Surface is not a tablet. It's a PC in tablet's clothing. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft's new slab device looks and, in many ways, acts like a tablet, but at its core, it's a Windows Personal Computer. This simple fact makes Surface an excellent companion device for Windows desktops and laptops, but also makes it unlikely to challenge the iPad.
I've now spent almost a full week using Surface, doing my best to leave aside not just my Apple iPad, but my ultra-portable Windows 8 laptop as well. If Surface weren't hiding a traditional Windows core behind that Windows Design skin, I doubt I would have been successful.
What Is It
On the surface (yes, I went there), Surface looks like many other tablets on the market — especially the Android models. Its 10.81 x 6.77 x .037-inch black and slate gray body is clad in "VaprMG" or molded magnesium, which helps make the body stronger. You may have seen Microsoft Windows Lead Steven Sinofsky skateboarding on one (no joke). The body also features the expected: tiny stereo speakers, microphones, audio jack, two 720p cameras (front and back) rocker power button, mini-HDMI port, and the somewhat unexpected: full-sized USB port; a magnetic power jack (not Microsoft's best invention) and a near-full-length channel for a snap-on keyboard.
The Surface is also the only tablet to feature a built-in kick stand. Microsoft spent a lot of time developing not only the metal stand, which, when closed, almost disappears against the Surface body, but the three hinges as well. Even though the stand is metal, you never hear it snap against the Surface frame. Instead, dampers turn the action into a tiny click.
Thanks to 10.6–inch display, Surface is a bit larger than some tablets. Underneath the Gorilla Glass 2 translucent cover is a 1,366 x 768 screen (in a 16:9 aspect ratio). The Apple iPad retina, by contrast, has a 9.7-inch screen with a considerably higher 2,048 x 1536-pixel resolution. When I met with Microsoft last week, their display expert spent considerable time demonstrating how much better the Surface screen is despite the fewer pixels, because the Surface squeezes the LCD panel, touch interface and glass cover closer together. Surface's screen looks great, but I'm not quite convinced that it looks better than the iPad's Retina display.
Printed on the glass below the screen is a Windows logo that also doubles as a home screen (Start Screen) button. It vibrates slightly when you touch it. It works well, though I still prefer the iPad's physical button.
Getting Started
As with the best tablets on the market today (Apple's iPad, Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7) Microsoft's Surface wraps the end-user in a warm, pleasurable experience, from the packaging to the first time you power up the device.
Power up the tablet and Surface guides you through a simple set-up, which is made easier if you have a Windows Live or Hotmail account; it helps tie all of the Microsoft's Surface, Windows 8, cloud and Xbox services together.
Microsoft sells a few different model options, so this is where your experience may vary. I tested the 64GB Surface and Touch Cover bundle, which costs $699 (you can also get the 32GB model without the keyboard for $499 and buy the cover for an additional $119.)
I'm going to tell you up front that you want the cover. This is a tablet that fully embraces the keyboard — when it's attached. Don't get me wrong; Surface is excellent without the keyboard, but you will get a lot more done if you have one. More on that later.
Inside Windows RT
Much has been made about the difference between Windows 8 and Windows RT and how Microsoft will educate consumers on those differences. This is kind of silly, because the differences are not as great as anyone thinks and can be explained pretty simply.
Windows RT might best be thought of as a runtime of Windows built specifically to run on ARM CPUs. Traditionally, Windows has always run on Intel and AMD CPUs, which are both "X86 chips". This difference means that software built to run on traditional X86 PCs — your legacy software — will not run on a Windows RT tablet.
That doesn't mean that RT is nothing like traditional Windows.
When Microsoft advertises the Surface and even when they talk about it, they never mention the Desktop mode. That's right, Surface (and Windows RT) has a desktop that looks exactly like the Windows 8 desktop (and a lot like the Windows 7 one). A little digging there reveals a traditional file and folder system, a simplified task manager and, yes, even the Registry. It is all there. Microsoft Office Home and Student RT Preview also resides in the desktop mode. As soon as you start using this software, you end up in desktop land. There's even a separate Internet Explorer 10 Desktop edition. I don't understand why Microsoft would deliver a tablet with two versions of the same web browser, but the company did it. (This state of affairs is repeated on Windows 8 desktop and laptops which also feature Windows Design Start Screen and a more traditional desktop).
