Unplugging iPad/Foreflight in favor of iFly/MS Surface Pro 3

[dstclair]

I'm probably swimming against the tide on this one -- sort of

I've been an iPad user since May 2010 and Foreflight soon thereafter. I find/found the device very useful for both personal and business. Devices have evolved over time and I now have a MS Surface Pro 3 2-in-1 device that works very well for ME. After 6 months of usage, I'm going to pull the plug on using my iPad as I try to reduce the number of devices I use. I need a Windows 8/10 device for business reasons.

Don't get me wrong -- the iPad is a much better tablet while the Surface is more robust PC. The Surface has the functional/apps I use other than aviation apps. I solved that issue this week after finding a very good Android virtual machine for Windows 8.1 called "Duos". I tried out Garmin Pilot and iFly GPS. Pilot had some minor scaling issues but work OK otherwise. iFly works very well and with the new seamless charts looks to be the winner. Performance of iFly is a little crisper and is a little more intuitive for ME. I also like that iFly goes through Lockheed Martin for weather and filing as this gives more functionality for opening/closing/activating flight plans.

The closer on the deal was the natural interface with my Skyguard transmitter. Now I don't need multiple apps to control the Skyguard -- it's all in one.

The iPhone version of iFly is solid as well and is actually my primary backup to my Garmin 795. I plan to use my Surface as the backup to the backup and serve as my on-ground planning device (big screen).

I haven't had a chance to actually fly with iFly due to the 21 days of thunderstorms in the month of May for Dallas but hope to try things out later this week.

I still rate Foreflight as a bit better product that iFly and Pilot but the platform support doesn't fit my mission.

[SportPilot]

.......

[dstclair]

Just following up. iFly on DuOS works quite well except for a couple items:

* Weather does not automatically update after the initial load if you switch from the DuOS to a Windows app. Not a showstopper for me since this would be when you're planning on the ground and I'm rarely in the app for long enough that a weather refresh would be needed. Until then, you simply restart iFly to get new weather.

* Cannot connect to an external Skyguard unit (and perhaps others). The Surface is replacing my Wifi-only iPad 4 so this is no loss of functionality for me and doesn't effect my mission.

These should only be short-lived issues as iFly is working on a native Windows version.

[SportPilot]

.......

[dstclair]

DuOS provides a complete Virtual Machine so access to Windows services (like network) will be abstracted through a proxy layer. It is highly likely the DuOS only implemented common protocols like http/https/ftp/etc. and did not allow for peer2peer communication. Downloading weather, maps, etc. work fine so this is likely the case.

Perhaps in a future release of DuOS they'll add access to lower level Windows stuff but may not be that important for iFly if they release a native version soon.