Enterprise Information Workers Favor Microsoft Tablets and Apple Phones

Alternate headline:

Microsoft Tablets Well Received by Those Who Have Not Used Them

What are Enterprise Information Workers? Are these IT employees?

I think IT workers like the idea of being able to run MS Office apps on a tablet. They haven't actually seen now these apps run on Surface RT and Surface Pro devices. :(

This dynamic will change when/if MS offers a version of Office for the iPad.

Until we tested the MS tablet


Give us iPad please

Alternate headline:

Microsoft Tablets Well Received by Those Who Have Not Used Them

I bet you have never touched one; it's a great little device and this comes from someone that has not bought a MS desktop OS since 2006.

What are Enterprise Information Workers? Are these IT employees?

They work for the website

www.startrek.com

releasing information about the enterprise, movies, actors, sequels etc.

This is really pathetic. Have any of you used a Surface? I have and it's a joke. Even people who get them for free don't like them.

For tablets, preferences were 36% Microsoft Surface

The chart shows 32%. Typo?

You've got too much opinion going on being masqueraded as fact. I can't deny your experience, but I can deny your experience makes you completely objective on all things UI.

Like the ribbon. I've never understood the ire some people have for it. See, I hate nested menus. Think they're of the devil. It doesn't lend itself well to exploration and discovery, and makes it hard to find something unless you're specifically looking for it.

That's funny, because ribbons are the devil to me (as a developer) and the technical writer on our team precisely because they require exploration and discovery which makes it hard to find something unless if you remember where you last found it. In other words, a lot of time is wasted searching for a feature that is often categorized with unrelated items.

The thing I liked about the menus was that I could usually quickly find what I was looking for by looking under the logical grouping of the menu and submenu names. I also liked the fact that the keyboard shortcuts appeared by the menu items. That organization lends itself to muscle memory and a quick "binary" search by eliminating categories by the menu and submenu names when you are searching for a feature for the first time.

You see, I don't use Office or other windows programs to fart around as a "hobby". I actually use it to "get stuff done" as part of my "job".

I don't know how it works for you where you are but where I live, time equals money.

Before I started working on application server services, I used to be a web developer. One of the cardinal rules I had was that you should not change the UI of your product for the sake of change and try not to introduce unnecessary changes in workflow when updating a product especially if it was customer facing. The reason for this is that abrupt changes in the UI destroy muscle memory for the user and cause a need to relearn the workflow again. I also applied similar rules to changing windows form applications.

Maybe these are difficult concepts for you to understand if you have never worked on software where you are "paid" a lot of money and your business relied on happy customers and internal end users remaining a productive as possible.

BTW. What if I told you that the "ribbon" was just a "tab" in disguise? That is all it is. Does replacing menus with "tabs" containing "buttons" sound cool to you? It sound lame doesn't it? Stop being such a hipster wishing for "change" for the sake of change and start to consider the needs of serious users who want to get their work done as quickly as possible.
:rolleyes:

PS. In a nutshell, I have gone from desktop console (point of sale and expert systems) development to web (e-commerce) programming to forms based windows backend processing development to app server and SOA (software as a service) development. That basically means that I know my ****. Some of my former colleagues/teammates have gone on to work Google and Microsoft.

It's funny how all of you Apple sheep are bashing the Surface. It is, without a doubt, much more usable than an iPad in a business environment. Get your head out of the clouds.

I'm just going to take a guess that you don't use any sort of windows in a business environment. I am also going to guess that you have never actually used a surface or Windows 8 for any period of time beyond playing with one at a mall kiosk.

I use windows every weekday for approximately 8 hours on average. I use Windows 7 Enterprise running VS.NET (for development), MSSQL Management studio (for development) and Office for email (Outlook) and documents.

I have been a software developer on the windows platform for over 15 years. What about you?

Based on my experience with windows 8, I can say that Microsoft has made a huge error in judgement. I believe that windows 8/RT will be their worst failure to date. The UI is full of basic usability mistakes that will alienate but novices and professionals alike. The only people who "love" the metro UI are microsofties and fanboys. If I have not made myself clear yet, I HATE the metro UI. I also HATE ribbons found in Office and the new explorer in Windows 8. Nobody at Microsoft seems to have asked or cared what professionals wanted or needed and only listen to "yes" men from Windows fanboy sites.

Microsoft has some of the biggest "sheep" in the industry. Their fans never critique Microsoft. Contrast that with mac users on here who are some of the biggest complainers there are on the internet. Apple should feel privileged to have a userbase that is so hard to please.