So is RT Start Screen just a skin? Maybe. This reminds me of Windows 95, which completely redesigned the Windows 3.1 interface, but like every Windows that had come before it, was just a shell on top of DOS. Is the RT Windows Design (Metro) interface just a shell on top of the Windows Desktop? If you're a fan of Windows, I'm not sure the answer will matter that much to you.
The close connection to traditional Windows does come with some added benefits. Existing Windows hardware like mice and printers just work. I plugged a Microsoft Arc mouse Bluetooth connector into the Surface USB slot and the tablet immediately recognized it. I didn't have to do a thing. Similarly, when I connected the Surface to my Windows Homegroup, my shared printers showed up in the Devices charm and worked perfectly — I can, for instance, print directly and over Wi-Fi from any app that supports printing
It's not all smooth sailing. The Homegroup only works for devices and I cannot share files between the traditional windows computers and the Surface.
It should also be noted that the marriage between the desktop and RT's Start Menu interface is a bit fractious. SkyDrive, Microsoft's cloud-based file storage and sharing service, for example, is part of the Surface, but nowhere to be found in the desktop mode's Windows Explorer-like file folder system (you will see it when you save files in Office). I also find it odd that photos and videos shot with Surface's camera all end up in the Pictures folder. Should Windows knows enough to drop videos in Video?
Using Surface
The key to using Surface is gestures. The more you know about them, the more utility and fun you'll get out of the device. Despite the fact that the Desktop exists alongside (or underneath) the RT Design Interface, it all responds to the same gestures.
To switch between running apps, you simply drag a finger from the left edge in. This lets you quickly flick through numerous tasks. A flick from the right edge brings up the "Charms" list, which includes contextual search, Share, Access to the Screen, Device access, and contextual Settings.
The Windows Design Start menu adds a couple of other screen gestures. A swipe from the bottom can bring up a contextual menu. A swipe from the top will, depending on the app, bring up other contextual menu options.
All of this is intuitive and even fun to use. The more you do it, the more natural it becomes. I particularly enjoyed using the keyboard and then touching the screen to quickly switch back and forth between activities -– I could do this all day long.
Keyboarding
Microsoft is not being shy about pitching Surface as a keyboard-friendly device. Apple has never, to my recollection, advertised the iPad with a keyboard attached, even though they built a dock and keyboard for the very first iPad.
The Surface is more explicitly a productivity device. Microsoft told me they made design decisions based on the fact that they wanted it to work with a full-sized keyboard and touchpad mouse. The Surface and Touch Cover is a true technology marriage. From the special channel in the Surface to the tiny, powerful magnets on the Touch Cover, these are two parts that are designed to work perfectly together. By and large they do.
Microsoft provided me with both the 3mm thick Touch Cover, which comes in a variety of colors. As with everything else about the Surface, Microsoft poured a ton of R&D into this cover. They developed their own blend of polyurethane material, used special lasers to carve out the white letters (there's a sheet of white beneath the color) and programmed it so your hands can rest on the keys without activating them unless you tap with a certain amount of pressure (measured in grams per square inch). Close the Touch Cover and just like the iPad's smart cover, the Surface goes to sleep.
In practice, this is all true, but as a touch typist, I still wanted a bit more tactile feedback. So I opted for the somewhat more expensive Type Cover, which features real keys and buttons on the touchpad. That, in combination with the kickstand and Arc mouse, makes the Surface a near perfect Windows ultra-portable laptop replacement. Not only because it works so smoothly, but you get a solid 10 hours of battery life while performing a variety of tasks (word processing, gaming, video photos watching Netflix movies and controlling my Xbox 360).
As a Tablet
Even though Surface calls itself a PC and it has many PC attributes, the device is still a very good tablet, with one or two unique features.
While considerably larger than the iPad and even 10.1-inch tablets. Surface weighs just 1.5 pounds. It also has a pleasant 22-degree chamfer around the edge that makes it comfortable to hold.
