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Living Room / Re: Microsoft Surface RT - I got one.
« Last post by Deozaan on May 09, 2015, 10:35 PM »Deozaan, the outlook is pretty bleak for you. Windows RT is officially dead as the word has come down from the mountaintop in Redmond.This thing would be so amazing if I could just run my usual Windows programs. . .
Why, yes it would and...yes, those things are amazing when running Windows programs. Unfortunately, you have to pay a lot more money to get one of the Surfaces with the 'pro' moniker behind its name in order to do it.
I've never used an RT device and I'm not too familiar with them, but I believe Microsoft's entire philosophy with the RT platform was that anything that an RT device could run would be offered through the Microsoft app store. I don't believe there's any way to 'side-load' apps on those things. I'd love to be told I'm wrong, but I don't believe I am.-Innuendo (May 09, 2015, 09:26 PM)
[EDIT]wraith808 posted while I was typing up my response (I took a long time and got distracted in the middle of writing this). We both essentially said the same things.[/EDIT]
I've looked more into it and it seems that all editions of the Surface 3 run full Windows, even the non-Pro version. That's pretty cool.
You can side-load programs on here. Sort of. I got the Surface so I could test my Unity game projects on it. After a bunch of mucking about trying to figure out stuff, I finally got a demo project installed on the thing. Honestly, I'm still not sure how to package it all up into an "installer" (or executable) without using Visual Studio to deploy the program onto the device.
But it's now considered installed on the device and I can launch it from the same place as the rest of the applications.
As part of the process, I did also have to download Visual Studio Debugger program for the Surface, which I did straight through Microsoft's website, using an installer. Not the Windows Store. So, yes, I'm pretty sure you can install whatever you want on the device without needing to use the Windows Store. But the hard part is finding something that has been compiled to run on Windows RT (ARM). And that has to be the biggest flaw of the device. It's hard to find programs compiled for ARM and the Windows Store seems fairly sparse to me.
I realize I'm talking in circles now, but... The hardware is really amazing! There's a lot to like about the Surface. Even Windows 8.1/Metro stuff works decently enough on the touch interface. But the ARM architecture is its ultimate downfall. So I'm glad to see they've rectified that issue with all editions of the Surface 3. I'm just a little bummed that I happen to be stuck with the lame-duck Surface 2.

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