Microsoft unveiled their Surface tablet yesterday. It look delicious! This is the first time in about 7 years that I've been definitely tempted by a Windows-run device.
I love my Apple devices for their functional simplicity, seamless integration and great design. When I update my Contacts on one device, all 3 are updated either by direct connection or via iCloud. I love my Macbook Pro because it just works. Took me a while to warm up to the iPad but I'm getting there. My wife grumbles about my iPhone and she's right, it's the real love of my life. Aside the obvious uses, it's my primary e-reader, sat-nav, iPod, expenses tracker, diary, dictionary, camera, etc. It helps that I run my wireless network on the Apple Time Capsule, which quietly backs up everything each hour.
However, I have my frustrations. My work requires mobility and I'd love to have full computing power on the go, in a convenient package. So I'd ditch my laptop quicker than you could say "Jobs" if I could. My ideal computing device would be the iPad with genuine Microsoft Office app and 1 or 2 USB ports to take an external hard drive or, at least, a flash drive. It would help if Apple allowed the Flash player on their devices so that one could get full functionality from all websites.
I've been looking at Microsoft's Surface on the internet all morning and it seems to tick all my boxes. It's built to work! It will run on Windows 8, have a full Microsoft Office suite designed for it, a USB port, 128GB hard disk space, what looks to be a great, full QWERTY keyboard and it's great to look at. All this in an iPad-sized package. Being Windows, there will probably be issues of reliability and many more viruses than an Apple user usually worries about but hey, welcome to proper mobility. As usual, I'll let it come out, assess it practically for 6 months or more and then decide. But I'm excited already.
