffered to get going. If you view ahead of available data then it stops playing and starts buffering again. Just like on a PC with slow Internet. There is no permanent cache to replay a video from. Close and reopen and you have to start again - but that is just like YouTube on a PC - I'm sure it is designed to stop you "acquiring" videos! While I am sure someone out of sheer intellectual interest will figure a workaround. It is WAY easier on a PC with capture tools and a ton of horsepower.
Let's put it this way - YouTube in a neat extra. Go back to MY personal criteria stated at the start of my original review and it is not really important!
But that Teeter game....... Now there is a real time waster. I suspect as much as BubbleBreaker........

iPhone vs Diamond/WM6.1

Got a company iPhone 3G yesterday and it's an intersting experience how different the devices and their OSes are. Think that's nothing new for the most but I like to share my impressions ...
The iPhone has an impressive build quality, feels very good and solid in your hands. The cold real glass touch screen paired with the chrome border and the smooth back are nicely put together. But it's a little too big, not thick, it's just rather a bigger phone. For surfing the web it's better to be big but for daily use the small dimension of the diamond appear to be more slick.
Safari is incredible in terms of speed and responsiveness. There are definetely moments where Safari isn't reactive but compared Opera it's another league. I am wondering that Opera who is doing browser development on embedded devices for years isn't able to build something similar. Just the time of the first connection and request is MUCH MUCH shorter than on Opera (both tested on 3G). I don' know if this issue is Opera's or WM's IP stack's or the radio ROM's fault. Site rendering, zooming, clicking on links is SO MUCH better than with Opera. I think that's clearly Opera's fault. The non-capacitive touch screen of the Diamond CAN BE reactive, look at TouchFLO on udK's latest BETA. Anyway and the larger screen is more comfortable despite its much lower resolution. But that's again a trade-off when it comes to transportation.
Just saying that the Diamond can be reactive with the right ROMs it's still awesome how much more reactive the iPhone's GUI is: Just swipe the main menu to the left or right a few times (screens are following your finger instantly) and you see what can be done with the right hard and software setup of a mobile device.
Great: the auto completion of recipients. The iPhone looks in your contacts and at the company server for matching namea the same time. SO SO FAST and stylish!
And now I'll make it short: what I am missing
- A2DP: all my devices at home are A2DP devices (3 devices) and it's damn convinient just to enter a room and within seconds you have music, a stylish remote and flexibility. My Diamond is my central music source, all the newest music on it (as my previos WM6 device). Second source is the notebook with my full collection also connected via A2DP with all the devices. Sorry but an iPod connector is so 80ies in times of A2DP
- A2DP tweaking - independently of the question if the iPhone ever will have A2DP I'll enjoy to be able to tweak the sound quality of a WM device to its max. Don't think that an iPhone will ever provide the flexibility when I look at the OSX A2DP stack (more a beta)
- Disc drive mode for syncing media - sorry but I don't want to manage iTunes or anybody to sync or handle my music and other media. Connect the diamond and you get asked if you want an ActiveSync device, a disc drive or an Internet sharing device, that's a PERFECT usability. Choose the disc drive option and go with high USB2.0 transfer speed.
- No calendar events with invitations, YOU CAN NOT invite participants?! Did I missed something? Crucial point, probably something for their next update
- E-Mails are not read/unread marked or do I have to change the settings?
- Smartdial, such a great feature on WM6, still ten times faster calling somebody with the Diamond
Still the GUI is amazing (loving OSX's font rendering) and I am happy that Apple raised the bar for mobile devices' OSes and hope that competitiors come with similar responsiveness & style but I doubt that. Apple showed the direction where mobile devices will go: replacing desktops/notebooks for many use cases.
Finally, the iPhone feels like a dinner in an high-class restaurant. You get four courses of finest french cuisine in a styled environment and pay 400 bucks for two persons. You are entirely impressed but still hungry because of small portions on big plates. So the next time you just get a Big Mac, french fries and a Coke when you are hungry, no style but you get what you asked for. That's Windows.

mttcee said:
Finally, the iPhone feels like a dinner in an high-class restaurant. You get four courses of finest french cuisine in a styled environment and pay 400 bucks for two persons. You are entirely impressed but still hungry because of small portions on big plates. So the next time you just get a Big Mac, french fries and a Coke when you are hungry, no style but you get what you asked for. That's Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
fantastic description

mttcee said:
... the next time you just get a Big Mac, french fries and a Coke when you are hungry, no style but you get what you asked for. That's Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah,
not so fantastic description!
People forget too fast how much you can do with Windows Mobile! Installing or programming real offline application for exsample - or customization! The iPhone on the other hand: cut off your internet / 3G and you have most likely an useless (but yet expensive) toy with cool animated menus ... - ... however, still useless!

