Surface Pro 2, Better for Schools (maybe)

After the announcement of Microsoft Surface last year, many schools got excited about the prospect of this highly capable device raising the bar for tablets in an education setting.  Then it shipped and the reality was that it was incredibly hard to get hold of, the service arrangements were poor, and the battery didn't have a full school day in it.



Recently though, word has leaked on a new and improved Surface Pro 2 is on the way, which thanks to Intel's new Haswell CPU architecture may promise more than a school day on battery as well as a RAM bump, a better kickstand and even some interesting accessories. There are even rumours of a new type cover that will contain a second battery (because although v2 may sport up to 7 hours battery, that's still not as good as competing Haswell devices).

the device was only available through retail channels, with the usual return-to-base-and-wait-until-the-next-ice-age warranty

Sounds great doesn't it?  It might even be released and available in time for the end of the summer school break... in the U.S!
Of course there's the catch, those of us in countries outside of the U.S. had to wait so long for Surface Pro last time that the tablet was practically obsolete by the time we saw it.  Moreover, the device was only available through retail channels, with the usual return-to-base-and-wait-until-the-next-ice-age warranty, making it even less appealing to education.

So, I guess I'm being pessimistic, but based on previous form, I have to say that while Surface Pro 2 could be the best tablet for schools, possibly the only thing likely to stop it is the company that makes it.  So there's a challenge Microsoft, prove me wrong!

Windows 8 Apps for Education

With our new Windows 8 tablet program about to debut, I thought I'd post some resources.  The app environment for Windows 8 (through the Windows Store) has got off to a good start with a lot of new software available in the store.  There are about 100,000 apps available at the time of writing, according to metrostorescanner.com. So here are a few lists of apps relevant to education:

• Microsoft Australia, Education Blog, Windows 8 Education Apps


• Microsoft Australia again, with another list of Education Apps


• Babbel's Language Learning Apps


• Another short list from Microsoft, this time from MSDN


• A list of apps produced by the people at "teachnology"


• A list from app indexing site, Applooker


• The full list of (currently) 14,000 education apps on Metroscanner

That'll do for now.  There are more apps being added every day, I'll update with more lists as I find them.

Just sayin'

Okay, I don't want to start a fight!

But I am going to draw an Apple / Microsoft comparison here so if you're the sort of person who's head is likely to explode as a result, taking this post down the same road as these guys, then look away now!

Microsoft have started producing some ads that compare Windows 8 tablets to the iPad.  Some of the ads are a little tongue-in-cheek, and some are bizarre (unless there's a cultural thing I don't get).  But this simple one actually cuts through to a couple of truths that speak to why we and our teachers couldn't bring ourselves to adopt the iPad as a platform.  There's more to it than just these few features (it's quite a complex issue actually).  But these are some of the things people struggle with initially when considering an iPad anywhere where they might need to do work, and these are some of the stumbling blocks our iPad trial kept on hitting.  So, here it is, make of it what you will:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/zgu9uo2UpPg]

... Oh, and there's a third side to this comparison, which is Android tablets.  That's another similarly complicated thing altogether.  All I'll say on that is, always remember it's at least a three-horse race! ;)

Too big for your boots!

Okay, so Microsoft produced a great product in Windows 7, and a good, but rough product with Windows 8. Windows 8 feels like early Windows XP in some ways, given a few updates to the OS, it could be great.  In fact if you factor in what they're trying to achieve with Win 8, it's pretty darn good.  Nobody else has even come close to being able to unify a desktop and mobile OS yet.

Anyway, so one of the quirks of Windows 8 is the App Store, which bears a few problems that stem from Microsoft's apparent need to be more 'Apple-like' (for reasons known only to them). The Apple App Store model is primarily an online retail beast, designed to sell software to individuals, rather than entities like corporations so it baffles me when I try to understand why Microsoft have decided to replicate that at the expense of the large installations (like businesses and schools, for example) that they've gone to great lengths to help over the years.
One might think that if your modus operandi was to develop software with these organisations in mind that you might build in some features appropriate to them. Failing that, one might think that you'd at least try not to make it IMPOSSIBLE to use!

If you're not following, what I'm referring to is the complete inability to purchase apps from the app store on any basis other than a purely individual one. Something that schools in particular, require. Currently the only way to buy an app in the Windows Store is to use a credit card or Paypal. So if you're a teacher who's identified a paid app you'd like your students to use, you might find that few of your cohort of 12 year-olds have their AmEx handy!
Microsoft have in their organisation a division (business unit, or whatever they call them) called Volume Licensing whose concern is to help people purchase, access and deploy their software en masse.  So you could be forgiven for thinking that maybe, if you were setting up a store to sell software (en masse), you might include the expertise of this division.
But if you did think that you'd be wrong, because if you're a business, school or some other group and you want to buy an app for all in your organisation you have absolutely no way of doing so. None. I know you can side-load apps from the store, but only if the app developer creates a specific type of package and sells it to you using some method other than the store. I somehow don't think that makers of simple educational apps are going to be bothered with doing that.

