Microsoft Surface Tablet

[Connector]

Originally Posted by Rubicon

I certainly hope they don't double the resolution again!

I dunno really, Apple's whole "user experience" is hard to knock so they have that in their favour. Some more meat under the hood should be doable enough too.

What I'd really like to see is some sort of simple joypad in the box. Peripherals are fine but you really need the widget to be available to everyone to rely on designing stuff to use it. Maybe a dockable gizmo that sits along the bottom or something.

I doubt we will see a resolution increase in the ipad for a while, I think the new ipads resolution is still better than the surface, and considering that the screen size of the surface is bigger, Apple's screen will probably still look better.

But you are right, there might be some more meat under its hood, haha, as you so put it. Faster processor, cpu, more memory, etc. Won't too sexy, but making all the junk in the trunk run better will make it better.

But yea, I too wonder if the next ipad will have a better external joystick and have a stylus as well. I know the surface seems intent on showing off its stylus, and with hand writing cruticial to students to take notes, have to figure that Apple will get off their anti stylus crusade and embrace them.

I know I love using styluses with my new ipad. Anyone else out there the same? Especially for shmups games, a stylus is a must!

[crunc]

I never thought about using a stylus for a shmup. I will have to try that.

For note taking I think Noteshelf works pretty well. The automatic wrist protection works well, though you have to turn off gestures on the iPad for that to work. In any case that's the main problem with a stylus on a capacitive screen - you either can't rest your wrist on the screen, or they have to use some trickery like Noteshelf does (which isn't infallible by any means). That and that capacitive styluses tend not to be even remotely fine. I am getting a finer one and we'll see if that works well - I'm not really sure why they make them so fat.

[Connector]

Originally Posted by crunc

I never thought about using a stylus for a shmup. I will have to try that.

I'm a little ashamed to mention it, but I have 3 styluses. One a longer targus, and a shorter one, both of these two have the rubberytip.

The targus tip is nice cause it doesn't drag, but I kind of like the shorter one cause of the weight.

But at tj max, I bought a weird stylus that has a brush end and is really thin. Actually for shmups, this one works the best because of having no drag on it and it is super light. This stylus makes it feel like a joystick the most and is great fun.

But all 3 styluses play different and since I am a shmup and cave fan, I can not play games like dodonpachi or bug princess with my finger, they do not seem fun playing like that.

So I am a stylus fan, and I can remember long ago when I had an IPAC pocketpc playing mame, super nintendo, and genesis on my pocketpc.

Now fast forward two decades, and now it is on my new ipad and iphone 4. How things change.

[Peewhy]

this looks great and I love the USB port

[Connector]

Originally Posted by Peewhy

this looks great and I love the USB port

You know it would be cool to hook up a tablet to a hub and hook it up to many other tablets and iphones.

Why, you ask? I got no idea haha... But there must be some reason for it.

Anyway, just sounded like a cool idea, if anyone can think of a reason to have this usb hub arrangement, jot it down. Just the first wacky thing that popped into my head when you said usb.

But damn, I wonder if you can plug portable hard drives into the surface. With that, you could watch tons of dvd movies since many people have movie collections on their portable hard drives. That too may force apple to let us watch movies from our external hard drives.

Now that would be cool.