You Can Experience Microsoft Surface Now… Well, Almost.

I’ve seen a lot of hoopla about the Microsoft Surface and I am a bit surprised at all the speculation about what it will be like.  To me the Surface seems like nothing more than a good tablet with a keyboard and a dock all put together.  The hardware specs that Microsoft has published aren’t very different than the Samsung Series 7 Slate, but with a higher resolution display.  Sure it’s similar to that the ASUS Transformer in that it docks to the keyboard and turns into a notebook, but that’s all “gimmickry” and shouldn’t impact performance.

If you want to know what Surface will be like, get the Samsung Slate, load Windows 8 on it, and play.  You don’t get the combo keyboard dock, but who cares?

I seriously doubt that the Surface will be an iPad killer.  I have an iPad and I have a Slate and I use them both – but for different things.  We’re the Surface, and any other decent Windows 8 tablet will make its biggest impact is in the corporate market. I compared the specs of the Slate with my company-issued notebook PC and they are just about equal except for the onboard storage. The notebook has a 250GB hard drive and my Slate has a 128GB SSD. I’ll never use the space on the notebook unless I decide to load my ripped CDs and digital photos: personal stuff.

Where the Slate KILLS the notebook: Handwriting recognition. I take my Slate into meetings and I can write my notes into Microsoft One Note freehand, then convert them into text. Plus I can draw diagrams. All of this is sharable via my Window SkyDrive to all of my other PC’s – both work and home.

Where the Slate kills the iPad: I dictated most of this article directly into Windows Live Writer while driving home from work and cleaned it up when I got there. All I have to do now is Post it.