Mobile office work stations compared

When the weather is cold, grey and wet, days pass when there seems nothing much to do apart from routine domestic tasks. It's not pleasant enough to go out unless it's strictly necessary, and there's not much to do apart from read the news and feel listless. Thus passed Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I went into the office to complete one of my outstanding tasks, and came home with a Microsoft RT Surface to investigate. It had been hanging around for ages doing nothing, as Sarah had acquired it but not found it user friendly, and had tucked away on the common workspace to be found a use or new user. I took the pass-code details, charged it and satisfied myself that it was working properly, and ending up taking it home. 

It's a neat solid device. It starts up quickly and has a decent enough touch screen. It is runs on an Nvidia Tegra chip, as does the Asus Transformer. Windows RT is a version of Windows 8 built for the hardware. It has a version of MS Office, linked to the One Drive cloud file system. This works well, and is easier to work with than the Google Chromebook equivalent. Both are intended to function primarily as mobile office devices for working on documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc. Only after two years of competing production are some Chromebooks acquiring a touchscreen. The Surface is twice the price however. What you pay is what you get. 

The Surface keyboard is one deal breaker, closely followed by limitations of having a single USB port and no card reader in contrast to Chromebooks. If Microsoft had more closely followed the Chromebook hardware specifications it might not have been such a disastrous market flop. As it is, Chromebook sales are growing healthily. Newer hardware designs are of a quality approaching that of the Surface. The Google User interface works reasonably well and has lots of good features, but it's ugly compared to Windows. And in the end, aesthetics as well as functionality make a wholesome working environment, Each has assets and shortcomings. The ideal mobile computing platform would be a blend of the best of both. Good though Android is as a third alternative, it hasn't got email or browser interfaces for touch screen use to the point where you don't lose a precious text draft through an accidental finger swipe. If I use an Android tablet to browse or send emails, I do so distrustfully as a result of bad experiences. 

The Chromebook will continue to travel with me, in preference to the others, as it's so quick to start for use. It's light and has a great keyboard. The awkwardness and relative unfamiliarity of Google's filing system and off-line web apps I can put up with. They'll improve if people moan at them enough.