TouchComputing
Latest
Microsoft Surface setup impressions: "filled with mind-bogglingly frustrating usability issues"
Microsoft's Surface has been shipping out to corporate customers for a year now, but we haven't heard much about the backend setup of the $17,000 table -- sure, we know it's fun when it's up and running all those custom apps, but what's it like after the unboxing? Incredibly frustrating, says FD kinesis's Gordon Miller. Hired to implement a Surface solution for a client, Miller and his team first spent 30 minutes on the phone with MS phone support trying to locate the power socket, and another lengthy period of time poking at an unresponsive touchscreen before realizing that the Surface doesn't respond to touch out of the box. Yep, you read that right -- Microsoft's $17,000 big-ass touchscreen table requires a keyboard and mouse to set up, something which isn't noted in any of the marketing or manuals. Ouch. Hopefully that'll get fixed before this thing ships to consumers in 2011, but in the meantime, hit the read link for the entire harrowing tale -- it's a pretty fun read for a Friday afternoon.P.S.- We actually talked to Gordon on the phone for a quick minute and he said that Microsoft's been in touch about the experience -- he's working on an new post about that which we'll link when it goes up.Update: As promised, here's the followup, which includes Microsoft's response.[Via Daring Fireball]
