Got one yesterday from my son and haven't a clue about its features so far I can't get either itv playback or BBC I player
Photos have gone on but am unsure hoe to move them
He (son) says just have a play with it, daughter loves it and even wants to swap her laptop (easily to use) but old

Any good and bad points will be welcome
Thanks Nick

I don't think there are dedicated apps for ITV ad BBC, but you can use Internet Explorer, it has a flash player. You copy pictures into Pictures part of the Libraries, best by going to desktop and using copy-paste. You have Office there Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote. If you have a homegroup you can use it to stream media to it. Get Microsoft Solitaire games package, it's free and it's very addictive Works great with touch. If you are running out of space you can add up to 64GB microSD and move documents there. You can set up your email accounts except POP3. The rest depends on what you want to do with it. I have a couple of games and RSS feed reader, watch videos, browse Internet

ThAnks very much for that info that's very useful to know
Am not from the it generation) 52) so these forums are very helpfull to the likes of is oldies. But it just says this content is not working on I player and blank screen on itv player

Try desktop version of the Internet Explorer. Also does it have latest updates? They updated the flash player, too.

Make sure you've done all updates, this includes going to the store app and doing any updates from there and doing windows updates too.

Type "updates" on the start screen and you can find it.

I tried both itv and bbc, but being outside UK all I get is a message the content is not available. But I can play bbc radio. I guess you need to install the updates and it should work. If it does not you can reset the Surface from settings, something might have been misconfigured.

Well this is strange I can watch live tv but not I player it says flashplayer is dl on your system but its obviously not working how do I check if fp is on it or not

Go to http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

Did you manage to solve it?

Sort of can get live tv & you tube but not I player or playback
Found photos but unsure how to move them

Have you done all the updates we suggested because it should definitely work in IE10?

You need to go into the desktop app and use file explorer to move your photos like you would on any normal windows computer.

iPlayer is working for me. but no program downloads, just streaming.

So this is the Flash player that Adobe have 'withdrawn from mobile devices' ?

A special exception made for Windows RT eh.

It is slightly different as this isn't operating as a plugin but built into IE10 RT and co-developed with Microsoft to allow the benefits of Flash without the security issues.

It's not "full" Flash, but mainly exists to enable support for video.

I wonder what stopped development of 'Flash Alternative'

'Without security issues' is obviously marketing. Microsoft will hide the security updates within its profusion of IE fixes.

There were a few updates of the flash already, delivered separately. It's hardly their USP, you do not see the flash advertised.

Hard to advertise it when Adobe told us they stopped development.

It does not stop it being a unique selling point. For consumers it is obviously far more useful than that more basic Office given free.

Interesting that MS opted for Adobe Flash Player rather than their own Silverlight.

Silverlight is dead, I think. It's HTML5 now. As for Windows RT and flash, I certainly did not find about the flash player from MS Surface site. Web sites are switching to HTML5 or are creating apps, but it's nice to have a backup plan when there's neither.

Its certainly not dead, the up and coming BT sport app is written in Silverlight for PC and many other broadcasters worldwide are interfacing it for the first time.. It still is quite popular.
But yes HTML is the way forward.

MS used Silverlight for WP7 apps, not for WP8. It is still supported for PCs, but I think they are less enthusiastic about it and want to push HTML5 instead.

I don't really see any real push on HTML 5.

No WebGL (OpenGL for the browser) says everything.

The only real push is towards apps, not the browser.

It's coming in IE11 in Windows 8.1

8.1 RT too?

Yup . .