Summary: Looking to buy tablets to roll out to your business? Now that Windows RT is off and running, is that a better bet than the iPad...?
By
Matt Baxter-Reynolds for
Post-PC Developments
October 18, 2012 -- 08:50 GMT (01:50 PDT)
The floodgates are almost open - we can buy Surface tablets running Windows RT today, and very soon we'll be able to buy Windows RT tablets from the other vendors.
Question is - if you're buying them for business, which one do you buy?
Buying for yourself
Let's say you have $600 burning a hole on your pocket and you're desperate to buy a tablet today to take into work, BYOD-style. What do you buy?
I'd love to say to you "buy a Windows RT tablet -- such as Surface", but I can't. You should buy an iPad. It's pretty difficult to be disappointed buying an iPad, especially when you consider quality, reliability, and availability of apps.
We're not going to know about the quality and reliability of Windows RT devices for months. We need actual humans to be using both the Surface device and those from Microsfot partners in order to make a judgement and allow problems to shake out. Similarly with apps, the count is not great at the moment --
4,326 apps globally is all you get to choose from. And, although it's easy and glib for me to say, most that are there are pretty rubbishy. (Expect a deeper dive into this topic soon.) This will get better, but it's just getting started.
Buying for a business
Oddly though, if you need to buy fifty, a few hundred, or a even several thousand tablets to give to staff, it might make sense to move on Windows RT rather than iPad. Maybe don't sign the PO today, but soon.
Let's break it down.
