Microsoft Surface

Windows RT was launched two years ago promising to be a lightweight, low power consumption OS for modern devices. You couldn’t install any old software on it, only approved Windows Store apps and software pre-installed on it would work so that meant no viruses or malware could get on it and the OS wouldn’t degrade over time, plus you got great battery life out of a device. But its biggest selling point was also its main weakness as you couldn’t install Windows programs on it like iTunes, Photoshop or any other software and the Surface/Surface 2 didn’t sell well (nor did any of the OEMs RT devices). In the last three years Intel have made massive gains with the Atom chips so Intel devices can now get battery life like the ARM devices did so there less need for an ARM powered device.

This week at the Microsoft’s Windows 10 event Microsoft never mentioned Window RT and they said that Windows RT devices would get “some” of the features of Windows 10 but not the full upgrade, so in effect ending the Windows RT experiment.

There is a demand for a simple computing device, Google are selling plenty of Chromebooks which offer a simple OS with apps only available via a store. Should Microsoft have an OS to compete with Chrome OS or is that Windows 10 with the complete the good and bad of traditional Windows?

Was Microsoft right to kill of Windows RT?
[poll id=”7″]

3 thoughts on “Poll: Is Microsoft right to kill off Windows RT?”
  1. From a business perspective yes, it’s right to kill off RT. The new architecture Windows 10 can clearly be turned into an RT-like experience so although it’s going to annoy a lot of RT owners, they are doing the right thing.

  2. Kill it. It’s not necessary, and never was – by the time it shipped, Clover Trail x86 SOCs were almost ready (and would have been ready before, if Intel wasn’t late with delivery), making the entire product pointless. Why make a limited product when you can make a full featured one with all the same benefits. Two and a half years later, Cherry Trail chips will still be equal to or better than any ARM chip on the market, so there was literally no reason to continue with Windows for ARM.

  3. It is fair that they kill off RT, but then they should upgrade users who purchased devices with it to the normal Windows 10 version.

    They are now again deciding that they did something wrong the first time, so they better do it differently, which means they are effectively leaving their early adopters in the cold, specifically Surface and Surface 2 purchasers – this is the second time they do this – they last did with Windows Phone 7.5.

    Basically, it means that I personally would never recommend anyone to purchase latest Microsoft technology, because it seems to be a trend that they need a few rounds to do things the way they intended – that is just not good enough.

    This is for me the primary reason that Microsoft have not had success with these things the past years – the “fanboys” which are the early adopters are the ones that can pull new things wider, and Microsoft were behind on having these types of persons, and they are effectively the ones being hit by these things each time, so that situation do not seem to be going in the right direction.

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