My Lonely Windows Tablet

Android is great ... when you first buy it.  Pretty soon, the data mining activities of the various apps grinds the thing to a virtual standstill unless you regularly clean it out; and it never gets back to full speed.  It was particularly irritating that I couldn't free up space by deleting any of the numerous Google apps that I never used, but suspected were using me.

So I bought a Windows tablet. It's a well-written platform with the official Microsoft apps running well; my only gripe being that the keyboard often obscures the fields I'm trying to enter the information to. Solved this with a separate keyboard.

So, everything working well, I went to look for the apps I wanted to add: Amazon, Ebay, Facebook and Twitter at first. Ebay is the shoddiest: every time I click on a search item, it returns "String reference not set to an instance of a String Parameter name: s (EX)" which I have to close before re-selecting the item. Annoying.  Those apps that have been ported to Windows have often not had the kinks ironed out of them, making them difficult or irritating to use; and there are many apps that are simply absent! There's no Flickr, no WhatsApp, no Instagram. A major phone and tablet platform has been ignored, probably because so few people use it; but so few people use it because the apps they need are not available on it.

I don't know whether Microsoft has just been sitting back and accepting that this platform will only be relevant to corporate or anti-social users, so has not provided the tools for app development in an easy format, or whether app developers have ignored it because Google is gyrating its pelvis before them in such a sexy way that Microsoft is sat in the kitchen, friendless and alone. Maybe a bit of both.

However, I will continue to elbow my way past crowded Google and uptown Apple to join my Windows tablet in the kitchen. It may be lonely, but that annoying little icon that means "waiting... waiting... waiting..." is refreshingly absent.