Junner2003 said:
The iPhone on the other hand: cut off your internet / 3G and you have most likely an useless (but yet expensive) toy with cool animated menus ... - ... however, still useless!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pssst, The Cold War is over,
you can come out of your nuclear bunker.

Surface Pro From An Artist Point Of View

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This is my first post here on the Surface Pro forums. I'm usually in the Nexus 4 forums so just a little out of place, haha.
Pretty much there's a lot of mixed reviews from tech journalists and the business world in regards to this tablet/laptop. If any of you haven't seen the review done on Penny Arcade, then I suggest you go there first if you want a full review of this product.
This thread is mainly to tell you guys about my experience as an artist working on this tablet.
My setup is as follows:
1. 128GB Microsoft Surface Pro
2. Logitech K360 Keyboard (wireless)
3. Logitech M510 Mouse (wireless)
4. Uspeed USB 3.0 4 Port Compact Hub
5. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 6
I chose this setup to be as versatile as possible. The surface keyboard option was $130 dollars, and honestly, I think that's a load of crap. The keyboard was 40 dollars at best, and even if it attaches to the Surface Pro and acts as a protective cover, I still don't get that price point. Maybe if it was more like a dock (more USB ports) and possibly a bigger battery source, then I'd be more inclined. The wireless allows me to completely detach from the keyboard and mouse by simply taking the Surface Pro from my desk and immediately start using my pen. When I put the tablet back in the wireless keyboard/mouse range, it automatically detects it again and this is pretty much seamless, no syncing, no bluetooth pairing crap, it's awesome.
The 4 port hub is optional and rarely do I have it hooked up. It's for when I need to hook up a USB memory stick or a device such as a scanner or printer (which I have yet to use). It is powered so if I need to put in a hefty device, then it won't kill the surface pro. It is also very light and compact, barely bigger than a credit card. The cord on it is a little longer than I'd like, but it's not bad.
I've had it for about a week and I can tell you that this is probably the best drawing tablet on the market right now (minus the professional desktop grade tablets such as the Intuos and the Cintiqs). I've tried the iPad, Asus Transformer, Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The Tab comes the closest with their pen option, however with Android, I don't get the same options I do where Windows 8.
For drawing I mainly have just the tablet and pen in hand. In fact 80% of the time, this is fine. Sketchbook Pro 6 is well designed for very minimal keyboard hotkeys and so I am able to navigate most of the interface with just the pen and finger gestures. I can't comment on Photoshop yet because WinTab has yet to be released at the time I'm posting, and so pressure sensitivity is still up in the air. However Sketchbook Pro 6 registers pressure sensitivity very well.
PROS
Screen lag is virtually non-existent, response is very good. I say virtually because, it will start showing up when the brush size is super super large and you have, say the airbrush tool selected. However this is an inherent problem with even my main rig, which has an i7 2600k and 16GB of ram. Most of the time, I use this tablet to get my roughs, and even touchups done, but if I'm going to work on a 50+ layer 300DPI/PPI image, then I'm switching back onto my main machine to do that kind of work. With that said, I would not recommend this tablet/laptop for any graphic designer wanting to only have just this to work on. This is a purely supplemental tool to an artist, in my opinion.
Multi-tasking is a breeze when I'm using it in tablet mode. I can draw sitting on my couch or outside, I can have my music playing in Spotify and I can quickly go in and out of my file browser, network as well as any USB devices I have very very quickly. If I need to FTP anything up to my websites, I can do so fairly easily as well. This is the true power of having Windows 8 rather than a tablet OS. You just can't beat the sheer amount of applications built for productivity on Windows and so it's highly evident when using this tablet.
CONS:
My biggest gripe with this tablet is that what makes it powerful.. Windows.. is also it's weakpoint. What do I mean by that? Well in essence, Windows is a desktop platform, and so interacting with buttons is very precision based (mouse) or in this case a pen. While practice will essentially get rid of this, it's still somewhat of a pain in the butt having to try and click a tiny button during installation or even minimizing or maximizing a screen.
Font size is the second problem. Even with large fonts enabled, there's still a lot of programs that don't take advantage of this. When I'm working in 3DSMax or Maya, the interface still looks very very small. Now someone may say, wtf are you doing working on a 3d program on a mobile device? Well honestly, when I'm traveling, I can model an object without rendering it. I don't need to be rendering out a high quality pass with V-Ray or Mental Ray activated and Final Gather on, lol. I'm simply saying that working in the interface, even though I'm used to most of them, I still have to squint a lot to enter values or read off values. There's probably mods out there or applications I can get to increase this, but with just a base stock install it is a pain.
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If you all have any questions on this tablet please feel free to post up.
WISHLIST
Some things I'd like to see in terms of accessories..
Adjustable cover... I find that when I'm drawing, I either have to lay it down on the table or go into "picture frame" style mode which isn't really usable for drawing. I will often just have it on my lap or laying on top of a three ring binder to get that angle that I'm looking for.
Grippier pen.. I have an Intuos 5 at work and Intuos 4 at home and the pen is much more comfortable and ergonomic to work with. Now the Surface Pen is by no means a slouch and I can definitely work with it.. but if they had different style pens for artists available, I'd definitely buy one.

