Why is Win7 being dismissed in terms of Tablet OS's?

[SunnyD]

I figured I'd ask, because pretty much every article in the vein of the upcoming tablet/slate war features the battle between iOS, Android and now (to a much lesser extent) WebOS. Every single article that I have read to date, and every "user" comment regarding Windows as a tablet OS has all but dismissed it as a viable option for the tablet arena.

Now I personally have to question this. Why? The most common and reoccurring statement I've seen is that Windows simply isn't designed for a user-friendly touchscreen experience. Myself, having had a lot of professional experience with tablet PC's in corporate environments, Windows is an exceptionally designed OS for the tablet experience since Windows XP. The entire user interface lends itself neatly towards a touchscreen environment, and the advancement Microsoft has put into Windows 7 for alternative input mediums makes it vastly superior and far more flexible than the static environments that iOS and Android currently offer. I mean seriously, the operating system was designed around a pointing device and gestures.

So why the issues with Windows 7 for tablets? My take on it isn't the operating system being the issue, but rather the software ecosystem. Supporting end user software simply isn't designed for a touchscreen experience on the Windows platform. The bulk of the software out there is designed with a mouse and keyboard in mind. The fact that Windows 7 provides several alternative input mediums (touch and voice for example) actually serve to mitigate application shortcomings in my opinion.

Simply put, other than the girth of Windows, a perfect application example to actually showcase Windows' abilities in this arena would be OneNote. I can think of no application which is remotely comparable in iOS or Android in terms of usability in a tablet environment. And this is a Windows native application.

So what's everyone else's take on this? I'm curious...

 

[JackMDS]

In the vehicle world their are regular cars and there are Bulldozers.

Lucky for us people got used to cars and everybody understands that depending on the circumstances each one is priceless.

The phone type of tablet platform is a consumer appliance and not a real versatile computer.

The judgment of the tablet is done from that perspective (The perspective of I like toys).

People that use Win Tablet for serious work will not trade for the other Toys.

On the other hand people that love “toys” has no real use for current Windows tablets.

I.e., the current level of argument is really a social one.


😎

 

[KentState]

I think it's the difference in perception of what a bunch of people on a tech forum want out of a tablet versus a more typical user. Like you, I see a lot of upside to having Win7 on a tablet. The iPad to me is just a toy and I see little value and clearly just don't get it. However, I'm not the target audience and most likely in the minority. Tablet users want something simple to consume content without much hassle and the iPad delivers for them.

Similarly, I like play games that have stats, role play elements, 80+ hours of play, deep story and so on. Typical people are content swinging a controller to a cpu controlled tennis player on the Wii. I would rather read an in-depth newspaper article while most people want to watch clips of current news topics on a comedy network.

 

[SunnyD]

The social aspect aside, these supposed 'experts' in the field (I'm obviously critical of that designation) are saying Windows simply isn't designed for tablets and/or touch input... where in reality it completely and totally is.

I don't know... maybe it's just me.

 

[Modelworks]

For me what makes windows incompatible with tablets currently is the overall OS itself. It just isn't well suited for the embedded chips it would have to run on. Windows is designed with the the idea of having a central cpu do all the task requiring a faster cpu and using more power and that isn't the way the embedded world works. In windows if there isn't a hardware video decoder the cpu tries to decode the content. In embedded if there isn't a hardware decoder, you get no video. Embedded works by giving task to specialized devices of the system to handle what they do best with the processor being relegated to traffic cop coordinating what data stream goes where more than performing actual task itself. One of the reasons linux is used so often on devices is because it is extremely modular in design while windows breaks if you try to remove parts.

Interface wise windows can work on a tablet fine. It is the stuff underneath at issue. Even the ARM port of windows is proving more difficult than first thought because of how the overall core is designed. You have to look at every single task that the OS performs and figure out how to deal with it if the tablet cpu doesn't support that feature.

 

[beginner99]

The social aspect aside, these supposed 'experts' in the field (I'm obviously critical of that designation) are saying Windows simply isn't designed for tablets and/or touch input... where in reality it completely and totally is.

