Day 2 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Surface RT for Teachers -
Teaching and Learning with a Surface RT Windows 8 Tablet

I still have a little bit more to tell you about my first day experience with the Surface RT before I share my Day 2 experience.

First, The Good

After I logged in for the first time with my Microsoft Account and everything synced up with SkyDrive I was impressed. From zero access on a brand new Surface RT to my entire Microsoft account collection being available to me in 20 minutes is impressive.

One of the reasons I purchased the RT was so my wife could also use it in the evenings for recreational purposes. So next up was her turn to login using her Microsoft Account. Here is her timeline from Day 1:

5:25pm My wife logged-in to the Surface RT with her Microsoft Account for the first time. Yes, the Surface RT supports multiuser accounts, another selling point of the RT. I will be adding a post about multiuser accounts in the future.

She also got the useless tutorial about swiping with your finger to access the Charms bar and like most people she tried swiping her finger in from the right side but this does nothing, it is only a video to make new users aware of swipe gestures on Windows 8.

5:26pm In less than a minute the Windows 8 Start Screen appears and her files from Skydrive begin to sync on our Surface RT named Nemo. I called it Nemo because this blog series will be going beneath the Surface to learn more, get it?  ;)

5:27pm All of her info from Skydrive is synced and ready to be accessed. All of her Pictures and Settings were now synced on Nemo. This took less than two minutes and that included the video tutorial. We discussed what she wanted to first do with the Surface RT and she wanted to access her Kindle ebooks. Time to go to the Store for the first time.

5:32pm We went to the Microsoft Store and did a Search for the free Kindle app, found it and selected it to install.

5:35pm The Kindle app took approximately 3 minutes to finish the install. The RT will multitask so you can do other things while the app downloads and installs.

5:36pm My wife logs-in to the Kindle app with her Amazon account and her ebook collection starts to sync to the Surface RT under her user profile.

5:38pm My wife opens the ebook that she was reading previously on the Nexus 7 and is amazed that it opened on the Surface RT where she last left off reading, thanks to Kindle Whispersync. The entire library of ebooks we purchased is now available to her in the Kindle app on the Surface RT.

5:40pm I checked the Microsoft Store and it said we had 13 Store updates available. I checked Windows Update and it said we had 30 updates to install.  

5:45pm My wife logged out of her account and I logged back into the Surface RT with my Microsoft Account. I also wanted to access the Kindle app so I went and searched the Microsoft Store, found it, and installed it. The Kindle app only took 30 seconds for me to install in my account probably because my wife had already downloaded it for her account.

5:47pm I wanted to get the free Office 2013 Home and Student Edition working so I went to Word 2013 and a wizard was started and walked me through a video tutorial of the new Office Suite and began downloading the program to the Surface RT.

5:52pmOffice installed and I was using Word 2013 for the first time on the new Surface RT.

5:58pmLogged out of my account for suppertime.

The Bad – Updates

Windows 8 currently has two different update mechanisms. First is the regular Windows Updates for the operating system just like Windows 7. The second type of update is for the apps you get from the Microsoft Store. You have to check both places to be completely updated. I have heard that this may change in the new Windows 8.1 update expected to be out in a couple of months and will be unified into one updating process, let’s hope so.

6:34pmlogged back into the Surface RT with my Microsoft Account and went to the Windows Store to begin the update ritual. The Store still said I had 13 Store updates so I selected all of them and began the update. Below is a screenshot of the Store updates:

6:44pm to my surprise all the Store updates finished in about 10 minutes.

6:45pmFeeling confident I went to the Windows Updates and saw that there were 32 updates and a Firmware update. I plugged the Surface RT into the electrical adapter and began the updates. You always want to have your device plugged in when doing updates because running out of power in the middle of an update cycle can corrupt the installation.

6:58pm All 32 updates were downloaded and the installation portion began.

7:15pm The installation of the 32 updates and Firmware completed and required a Restart of the system. Total install time for Windows Updates – 30 minutes.

7:16pmRestarted the system and 30 seconds later my Lock Screen was ready for login. I logged in and checked for more Windows Updates and it said I had one important update and that it would be installed during next maintenance cycle.

The Ugly – More Long Updates and the slow ARM processor

On Day 2 I used the Surface RT for browsing mostly and just playing around with some of Windows 8 new features. In the afternoon I signed out of my account and ran some errands. When I go back I noticed that the Surface RT had begun to install another round of updates. I guess it downloaded the updates in the background overnight. I am not sure what triggered the update process to begin but it did, I am guessing that me signing out did it, but this time the updates took A LOT longer:

Day 2 Update Timeline

5:00pm 30 updates began to download and install on the Surface RT

8:30pm The download and installation of all 30 Updates completed and required a couple of restarts along the way.

Total time for this round of updates was about 3.5 hours. Now that is a long time and this is also what James Kendrick experienced in his review of the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2.

Spreading out all of these updates across two days lessened the pain but still 4 to 5 hours of updates on a brand new system is not a pleasant experience. There needs to be a better and faster way.

If you happened to be at #iste13 on a spotty wi-fi connection I could see where this would be unbearable. One solution would be to turn-off all Windows Updates on a new system until you are at a location with high-speed wireless access AND have the time to wait 4 to 5 hours for all the updates to complete. It is not recommended to turn-off Windows Updates for security reasons so be sure to turn them back on as soon as possible if you do.

I can see where this is frustrating to new users with such a long update time. I know there are a lot of variables that affect the time to install updates from wireless speed, how much RAM your system has, speed of the processor, etc…. but Microsoft needs to find a better way to communicate the time any give update cycle may take on a particular device. A heads up that this will take 3 hours would be appreciated.

This is also why  Microsoft sets the update process to occur typically at 3am in the morning. All of this can happen in the background overnight while everyone is sleeping and this is what most people do. The good news is that once  you endure the first long series of updates the Surface RT any future updates should have minimal impact upon its use if they are installed at 3am in the morning as Microsoft suggests. Out of sight, out of mind.

I account much of this slow update time to the ARM processor in the Surface RT, here is hoping that the next version of the Surface RT will have a much more powerful processor to improve overall performance, including updates.

It also confirms my view that the Surface RT is a companion device and processor heavy activities will be limited by the slow ARM processor.

It is not all bad as overall I have a more favorable impression of the Surface RT after using it for a couple of days. Barring the update situation, I look forward to using it more and sharing some of the positives in upcoming posts, but Microsoft you still have work to do here.

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, Ph.D.

@tomgrissom

http://eiu.edu/itc/

http://techtalk4teachers.blogspot.com/