Microsoft Surface 2 fondleslabs finally get off ground with airline order How many of Microsoft's ARM-powered Surface 2 fondleslabs has it sold so far during the presale period leading up to the tablet's October 22 launch? At least 11,000, as it turns out, because that's how many were snapped up by US passenger carrier Delta Air Lines. "Delta is rolling out these new tablets to replace the …
I'm not a luddite, however I would note that all of my Disaster Recovery/BCM plans are printed out and stored in paper folders. I suspect other IT professionals do the same on the basis that in a disaster you simply can't count on your documentation being retrievable from computers.
While it might save a lot of money on reissuing paper documents, I can't help but feel that certain things are best stored as a reassuring lump of paper irrespective of cost because paper is pretty failure resistant to a user leaving it turned on and running the batteries flat.
For Delta it all seems like a good deal, but for Microsoft?
I've already got an HP Touchpad that runs Android that I barely use. Though it would be tempting to use Windows 8 in an environment (touchscreen) that it was actually designed to work in. Ahhh who am I kidding, I wont use it, it's hardly like I can run the iPlayer radio app on it.
Maybe what I need is the Surface X Pro (where X is whatever number). It's got some exciting specs and the idea of being able to run all that PC software on it is quite tantalising. I'll just wait a bit longer for one with a decent sized screen and perhaps an integrated keyboard. If only I could get my hands on one of those now. Though with those added extras it certainly would have to be more expensive than a Surface X Pro.
One division in my company were given ipads so that they could track sales meetings etc whilst out and about. Due to the very shoddy software provided it kept locating them in Colorado and China, when there were actually in Colchester and Chester (or so they say).
So after a year the ipads were taken away and replaced with Android tabs that have worked beautifully. But the removal of the fruity ones fondleslabs was accompanied by much moaning and bleeting, not because they thought the iPad was a better bit of kit, they just happened to have installed all of their iPhone tat on there also.
So I very much doubt that the good folks at Delta think the iPad to be the finest tablet out there. It's just that they don't want to lose their progress on Angry Birds.
I often ask the laydees if they'd like to come back to my office and stroke my android.
I'm sure this is unrelated, but I seem to be getting a lot of letters from HR talking about sexual harassment lately, too.
Oh well. It's almost as bad as that time I was using Thinkpads and offering to train the lads on how to use it, by showing them how I touched my tracknub. All I did was ask if they wanted to see me play with my blue nipple....
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Mr iTard, the Delta pilot said glowingly about their choice of Surface "We need an inflight solution, not just a document reader". You clearly know nothing about the airline business, the Surface is significantly better at integrating into their workflows than the iPad.
I work in an avionics business and am aware of the popular use by pilots and crew of the Ipad without any promotions from Apple. Commercial and civli aviation pilots have been using the ipads for backup navigation, weather, ADSB, aircraft checklists, manuals etc.
The Delta deal to use the MS Surface devices should be interesting.
This story sounds like an MS PR move, and I wonder how many Delta crew members are going to give up their Ipads.
If Delta requires flight staff to use M$, then they will use M$. They may also bring along their own iPads in addition. Since the iPad was the first device to gain approvals, developers have come up with some excellent apps for the market and the iPad has a healthy head start.
I haven't seen the ADSB implementation. I'll have to check that out this week.
I'm going to guess that Delta is getting a kickback in some form from M$.
As I guessed, that's just a receiver. It can't transmit data. ADS-B it's a technology for receiving other planes position and transmitting its own. It's a bit useless otherwise, because you can see other aircrafts as long as they transmit their data also (sure radar data are also fed into the system, but ADS-B is a "cooperative" system).
Not sure either if a receiver mounted with a suction cup and an iPad mounted somehow are better than a built in ADS-B MFD. After all that receiver receives, processes and relies data over Wi-Fi - it could be adapted to any other device. Anyway this a cheaper albeit limited solution for sure, given the prices of aviation hardware.
they wont end up splattered on a runaway
the lumia 820 will direct the to the airport correctly and not onto runaway
I doubt it is much more than they have the system already developed and
putting it on surface is a no brainer. and far easier without having to develop
for multiple platforms completely from scratch.
