First of all, thanks for writing about your experiences! This was an inspiration for me when attempting to do something similar on a Transformer Prime. Unfortunately the Asus keyboard wasn't good enough, and that fell into misuse.
However, this has prompted me to re-evaluate what I need on my work computer. Essentially, there are only three things I actually run: vim, Vagrant and a browser.
This means that when the lease period on my current Air ends in February I will have a lot of freedom to choose my next "workstation". Theoretically it could be any small-and-light laptop, or maybe even something like iPad or Surface. Though even with the little requirements I have, I'm not so keen to go Windows...
Oh, and an actual question: I do quite a lot of front-end development (see for instance http://createjs.org/ ). One thing that mobile browsers lack is access to proper inspectors and JavaScript consoles. Any ideas on that?
"One thing that mobile browsers lack is access to proper inspectors and JavaScript consoles. Any ideas on that?"
When you have to, can't you VNC to a machine with proper inspectors and consoles?
I don't ipad exclusively, nor do I front end very much, but whenever ssh or run-a-client-on-the-ipad fails me, VNC usually is the solution. I guess rdesktop works too. Given a decent xserver on the ipad I could do a few more things.
Well, I plan to use a Surface as a client but my development will stil be on Linux, of course. The whole no-browsers-except-IE-on-a-surface might be a real killer for anyone doing web development though.
True of iPad as well, no? I'm still confused about the Windows RT / IE rule. I remember that they put special provisions for browsers to have elevated rights. Then I remember 3rd party browsers not being allowed on the "desktop" of RT, and then there is some suggestion that they won't be allowed to JIT even within Metro. There's been enough conflicting stories that I really want a detailed summary from someone at Microsoft or Mozilla on what is and is not allowed.
The last I heard of this is that the Metro versions of the different browsers can run on Intel-based Windows 8 devices, but not on ARM-powered Windows RT.
If you get a Surface Pro, you could run any browser you want, Firebug and even Linux natively. You'd be giving up on some of the battery life, weight, thickness and price over the RT version though.
However, this has prompted me to re-evaluate what I need on my work computer. Essentially, there are only three things I actually run: vim, Vagrant and a browser.
This means that when the lease period on my current Air ends in February I will have a lot of freedom to choose my next "workstation". Theoretically it could be any small-and-light laptop, or maybe even something like iPad or Surface. Though even with the little requirements I have, I'm not so keen to go Windows...
Oh, and an actual question: I do quite a lot of front-end development (see for instance http://createjs.org/ ). One thing that mobile browsers lack is access to proper inspectors and JavaScript consoles. Any ideas on that?