2 pages, I thought something cool had happened and its a frikkin tablet .. nevermind

As with any electronics device, it's better to wait for the second generation of the product.

I will buy the tablet for sure, I love reading and doing complex math, so I need a tablet for those. Also, if you guys haven't tried Windows 8 already, it is awesome (perfect for a tablet IMO)

The Pro version is very tempting, will have to wait for a price.

I might get a vanilla version since it does have Office.

Its a very pretty piece of hardware I must say.

I expect €800-€1000 for the base Pro model.It is, but I'mnot sure text editing/other stuff you can do in Office can be done well enough on a tablet. We'll see, maybe they'll find a way to do those things efficiently.Usually those sort of products have some glaring flaws with the first iteration that get addressed in the next revision. Vista was on new engine compared to Windows XP, ggot a lot of crap for its many flaws, most of which were not present in Windows 7 which is really just an evolution of Vista. Sometimes MS does get things right at the first time, eg. Office 2007 was a drastic departure from Office 97-2003 and was practically perfect, at least in my experience with it. But 2nd generation rule applies not only to MS, iPad 2 was a big improvement over iPad 1, a lot more tangible than iPad 3 over iPad 2 (I've not used much any of them mind you).


Heh, at the moment I have only a laptop from early 2010, I get pretty annoyed with it as it's neither as comfortable to work with compared to a desktop PC nor is it as portable as I'd like it to be, so I've been thinking about switching to a desktop PC + tablet combo.

I use my Ipad 2 purely for reading also, but I sure would love to be able to do much more without any limitations.

If they can get pressure sensative pen control for a decent price, i might be interested in this. Otherwise as an ipad owner, i dont really see much point in it for me. Tablets are highly intuative and simple web browsers and novelty app access for me. I dont need a physical keyboard for that. Nor do i need a full OS. BUT. As a drawing tool, it could be great for me, because while i can do a lot with the apps avaliable on the ipad, they offer approximations of a pressure sensative input. It doesnt feel accurate enough for more complex work but this could be perfect. Price it well, and i'm in. Over £550 and its too much for what it is (what i'll actually use).

For those new to tablets tho. They're awesome. I havnt touched my PC for almost 2 years. Not as a browser, not as a work station...nothing. It just gathers dust. I'm definately waiting on a few things tho. Namely price, battery life and pressure info. Plus i want to see apples counter before i back MS.

Battery life would seem to be one of the big gains of the Ivy Bridge line of Intel Core i5 processors. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see one of those pull a nice 8-10 hours.

What do you read on it? I read with my Kindle a lot but it is terrible for browsing/reading PDF files, it's only good for novels and press articles. Tablet would certainly come in handy forme in this regard.

Just to butt in, but graphic novels are the dogs balls on tablets. perfect size for a digital comic. I leave my kindle for books since the digital ink is far less straining on the eyes and far better quality. But for comics it's king

American Comics, Manga, Halo books :P, Hunger Games, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book series. I love how mangas/comics look on the Ipad 2's screen.

10 inch eInk devices are perfect for Japanese (black and white) comics. They look better than on paper itself IMO. Of course Amazon nor any other eshop that I know of sells them properly formatted, so you can only read them by stealing, which is a shame. (not to mention the ridiculous prices of 10' eInk readers)

I have an official subscription to Shonen Jump Alpha as well, so I can read them on my tablet in great quality. A combination of purchased and stolen (:P) manga :D

Come to think of it, they have an Ipad App that I've never tried lol. I've always just been going to the actual site and using their reader there. The quality may be even better for my Ipad with that app of theirs. Going to check it out now.

I also love to use the Ipad 2 as my official Audio Book device :)

One other huge use that I have for it, is that I like to use the remote app to control Itunes on my pc, playing music at night through my computer's awesome speakers as I relax, or if I don't feel like putting headphones in, I can just play an audiobook through my computer's speakers. I make pretty effective use of my tablet, and it's only the limitations of the Ipad that keep me from using it even more than I already do.

The apps i tend to use the most are the ones that improve usability and ultimately make for a better experience then on a desktop. Things as simple as the ebay app. Not having to deal with pages of listings, but a constant stream of them as you swipe down on the screen. It just feels better, and i'd struggle to go back to the web browser method now.

Apps like deja stumble upon and showyou are great too, again offering a much more intuative, fast, simple way to find new and interesting content and videos. Stuff like tunein radio for millions of stations from around the globe. Sketchbook pro for drawing. Love film player and post so you can watch content, or set up rental lists etc. those are the apps i gravitate towards. I download a lot, but they tend to be one use deals. Novelty that wears off. Case in point. Flipboard. Combines facebook, twitter and any other news feeds into a book-like presentation. Cool at first, but i tend to just use the individual apps since they offer more features.

In my view, it helps the OEM partners, because they weren't doing much of anything to excite people out there. And if the Surface is successful, that makes it even more likely that OEM partner win 8 tablets can be successful, because let's face it, sometimes it takes one company succeeding more so than others for a certain kind of product to become more viable to a larger market.

