Microsoft admits customers don’t understand Windows RT

Nicole Kobie May 8, 2013

Microsoft needs to do a better job of explaining Windows RT to customers, especially considering the lack of backwards compatibility with apps, according to Windows vice-president Julie Larson-Green.

Microsoft admits customers don't understand Windows RT

The ARM-based version of Windows 8 doesn’t have a standard desktop, leaving users with Windows 8 Store apps and the Start screen. As PC Pro has previously revealed, retailers haven’t fully explained the difference between Windows RT and Windows 8 to customers – which isn’t helping struggling Windows RT tablet sales.

Larson-Green admitted Microsoft needed to do a better job of clarifying to customers exactly what Windows RT can and can’t do.

“I think we have some work to do on explaining it to people because it’s different,” Larson-Green said, according to a report on TechCrunch. “They’re just so used to Windows meaning backward compatibility in all the programs that you use today.”

She said she uses her Surface RT as her “main computing device” for work – stressing the built-in Office apps – but then admitted she switches to a Surface Pro running the full version of Windows 8 in order to “work on the details”.

Larson-Green also revealed that a public preview of Windows Blue, the update to Windows 8, will arrive at Microsoft’s Build conference at the end of June, and could see the return of the Start button to the new OS.