[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] BarryH_GEG:
Here's a review of a W8 Pro tablet from a reporter that used it for a week. Overall, he was pleased. Here's some of the things he questioned which I think are going to be important to a lot of people. The things I bolded we've talked about and I'd bet you create a lot of chatter once W8 tablets are in people's hands. There's an old adage - "you only get a single chance to make a first impression." How W8 tablets launch and are perceived (outside the enterprise) are going to determine their future. So far all our conversations have been about the things people hope to do with them with no discussion about their limitations. The latter is going to get far more press after their launch. Look at maps and the purple camara flair in the iP5.

The split-screen view is one of my favorite new tricks. The OS supports full multitasking, and with a specific finger swipe maneuver, you can open two different Windows 8 apps on screen. For example, your Mail app can occupy the left pane

(which is fixed at roughly one-quarter of the display)

while Internet Explorer can sit in the right pane (which dominates the screen). If you like, you can flip their positions, moving the skinnier pane to the right side.

Another neat trick: To switch between open apps, simply drag your finger from the left side of the screen. Its the Windows 8 version of Alt-Tab, and once again demonstrates just how powerful--and fun--the system is relative to the competition.

To see a thumbnail filmstrip of all of your open apps, quickly drag your finger right and then left, from the left edge of the screen. To access the Windows 8 "charms" bar--a centralized home for search, sharing, and settings functions, among others--swipe in from the right bezel. All these touch maneuvers became second nature once I learned them, but they're not intuitive from the giddy-up, and they're difficult to describe in words. This could emerge as a public relations pain point for Microsoft.

If the company is smart, it will build a force-run demo video into Windows 8--something that pops up the first time someone turns on the new hardware.

Challenging learning curves aside, I found the W700's touch controls quick, fluid, and responsive. Screen redraws never lagged or stuttered, and the hardware seemed well-equipped to handle the OS's requirements. We didn't run any benchmarks on our preproduction unit, but

if a Core i5 and 4GB of memory can't boss a tablet OS around like a schoolyard bully, Microsoft has serious optimization problems.

Of course, the new Start screen is far from perfect. For one thing, without resorting to third-party utilities, a user who wants to boot straight into the system's desktop mode can't bypass the Start screen. And as Paul Allen recently pointed out,

the Start screen has no hierarchical nesting system--so if you have a huge collection of apps, you may find yourself scrolling ad nauseam to find a particular live tile

.

All of which brings us to the question of how the W700 and Windows 8 performed in desktop mode. It was far better than some critics have made it out to be, but a device like this definitely presents some compromises. The bigger problem with using the W700 as a traditional PC productivity machine lies in the rendering of the Windows desktop.

A resolution of 1920 by 1080 on an 11.6-inch screen makes for tiny fonts, icons, and scroll bars. And because all of these interface elements were so small, I had trouble seeing text in the URL field of Internet Explorer, for example. Likewise, using touch gestures to collapse and exit out of windows--or, for that matter, just navigating around the basic Windows experience that I've been using since Windows 3.1--was a challenge.

Though Windows 8 hasn't even launched yet, it's off to a rocky start. Power users are slamming Microsoft for all the new "features" that subjugate the desktop, and

as we reported on Monday, the Windows Store inventory is looking alarmingly thin.

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http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/windows/3402233/acer-w700-review/?pn=1