Just yesterday for example, as this was being announced, I had 3 people calling me asking about it, and how good it is or isn't (of course I have no answers), and none of these 3 people are remotely tech savvy individuals. And why did these people even take such interest in this? Because Apple, with the success of the Ipad, has successfully redefined the market for these kinds of devices. These are people who, were it not for the Ipad, wouldn't even be interested in tablets. And since Apple has brought them into the market, they are now in the market for anything that may catch their interest. If Microsoft had attempted to launch this device prior to the release of something like the Ipad, it would be guaranteed to bomb, not because it isn't good, but because people seem to eat up everything apple puts out there, and because this is the case, Apple has the power to technically create a market out of nothing. Just as how there's a much larger market for this surface tablet because of the Ipad, there will be a larger market for win 8 tablets because of the Microsoft Surface.

If OEM partners are somehow ticked off by this, they shouldn't be.

Will they really have abysmal battery life? From what I've seen of Ivy Bridge processors, they seem to offer some pretty damn impressive power savings over the Sandy Bridge line of processors, and unlike a full fledged computer, or even ultrabook, that still has to support many more outputs than the Surface Pro ever has to, and usually also bigger screens, I really don't think the battery life will be quite as bad on the Surface Pro as one might initially believe. What's more, this tablet is also using second generation gorilla glass, which apparently has notably superior touch responsiveness, which from what I've read on the stuff, will mean that the actual device needs to use less power to help with the overall touch responsiveness of the device. So, even the glass tech used has the potential to help with power consumption.

True, but Microsoft got a real wake-up call last year when HP nearly decided to dump it's entire desktop division. I think they realize that going forward they're going to have to champion their software products with their own hardware. Microsoft is becoming increasingly comfortable with hardware manufacturing, they're also seeing the advantages of supporting their products with made-to-order hardware platforms.

It's good to see Microsoft make some kind of attempt at innovation again. After all, they're sitting on some of the juiciest technology patents in existence, I'd like to see some of those things actually get made. I also think Microsoft is tired of waiting for HP, DELL etc to make their move. Sure it's a risk, but the rewards would be huge if they could actually create a product that takes off. A couple of years ago Microsoft had an Adaptive Keyboard Concept, before that it was the Courier. I would have purchased either of those products because they instantly appealed to me as more than just sexy gadgets, but also concepts that had real functionality to them. So I'm really hoping that this is just the beginning of things we see from their hardware division.

Yea, I'm happy to see Microsoft putting their patents and plentiful resources to use to create hardware that they feel best shows off their software. It's the way it should be. Microsoft has sat back for far too long as their hardware partners far too often put out absolute duds that do nothing but make them look bad.

Yea, a lot of people are actually sleeping on RT. It might even end up being considered better than the Pro. Some really and truly just want a tablet that uses awesome looking tablet apps, and Windows Metro, from what I've seen so far, certainly has enough features and a really nice visual/functional aesthetic about it that already makes it more attractive than an Ipad. Software will be the thing that drives Surface RT.

I think the surface will allow Microsoft to get better out of their OEM partners, due to the competition coming from Microsoft themselves. They won't just want to match what Microsoft has done, they'll want to outdo it.

Think about it, Microsoft has never really designed a mainstream OS for a tablet before in the way they've done it this time with Windows 8. Tablets are clearly a major part of their strategy. They created Metro largely due to touch and the whole tablet mania that's going on right now. Major windows operating systems have always been designed for PCs and laptops. Considering this is the first ever major OS by MS built for tablets, and isn't just a minor shoehorning of features just to say they have it, like was the case with touch on previous windows operating systems, such as Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft would be putting their company at risk in a way that they haven't done since the original Xbox. Heck, it's even riskier than the gamble with the first Xbox, because at least the first Xbox wasn't tied to a major windows release. The success of the next windows was in no way tied to the success of Xbox. However, in many ways, the success of the next Windows OS is largely focused on how well Microsoft does on the tablet side of things, because this OS is heavily designed with tablets in mind. Failure on that front is simply not an option.

Microsoft would be doing themselves a great disservice to not release their own hardware to serve as a sort of standard bearer for what is best and what is possible with a Windows 8 Tablet. The things they've done with this upcoming version of windows are the most radical changes they've made to Windows since the release of Windows 95. Microsoft must go all out. Expect the next Xbox to also run on Windows 8 RT.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft's OEM partners are NOT going to complain about this tablet. Apple dominates the market and at the moment they have no hope of becoming a real competition using Android OS, which is a convoluted mess on user end. Windows Phone 7 was a nice OS with splendid user interface, but it never gained traction as early models had lukewarm reception and developers never got on board.

With WinRT MS is going to advertise the hell out of it and give it a recognizable image. It'll be up to hardware manufacturers that Surface is not the Windows RT tablet but a WinRT tablet, ie. they'll have to make products that favorably compare to Surface. Basically what WinRT needs is huge volumes of sales right off the bat to get developer support and it can only be achieved if MS launches its own tablet product because companies like Asus, Samsung or whatever might release a WinRT tablet but they would not give it a big marketing push.