Surface RT has severe data speed caps…and some

I was so happy to flaunt my Surface today with its awesome Flash capabilities so I could stream the games during work on a second screen. That was, until I actually did it and the games were stuttering. To make things work, a dude fired up his iPad (yeah they have apps instead of the web) and it just streamed through…you know, like it’s supposed to. So I either have to blame Flash’s performance or there’s something else going on.  I did something crazy and compared the data speed of my Surface to my PC using SpeedTest.net. Both are on the same wifi network and the PC is clunky so it has no edge there. The results speak for themselves and running it multiple times didn’t change a thing – download speeds on the Surface RT (image above) are a multiple slower than on my PC (image below). And it’s indifferent if I used the Windows 8 or desktop IE browser. The Surface also shows some odd behavior with data coming in peaks and valleys instead of a graduated line.

I was convinced that this was a product of a registry setting…something I could change by changing a 1 to a 0 or something.  But I figured I’d make sure that the read write speed of just copying a file from my Surface to another location on my Surface would show me that the issue doesn’t lie there. Data was shooting and then it just died off…then it hit these little peaks and valleys and was rocking below 10MBps. Just like the data tests.

Son of a bitch…

A lot of you are more into this sort of stuff than I am. I’m into the 1’s and 0’s. What do you take from this? Think it’s the internal memory MS is using? Maybe it’s two independent things? Maybe it’s all in my head, I don’t know, that’s what I told myself.

Try this for yourself and sound off.