The iPads are great as cockpit document readers but clearly Delta are more forward thinking than that. The Delta pilot in their video said on their choice of Surface "We need an inflight solution, not just a document reader". Airline workflows and systems are complex so it appears that MS can offer something more than the iPad.
Sadly for Delta the iPad is approved for use as a digital flight bag, whereas the Surface 2 is not.
Apparently the cost of waiting for approval will cost Delta an extra $20m in fuel costs (for the heavy non-digital flight bags) over using the iPad today. Which is more than the $5.5m cost of the devices.
This really stinks of kickbacks and corporate schmoozing. Or a Microsoft-only infected IT department.
From a very quick Internet search the MS article about this says:
"Delta expects to receive approval from the FAA to use the tablets during all phases of flight next year, a process that follows an extensive period of testing on board Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 aircraft. Approvals for all fleet types are expected by the end of the year. "
They're going to request approval following testing due to be completed by the end of the year. By the time that the FAA have signed it off (and that is by no means guaranteed) then you're looking at at least 6 months elapsed. Then they have to roll them out. The iPad is already approved and available now. That's a difference of at least 3.25 million sheets of paper and 600,000 gallons of fuel (@ roughly $6/gallon) taking the numbers from the article.
I had 2 android tablets, and 1 ipad before I got my surface RT, the ipad was next to useless for anything work related, the android tablets could do some stuff but essentially didn't gets used ( like yours ) because they were more annoying to use than to get up and uwait for a desktop PC to turn on. ( ok I went somewhere once where I needed a gps and it was good except it didn't last the journey as the battery got drained having to be on wifi tethered to my phone and using gps. )
However the surface RT has allowed me to not lug around my giant laptop anymore, the laptop is now a desktop as it stays docked always, the tablet has become my mobile workstation and is hugely productive.
As for using the iplayer app ... err .. it doesn't need one, I just go to the iplayer website and view the full content using the built in browser, the reason ios needs so many apps is because its browser is severely limited in what it can do, the surface has a great browser and many of these "must have" apps like facebook etc are not required because you can pin the page to your start screen and instead of a limited app that you have to learn how to use, you get the full website.
People are such sheep these days, they hear some press and marketing propaganda and go about repeating it verbatim
lol if you think MS paid delta to use their tablets, no doubt they got a great deal on them, but I suspect you could too if you rang up and said you want 11000.
this is only one example of windows in use in military aviation....
I think you will find windows in a LOT of critical environments - Warships, missile systems, medical imaging......
other OS's are used too... but there isn't a blanket ban on windows, which is a perfectly useable and stable platform when trimmed and managed properly
M_P666: "I think you will find windows in a LOT of critical environments - Warships, ..."
You mean Windows-for-Warships? Hardly a good counter-example to prove how reliable Windows can be in a critical environment. It actually proves the opposite point. The first UK-built Windows boat experienced a complete PC shut-down within minutes upon entering its very first sea trial exercise. It took them 20 minutes to turn it back on again. Sitting duck. FAIL.
@JeffPooh: a couple of points:
1) It was a ship, not a boat.
2) It wasn't commissioned, by definition it was still having the bugs worked out of it. That's what sea trials are for. You wouldn't write of a whole ship if the engine failed during initial sea trials, you'd fix it and carry on.
"I think you will find windows in a LOT of critical environments - Warships, missile systems, medical imaging......"
No, you wouldn't. Having worked in the defence industry for more years than I care to remember I can emphatically state that I have only once seen Windows used as an OS in any critical system; a very badly made early days battlefield HUD system that made use of WfWG3.11, kept going into reset and had to be rebooted every 20 minutes. I think the accepted practice when met with MoD/USDoD requests along the lines of "Can't you use Windows?" is to put a Windows sticker on the package but to make sure that the OS is one that actually works.
that's the thing... you cant stop an employee from messing up an ipad... just go to the settings and remove the profile...
a device used in a mission critical operation - like a flight deck needs to be locked down. The tablet is not a personal entertainment device for bored pilots, its an electronic manual... its no fun when a plane is falling through the sky, your running through your emergency procedure when a words with friends request comes in and instead of looking at glide configuration, your greeted with a scrabble board!
saying that, im not sure if 8RT cant be controlled with Group policy, but I believe 8.1RT can
you can in deed do that, or manage an iOS device with a multitude of MDM solutions, but the configuration is just stored as a profile, much like the BT cloud wifi profile... an administrator cant lock down that setting from a user, which means you can just disable the profile...
