[Windows RT General] SixSixSevenSeven:
The app market you can check out on your full windows 8 machine no problem. I do personally think its a bit limited.

Windows RT is for all intents and purposes windows 8 running on ARM instead of x86 processors. This does bring a few limitations, and then microsoft impose 2 more.

ARM and x86 processors are rather obviously not compatible. x86 programs cannot run on ARM and vice versa normally (you could emulate an ARM CPU on x86 and vice versa but thats slow).

Most "metro" apps are compiled in both ARM and x86 versions. There are a few which are not for whatever reason. But most should be available in both stores. The vast majority of metro apps use C# or VB.net anyway which dont output native ARM or x86 machine code and instead use .NET bytecode (the .NET runtime is present on both windows 8 and windows RT). VLC is the only major exception I can think of right now, although that hasn't been publicly released yet and ARM is planned (right now its x86 only).

Just about all desktop software for windows is x86. It won't run on ARM. If its open source it may be portable however the only compiler capable of targetting Windows RT is MSVC whereas alot of software can only be built in alternative compilers. There is a list (already linked in the post above) of software which people have managed to recompile for Windows RT.

Then 2 microsoft imposed restrictions.

Drivers. Although windows tablets all have full USB host abilities, you do of course require drivers for all USB devices you want to use. Windows are not allowing 3rd party drivers on ARM, so if your USB device isn't listed on their compatibility chart it won't work. Mice, keyboards, USB storage, some printers and even the xbox 360 controller work.

Desktop requiring signed binaries. This is a major restriction which serves no purpose. All software run on windows RT must have a digital signature attached which will be checked before execution. If the signature is missing it won't run it. For store apps this isn't a problem as signing the app is part of the release process. However microsoft don't want us to use the desktop on windows RT devices, they havent released any way to add the signature to software running on the traditional desktop. MS Office, internet explorer and all the other software that runs in desktop mode and is preinstalled on RT has been signed because microsoft wrote it and have the tools to do so. We don't. There is a jailbreak which can remove this restriction and enable people to run desktop applications (either written in .NET or compiled for ARM) but it doesn't work on windows RT 8.1 which the lumia tablet and surface 2 have (they cannot be downgraded to 8.0). An 8.1 jailbreak is coming soon.

Whether the RT is suitable or not depends on your needs. If all your going to do is surf the web, well its full blown internet explorer 11 not some sucky mobile browser, it even has flash (but not java, which you should not confuse for javascript. However iOS and android dont have java either).

You get full RDP support in windows RT. So you can view the screen of and interact with your real windows 8 desktop remotely on the tablet. In the ported apps section for jailbroken devices there is also VNC which does the same thing but is cross platform unlike RDP which is supposed to just be windows (however there is an RDP server for linux too so if you have a linux machine, install the RDP server, remote access it on non jailbroken RT device no problem).

You get microsoft office. Its missing plugins and macros. But otherwise, its a full office suite. Its more than android or iOS have.

Being close enough to normal windows, you get a full file browser which supports network mapped drives and USB etc as you do on your desktop. Android can have file browsers, but they usually arent as good as a desktop file browser. iOS doesnt have a file browser at all.

With the file browser you have support for USB storage. Got some photos on a memory stick, plug it in, you can view them. iOS cannot do this. Some android phones can, some can't (your LG should be able to).

True there are not as many apps as iOS or android. But both iOS and android had low apps counts when they first released and according to what little public data there is, windows after 1 year is about on par with both android and iOS app counts after 1 year. It takes time (but will it take too long is a better question)