Have Microsoft thought about what this does to their App ecosystem at all I wonder? If I put myself in the shoes of a developer of a popular Windows 8 Store App targeted at education I have two choices when putting my app in the store. I can a) release it for free, taking the kudos and no money, or b) put it up as a paid app that students can't buy, have no-one download it and still not make any money.
Forget distributing it as an appx package, no one is going to do that apart from the big software houses, and why should they have to? Have Apple beaten Microsoft at their own game by having a Volume Licensing scheme for their own apps?

In trying to research this problem we've spoken to Microsoft employees at the App Store, and Volume Licensing (two divisions which in true MS style, don't appear to talk to each other). Our question to the app store about this problem was met with a bemused "we'd never thought of that" response. Moreover, the person at the App Store helpfully suggested that a way to purchase apps for a group of students might be to purchase them all under one account, then you can just install a copy on each machine from that account. Great, until we mentioned the device-limit of 5 installs per app (yes, believe it or not we had to tell them about their own limit). So the app store people failed us, and the volume licensing people told us it wasn't their problem.

It turns out there might be a solution on the horizon, albeit a bad one. But frustratingly the people at the app store didn't know that literally days after asking them the question "can we give students some sort of voucher to buy their apps with" and being told "no", that we soon will be able to. Pending reliability of The Verge and its sources, we've discovered there will be a voucher available soon that works across all Microsoft stores that we can give to kids to buy apps. It's still not the most elegant solution, but at least it's something (albeit essentially where the Apple store was at 3 years ago).

[caption id="attachment_158" align="aligncenter" width="423"] Real or fantasy? The unconfirmed Microsoft giftcard, according to The Verge.[/caption]

So, I'll finish this off by inviting Apple and Google fanbois a rare opportunity. I know you love to laugh at Microsoft when you get the chance, so pull up a seat and poke some fun at the Redmond clowns with me over this insulting oversight.

UPDATE: - No more news on the gift-card concept.  Either it's planned for release alongside Windows 8.1 or The Verge were merely peddling their usual quality of rumour.

UPDATE 2: - This feature of Microsoft SCCM 2012 SP1 looks quite promising.  No indication that it can handle paid apps at this stage but I'd bet that's in the works.

 

Atomic Testing

So, I’m currently typing this blog post on the first test machine that we’ve actually spent money on (as opposed to getting a temporary eval. model from a reseller).

It’s a Samsung Ativ Smart PC.  The entry-level Windows 8 tablet from Samsung running on a Clover-Trail Intel Atom platform, with a 64Gb eMMC (more on that later) and 2Gb RAM.  The dual-core Atom immediately felt like it was in a totally different league to the old Atom-based HP Mini netbook I used to have.

[caption id="attachment_259" align="aligncenter" width="567"] Samsung's Ativ and Intel's Roadmap for the Atom.[/caption]

It’s probably a testament to Microsoft’s work on keeping the system requirements for Windows from getting ridiculous like they had in the days of Windows Vista.  The overhead for Windows 7 and 8 isn’t really that different, which has allowed the lower-level hardware to catch up a bit.

There's a very tiny jitter in the start-screen when scrolling back and forth, probably due to the lower-power integrated graphics chip.  But said jitter is occasional, and so hard to notice that you have to point it out to people, and even then you can blink and miss it.  So no big deal there.

I’ve typed a few pages on this device and I' have to say, for a small machine the keyboard is fantastic, I’m able to type at the same speed as I would on my expensive desktop PC keyboard (sadly, it can’t help my poor spelling though).

It’s actually not shy on connectivity options either.  For those of us who don’t share the iPad’s “less-is-more” design ethic, there's welcome inclusion of one full-size USB port on the tablet and two on the keyboard.  Real work requires USB, so that’s great.  The tablet also sports a micro HDMI port and a MicroSD slot.  The other bonus feature is the S-Pen, a proper active stylus that’s pressure-sensitive and as accurate as a Wacom digitiser.  It lacks the eraser found on some, which is a small shame.

It’s got some bad that comes with the good though.  The buttons on the touchpad have nothing to indicate where the left button and right button meet.  The charger is tiny, which is great, except so is the connector, it’s one tiny pin isn’t very kid-friendly, and is likely to get bent.  The biggest disappointment though, is the way the tablet docks to the keyboard, the bizarre clip mechanism fails a lot on this test machine.  More often than not, you’ll pick up the tablet and the keyboard will fall off.  You have to be quite forceful to be sure it clips securely.

But this test machine wasn’t as much about the individual features of the Ativ as it was about giving one of these new Atom-based tablets a thorough test.  Which isn’t going so bad at the time of writing.  Nothing I’ve tried to do has made the device seem horribly underpowered, although it’s mostly been simple content creation and web surfing so far.  I don’t think it’s going to be quite so pretty when I try Photoshop on it, or try to edit a video.  But I’m happy to be proven wrong.

UPDATE: - Actually, I might be at least partly wrong, editing in Photoshop is doable with Web-sized images, and short video editing in Movie Maker can also be done.

Either way, I’m feeling positive about these little tablets.  We’d prefer our chosen machine to be an Intel Core i based unit, but if economic realities force us to look at the little-brother (or sister) from Intel, I don’t think it’ll be so bad.