I don't know... maybe it's just me.

IMHO needs too much hardware (and hence power) to work nicely. So the tablet would either need to be heavier (larger battery) or have shorter battery life.
You are forced to use an x86 processor (will change in future). So it's more on which hardware the software runs. Plus windows ain't for free.

 

[Nothinman]

The entire user interface lends itself neatly towards a touchscreen environment, and the advancement Microsoft has put into Windows 7 for alternative input mediums makes it vastly superior and far more flexible than the static environments that iOS and Android currently offer. I mean seriously, the operating system was designed around a pointing device and gestures.

That seems to go against the conclusions of pretty much every reviewer out there so far. The UI elements in Win7 are designed for a mouse pointer precise device and fingers end up just being too big and clumsy. Watching one of videos on an Ars review was pretty funny, as he kept trying to scroll a web page in IE it would sometimes just sit there, register a random click on a link, etc. It just didn't look like something I'd want to use for any period of time. Usable as a last option? Sure, but something one would enjoy using? Probably not. And no apps are aware of the OSK, so it usually ends up covering what you were just looking at instead of shifting it up like in iOS or Android.

MS could fix this with a tablet-specific UI, but that won't help existing applications and Windows only real advantage is it's support for legacy applications, if you're willing to fight with and bang on a touch screen for hours a day just to use 1 or 2 Windows apps on your tablet, more power to you.

 

[SunnyD]

That seems to go against the conclusions of pretty much every reviewer out there so far. The UI elements in Win7 are designed for a mouse pointer precise device and fingers end up just being too big and clumsy. Watching one of videos on an Ars review was pretty funny, as he kept trying to scroll a web page in IE it would sometimes just sit there, register a random click on a link, etc. It just didn't look like something I'd want to use for any period of time. Usable as a last option? Sure, but something one would enjoy using? Probably not. And no apps are aware of the OSK, so it usually ends up covering what you were just looking at instead of shifting it up like in iOS or Android.

MS could fix this with a tablet-specific UI, but that won't help existing applications and Windows only real advantage is it's support for legacy applications, if you're willing to fight with and bang on a touch screen for hours a day just to use 1 or 2 Windows apps on your tablet, more power to you.

See, you fell for that trap too. IE, despite its integration with Windows, is an end-user application... NOT part of the OS. IE is replaceable, and designing a browser around a touch experience is trivial. The core OS itself, and the bulk of the Explorer shell UI is designed and spaced well for touch.

This is my complaint about these supposed reviews... they take the current application crop and lump it into the OS in terms of usability. You simply can't do that and have to be smart enough to move beyond that limited train of thought before you can truly understand the potential ecosystem of a given platform combination.

 

[Nothinman]

See, you fell for that trap too. IE, despite its integration with Windows, is an end-user application... NOT part of the OS. IE is replaceable, and designing a browser around a touch experience is trivial. The core OS itself, and the bulk of the Explorer shell UI is designed and spaced well for touch.

This is my complaint about these supposed reviews... they take the current application crop and lump it into the OS in terms of usability. You simply can't do that and have to be smart enough to move beyond that limited train of thought before you can truly understand the potential ecosystem of a given platform combination.

So what applications should they have used in their reviews?

 

[SunnyD]

So what applications should they have used in their reviews?

Ones that don't exist yet? That's my point, they're judging the OS based on the application base for a given form factor, which isn't the form factor they're trying to utilize.

The OS itself is perfectly capable. Supporting applications designed with the given format in mind will come, just as they have for iOS and Android. It's not like either of those two OSes magically had tens of thousands of applications for their respective platforms/formats on day 0.

 

[Nothinman]

Ones that don't exist yet? That's my point, they're judging the OS based on the application base for a given form factor, which isn't the form factor they're trying to utilize.

The OS itself is perfectly capable. Supporting applications designed with the given format in mind will come, just as they have for iOS and Android. It's not like either of those two OSes magically had tens of thousands of applications for their respective platforms/formats on day 0.

