I was at Best Buy over the weekend and physically checked them out. There was a MS rep who was hanging out at the Surface tablet stand and he quickly tagged me. In the same fashion as the sad sales guys at the malls trying to give you a pitch on switching cell phone providers. As I was leaving, I ran into the MS rep again and we started to talk about the tablets. Let's just say the conversation was heavily focused on two things: 1. How the tablets have Office on them - free. 2. How neat the gestures are.
I'm an Office user but when I'm using mytablet - iPad, I am biased towards being entertained and do light productive stuff. Not sure if I want to do "Office" work on a tablet. As for the gestures. Too much. Seems like the whole industry has gone gesture crazzzzy. Apple started the gesture trend yet they are the most reserved with the gestures. Just because there's more gestures doesn't mean it's better.
Then we talked about price. Holy smack! I didn't realize how expensive these things are. I handled both the base and the pro tablets and they are chunky clunky. These things are supposed to be handled and nothing about the "surface" made me want to hold the tablet. I jokingly asked if the keyboard comes with it. I really thought for the price they are asking... of course. NOPE! They want $100+ for the keyboard and that's the crappy one. The better keyboard was $150. Yes folks there is are two keyboards... cheap(?) one for $100 uses bubble like buttons and the more expensive one is tactile spring loaded.
I'm a fair guy and have a household with both PC and Mac... and Android and Apple (iphone, ipad, appletv). I just don't understand how a company who is not a market leader in tablets, provides a less accepted product, not as mature, and lower quality build wants to charge more than the market leader iPad.
By Christmas the Surface tablets will be another wasted MS project. Too bad because the Surface commercials were so much better than the product.