I haven't heard of the intuos tablets but then I was never a graphic design person.
Are they Wacom digitiser based? If so then the stylus should work fine on the surface.
The surface stylus is just a wacom pen so that is probably why there are not additional styles available, you can already get them.
Note that I don't own a surface or drawing tablet etc.

SixSixSevenSeven said:
I haven't heard of the intuos tablets but then I was never a graphic design person.
Are they Wacom digitiser based? If so then the stylus should work fine on the surface.
The surface stylus is just a wacom pen so that is probably why there are not additional styles available, you can already get them.
Note that I don't own a surface or drawing tablet etc.
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All lines of Wacom tablets have proprietary pens, even an Intuos 4 pen will not work for an Intuos 5, I've tried, lol. Although, I wish they would :-/

Argenist said:
but if they had different style pens for artists available, I'd definitely buy one.
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No you wouldnt, they'd probably want $100 for it lol

Trig0r said:
No you wouldnt, they'd probably want $100 for it lol
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It'd depend on the pen. Wacom makes an awesome airbrush pen for the Intuos that I would pay that much for. If they charged $100 for the same pen with a small amount of grip on it, then yeah I'd probably say no.

I'm surprised you hadn't tried the Samsung Note 10.1, which has an active digitizer like the S.Pro but at half the price. Sammy's multi-window scheme is more elaborate and functional than Metro Snap. Sketchbook Pro is of course also on Android.
The Windows font scaling problem you mentioned has long been a problem, and is why S.RT's low-res screen is actually more functional than S.Pro's 1080p one. A larger issue is that there is (yet) no independent scaling for different displays, so the Pro's 150% scaling would look horrible if you attach an external display. The current workaround is to compromise at 125% scaling, which is optimal for neither. MS has said this will be fixed, and I expect Blue will bring display-specific scaling.
The con mentioned--desktop elements being touch unfriendly--is the single largest problem that has crippled the Win8 adoption. Metro is not the way forward for Windows, not until it can subsume desktop functions, and it can't in its current state. It's not even v1.0. It's only for small-screen devices, and is unfit to be used in portrait.
The desktop was mainly ignored in Win8. I would think that any aid at all would've helped to ease the transition. For example, the magnifying tool in Accessibility could've been deployed by default to dynamically enlarge areas for touch. I expect to see something like this to arrive in Blue.

e.mote said:
I'm surprised you hadn't tried the Samsung Note 10.1, which has an active digitizer like the S.Pro but at half the price. Sammy's multi-window scheme is more elaborate and functional than Metro Snap. Sketchbook Pro is of course also on Android.
The Windows font scaling problem you mentioned has long been a problem, and is why S.RT's low-res screen is actually more functional than S.Pro's 1080p one. A larger issue is that there is (yet) no independent scaling for different displays, so the Pro's 150% scaling would look horrible if you attach an external display. The current workaround is to compromise at 125% scaling, which is optimal for neither. MS has said this will be fixed, and I expect Blue will bring display-specific scaling.
The con mentioned--desktop elements being touch unfriendly--is the single largest problem that has crippled the Win8 adoption. Metro is not the way forward for Windows, not until it can subsume desktop functions, and it can't in its current state. It's not even v1.0. It's only for small-screen devices, and is unfit to be used in portrait.
The desktop was mainly ignored in Win8. I would think that any aid at all would've helped to ease the transition. For example, the magnifying tool in Accessibility could've been deployed by default to dynamically enlarge areas for touch. I expect to see something like this to arrive in Blue.
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Click to collapse
Galaxy Note 10.1 doesn't have access to all the apps he listed. Also, you can't beat full x86.
I've yet to find this to be a problem. You can set scaling to 125% for the environment and tell individual apps to not follow scaling if you need it to. Maybe it's just me, but my eyes are perfectly fine with 100% scaling.
I don't think you can blame that on MS. While I don't particularly use the metro ui, it is useful. I manage to use the desktop elements just fine in desktop mode. If you noticed, MS Office 2013 is touch friendly and other software developers are following up on making their applications more touch friendly (but you probably won't see a lot of them until touchscreen computers grab a bigger share in the market). Obviously if you come out with a new OS that is touch friendly when it never was, there would be problems with that...people never complained about this with earlier tablet pc's, so why are they starting to complain now? Because touchscreens are becoming more and more common. Obviously it will take some time to get there.
You're right. The desktop is mainly ignored and only used for legacy apps. I'm guessing MS hopes that most developers will try and switch to the metro ui (I'm suspecting this might take a few years). I still can't see myself using metro ui as my primary ui.