And one of the main points of most people out there saying this is that they already have an OS that better fits this form factor with no apps for it in WP7. Why fight two uphill battles at once? And if they market Win7 as a tablet-ready OS, people are going to want to run existing software and when it handles like IE did they're going to be disappointed and frustrated. It doesn't seem like MS learned at all from their previous tablet attempts with XP.

Hell, Linux is fully capable of doing everything Windows is and then some. But it's always judged on it's existing set of applications because that's what's available right now. If 50% of the world switched from Windows to Linux today I'm sure we'd see a whole slew of business, productivity, etc apps and games pumped out within the next few months. But that's not how it works.

 

[Griffinhart]

IMHO, Problems with Windows 7 tablets are:

-The UI isn't quite there for a dedicated touch interface. It's fairly touch friendly, but there are issues. A solution would be an alternate UI designed specifically for touch and pen. For convertables, the standard Windows UI, but when in tablet mode, the touch UI.

-The x86 platform. The big advantage non-Windows tablets have is that they are running on mobile processors really specializing in low power usage. My Win7 HP TM2 tablet gets 8+ hours on battery so the OS is capable of doing it. I think when we start seeing Windows 8 on ARM processors, we'll see that windows is more than capable at it.

-Perception. Look, let's face it, people love to dump on Microsoft. MS could do everything right and there would still be a lot of negative talk and false information out there. Unfortunately, all MS can do about this is hope that one day folks see and realize that Google and Apple aren't any better behaved than Microsoft is.

 

[shortylickens]

Win 7 is incredibly wasteful with resources, both memory and processor time. You really dont want it on a low-end system like a tablet for both performance and battery reasons.
Window 2000 would be better but its not pretty so people wouldn't like it.

 

[Nothinman]

Win 7 is incredibly wasteful with resources, both memory and processor time. You really dont want it on a low-end system like a tablet for both performance and battery reasons.
Window 2000 would be better but its not pretty so people wouldn't like it.

Odd, Win7 performed better than XP on my old work laptop...

 

[Genx87]

It wont run on ARM. How many tablets will be running Atom and be competitive? x86 just doesnt fit in this market.

 

[w7pro]

Personally, I think that it depends on your intent. I mean, just in sheer design, people would rather use tablets than a netbook. That being said, it's really easy to use a tablet so long as you're running Windows 7 Pro, if only for how convenient it is to sync up a tablet, a desktop, a phone, et. al. If you're a business owner and don't want to lug around a laptop, then a Windows 7 tablet would probably be beneficial, so long as everything was organized.

-- Ryan
Windows Outreach Team

 

[ultimatebob]

Try using Windows on a touch screen interface, and you'll understand. Most of the icons and menu options are just too damn small to accurately touch with a finger, and you'll quickly find yourself getting pissed off at the system when it doesn't respond properly.

The Linux GNOME interface is even worse, and I can't imagine Mac OS X being much better.

 

[Nothinman]

Try using Windows on a touch screen interface, and you'll understand. Most of the icons and menu options are just too damn small to accurately touch with a finger, and you'll quickly find yourself getting pissed off at the system when it doesn't respond properly.

The Linux GNOME interface is even worse, and I can't imagine Mac OS X being much better.

The difference is that no one is trying to put Gnome or OS X on a tablet, they understand how poorly that would work.

 

[Fox5]

Windows would be fine if they just designed a touch optimized browser for it.
Linux would be too. Thankfully, it already has it in Mozilla Fennec. I use that on my tablet, and since web browsing is 99% of the purpose of the tablet, it works well.

BTW, the interface is only half the killer on windows 7, and that's largely fixable by setting the UI to 150% zoom (or higher if that's an option). Weight is the big killer of a windows tablet. A cheaply made windows tablet is 4+ lbs. A super expensive one is 2+ lbs, still a little too heavy, and way lacking in performance. A windows 7 tablet really needs a dual core atom (or amd equivalent now), 4GB ram, an ssd, and to weigh under 1.5 lbs. The weight is the only thing that's tough to do, but it may be achievable with the next gen of low power cpus.