Posted on 11/10/2013 7:00:21 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It's the battle of the tablets. Just as Apple unveiled the ultrathin iPad Air with Retina Display, Microsoft officially released the Surface Pro 2.
Although both are excellent tablets for small businesses, each device has its own set of capabilities. Whereas the iPad Air is strictly an iOS tablet in form and function, the Surface Pro 2 is a versatile, Windows-powered hybrid machine that can be used as a tablet, laptop or desktop computer.
To help you choose which tablet is right for your business, we've compared the iPad Air and the Surface Pro 2.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessnewsdaily.com ...
It folds right up and slides into the case/pouch I bought for it.
The smaller keyboard takes a little getting used to, but overall - I like it.
Most people - even 'power' users - do not know the power of Excel.
I was there in the trenches in the early ‘80’s when MS and IBM were working to get PCs talking to the mainframes, and Apple was pretty much pissing on the whole idea every chance they got.
I’m glad for you and I am sure you have created a viable small to medium business model relying on microsoft excel. But “a 30 minute clerical exercise” is still what I consider hand holding. Granted anything with a gui, would by definition require human intervention.
Excel is just not my development environment of choice. It’s a fine stop gap measure. Look if I was hired to develop in it, I would do so gladly.
I’m probably just bitter because they blew Lotus 1-2-3 out of the water and never looked back. : )
That keyboard sounds very nice. I think I will go take a look at one.
But has not Lotus 1-2-3 come back in the guise of Open Office?
A buddy of mine “upgraded” to Windows 8. He hates it so much, he paid a significant amount of money to get a copy of Win7 for his laptop.
OTOH, the company I work for has migrated everyone to iPads. It works fine for the majority of people who are primarily text and web oriented, but for me, who is a photo and video person, I’m stuck with my old PowerMac G5 for all eternity. They hate paying for software to such an extent that they found a company that sells used G5 machines cheap so they can replace computers for less than the cost of new software licenses.
I love it so. It is rather handy.
So is putting Linux on a Tablet an option for you?
I would have thought you would love the photo and video capabilities of an iPad.
> Not possible to put Linux on any Surface device.
Another good reason to avoid such appliances.
Got a Windows box that is one pound, 10” screen, 0.5” thick, touchscreen, and needs nothing else - and you can install Linux on?
Ironically, iOS is basically Unix (just lightened & locked down).
We just use Google Docs for Business.
Open Office was written by a german company and open sourced. As far as I know It does not use the codebase of Lotus 1-2-3 for windows.
It was bought by what was then Sun Microsystems and they decided to open source it as an attack against Microsoft. Made little to no difference against that monopoly at the time.
Keynote is superior by far.
Pages is a layout program - not really comparable to Word.
Numbers is better, IMHO, for most crunches.
How about FileMaker instead? Easier interface, cross platform and compilable.
> Got a Windows box that is one pound, 10 screen, 0.5 thick,
> touchscreen, and needs nothing else
I have no need for such a thing. Besides, I could likely get 2x the power for 1/2 the price, since I don’t need for my laptop to be a fashion statement. I also enjoy having control over my system.
Do this - figure out all the high priced IT support that "hand holds" any application. And even with a dedicated system, there is still administrative time to do things such as changing reporting relationships, changing commission rates, etc. Excel solutions require no IT support, and far less administrative support because everything is custom developed. And changes are quicker that the time it takes to write the email to IT, who will tell you it will take 3 weeks to get a proposal.
I have switched to it for my home use. The company still buys Microsoft Office for work.
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