When Microsoft first announced Windows 8 - along with Windows RT – the software giant made song and dance of the fact that their latest operating system had a smaller footprint compared to previous iterations of Windows. While that’s true to some extent, the major problem with Windows still remains, it becomes sluggish after extended period of usage.
It's often the case that tech companies use the announcements of a rival to plug a new product or service, and on a day that will see Apple announce its new iPad(s), Mac Pro and more, Nokia has taken the opportunity to showcase its first tablet, which it has named the Lumia 2520. Costing $499 and running on Windows RT 8.1, it is built for the masses, and with a sleek design similar to many of the Finnish outfit's smartphones, also arrives with a keyboard-enabled smart cover.
As soon as I am done getting this news to you, I am heading out to the nearest Staples store. Oh wait – that’s not really needed until July 14, because that’s when the pricing for all Surface RT models is being cut by $150.
Microsoft’s Surface RT is a thing of beauty, and that comes from personal experience. The tablet is solidly built, with amazing externals and powerful hardware inside. The display on the Surface RT tablet, too, is stellar, and puts to shame many in the competing arena. That said, the only proper limitation that comes packaged with the tablet, is its inherent ability to run only ARM applications. In other words, you can forget all your legacy x86 apps and remain stuck with only those that Microsoft has approved, and is selling through, the Windows Store. This restriction is not limited only to the Surface RT tablet, either; all Windows RT tablets suffer the same dilemma, and for those users that are looking for an alternative solution, the choice lies in opting for either the much-pricier Surface Pro, or any other Windows 8 Pro-based tablet.
With Windows 8, Microsoft took some rather bold and unprecedented steps. The RT version of the operating system, found on the company’s Surface tablet (and perhaps, soon to land of similar offerings from a plethora of other manufacturers), enabled the software giant to enter a market that was previously dominated by Apple’s iPad and various-manufacturers’ Android-based tablets. Judging by the response that Surface has received from the consumer population, Microsoft’s entry in this niche seems to be playing out well as of yet. The good thing is that the RT version of Windows doesn’t suffer from a serious lack of apps, considering as how a lot of legacy apps are becoming available in their Modern UI versions for the platform. Things do seem to be headed in the right direction.
There is a lot of fuss being made in the tablet industry at the moment, centering around the pros and cons of the most well-known tablets on the market and which piece of hardware will reign supreme in the race to be king of the slates. Contenders include the Apple iPad, the Microsoft Surface, the ASUS Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10 manufactured by Samsung. They are all extremely capable options, but look past their feature sets and you will ultimately find that they all have a similar set of issues that affect our user experience. If you happen to have opted for the Microsoft Surface RT tablet, then the discoveries of one individual could go some way to eradicating any touch-screen responsiveness issues you may have been facing.
This past Monday, we reported on a jailbreak for Windows RT that allowed it to run apps available outside of Microsoft’s Windows Store. The Redmond company has now come out, not to condemn the jailbreak, instead simply to confirm that it poses no security threat.
It would appear as though the modding community of everything Windows would have something to cheer about this week. That is because security researcher clrokr looks to have discovered a way to get desktop apps up and running on Microsoft's ARM-based OS. Within Windows RT's code, there's a particular setting which prevents ARM-based desktop apps besides the Redmond company's stock offerings, but clrokr has snuffed it out, and has, in short, paved the way for the running of unsigned desktop apps.