I run a mixed OSX/Windows network and was looking to deploy several hundred iOS devices, but after 3 days of iOS Enterprise deployment training, the instructors couldn't give me an option to mandate any setting to be locked from a user - its not apples design ethic - one device per user with that user being an administrator of his device...
As the LA education board found out when trying to roll out ipads to the students - 300,000 had the security removed in the first week...
Profiles work lovely in a BYOD environment, where I can setup our radius and VPN by a user connecting to an open wireless network and installing a profile, which they then discard, but for properly administered security, your bang out of luck
> an administrator can't lock down that setting from a user...
Yes they can. With the iPhone onfiguration utility you can set it so that that the user can remove the profile; the user can remove the profile with a password, or the user can't remove (or otherwise disable) the profile at all.
See the 'security' dropdown in the General tab in the configuration utility. Set 'Control when this profile can be removed' to 'Never'.
Maybe the LA education board forgot to set this option?
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"...IT'S no fun when a plane is falling through the sky, YOU'RE running through your emergency procedure..."
Electronic version can be better faster and cheaper. They can tick-off things as they go. They can defer items for later, and be reminded. A vast improvement.
Just not sure about MS Windows. Their management, designers and coders are the sharpest knives in the drawer lately.
Guess a large airline like Delta doesn't use an off-the-shelf solution as those for GA - think it needs custom applications integrated with all its organization and related software. Beyond maps, there is some paperwork piltos need to fill before and after a flight - if Delta can move it to devices as well and the transfer it to and from its management systems is another chance for savings and speed up operations and control.
This is a classic microsoft move and it's genius. Find isolated pockets of specialized industry and business and target it with specially built software. This is exactly how they wormed their way into the PC industry and it's brilliant. They will sneak their way back in the back door with moves like this.
What is not being reported here is why the Surface 2 was chosen. The reason is, they wanted something that won't grow legs. Since no one will steal them, they don't have to worry about it not being there. If they use an Android Tablet or an iPad, they would be gone in no time flat. Use a Surface and it will be left alone.
So, Delta uses Surface tablets for its EFB stuff, and other airlines (American for instance) use iPads. Let the war for mindshare begin.
Pilots (even from different airlines) socialize together. They are a tight group. If there are features lacking in one platform, or bad things like crashes of software, EVERYONE will know about it.
The original "EFB" software is/was developed by Boeing (a subsidiary Jeppesen) where I did some contracting work a bunch of years ago. It was THE hot thing for reducing paperwork and all that stuff. The pilots seem to think it is OK, and since there are two editions in the cockpit (captain, and first officer) it should be OK as well for redundancy.
Time will tell if this really works. My friends make note that it was the touch interface that made it all work (replacing a laptop). The keyboard just gets in the way.
I might well trust a proven EFB to deliver at a critical moment, but if the product had MS behind it in any major capacity it would be very hard to have any real confidence in it. With one third of the worlds PC users still desperately hanging on to a 13 year old OS like a climber clinging to a crumbling ledge by their fingertips, there's not much in the last decade's Redmond output to inspire any real confidence for when push comes to shove.
Carry-Around Edition and In-Flight Edition
Whether it is an iPad or Surface, what controlling of the plane with it will the flight crew perform?
Why not make in-flight software that is the equivalent that is on the tablet, but give it a tether so it won't easily work outside of the plane? It could just be latched to the deck or a safe, out-of-face area when not in use, and then for flight management, outside of the cockpit, the pilots could use whatever software is optimized for the variety of approved reference reading devices the pilots adopt.
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