As a touch-only device, it's both obvious and smart. The RT Start menu interface is easy to navigate and highly customizable. Depending on how many email, contact and social media accounts you add, Surface can tell you quite a bit about your world from the start screen live tiles, which are constantly updating with news, social posts, email and photos. You can drag, drop and resize tiles as you see fit and if you have lot of them, you can pinch and zoom to see the entire start menu.
Surface is an adept productivity device, but it's also about media consumption. The start menu offers access to Xbox Video, Xbox Music and Shop, where you'll find all your app download options. It's easy enough to buy or rent movies, though most seemed to be offered in Standard Definition (SD) only. The music is easy to peruse and sample, though as I was preparing to try out some tunes, it occurred to me that the Surface did not ship with earphones -– an odd mission for a modern tablet.
If you have an Xbox, though, you're in for a treat. The new, free SmartGlass app lets you easily connect your Xbox Live account and then control your Xbox via the tablet. This worked perfectly for me, allowing me to navigate through the Xbox interface with gestures, find Netflix and then control movie playback — all through the tablet.
Browser for the People
A big part of Surface is the new Internet Explorer browser. It looks nothing like any Internet Explorer you've seen before, but is well suited to a touch-screen tablet interface. When you're on a Web page, there is no interface. A gesture for the bottom or top of the screen reveals at the top thumbnails of other open browser windows and the ability to add more, and, at the bottom, a URL window. A gesture from the right brings up the contextual charms. You can Search Bing and Share the web page on your social networks. The only thing I do not like is that "Share" does not take you directly to Facebook or Twitter. Instead you get the somewhat unintuitive "People" and the more obvious "Mail. If you want to share the page on Facebook or Twitter, you have to select people, because Windows RT ties People and Social networks together.
It's worth noting that this Internet Explorer doesn't support any plug-ins, including security-related ones. As with Windows 8, RT's security comes courtesy of the built-in Windows Defender.
Performance
Powered by a zippy dual-core Nvidia 1.5 GHz CPU and packing 2 GM of RAM (that's twice as much as the iPad Retina), the Surface never stutters. I opened numerous apps, web pages and documents and it never missed a beat. There were tiny hiccups, like the web browser crashing on me and, one time, the on-screen keyboard refusing to appear (that required a full reboot).
There's no 3G or 4G option for the Surface (though we may see one in the future), but the dual-band 802.11n radio worked well in my home network environment. I was, however, unsuccessful when I tried to tether the Surface to both iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 personal hotspots.
As I noted earlier, Surface has front- and rear-facing 720p cameras. The video quality is excellent, but I would not bother using Surface as a still camera. The roughly 1-megapixel images are abysmal.
Is This Your Next Tablet?
Surface is so different from any tablet I've used before that it took me a few fays to fully warm to it, but now I like it — quite a bit. Part of this is because I am a Windows user with a Hotmail account and Xbox Live at home. This is a Microsoft ecosystem and the Surface fits it like a glove. While I'm not a huge fan of the email interface (it's dull), I had no trouble accessing my Hotmail and adding Gmail, and Google apps accounts. Similarly, the somewhat dull-looking calendar smartly handled all my appointments and popped up gentle reminders at all the right times. I also like that files I store on SkyDrive are available on all my other logged-in devices (this can work on an iPhone or iPad, too, since SkyDrive has an iOS app).
I found most of the apps I needed: Netflix, Kindle, SkyDrive, Cut the Rope, but overall, Microsoft's Surface app selection pales in comparison to what you'll find on an iPad. I'm not talking numbers here. It's really about finding truly useful apps. I kept hunting for a great drawing app, but ended up with "Fresh Paint," which is a good painting app, but not much use for drawing. By the way, I tend to draw on tablets with a variety of styli, but Surface reacted oddly to them. The painted lines kept stuttering. I eventually gave up and went back to my finger. For now, the Surface still lacks a native Twitter app (something that sure to change in short order), and Skype (a testable beta arrived just prior to press time), which I expect to arrive in time for consumers.
I know some people are complaining about the price, but it should be noted that the $499 Surface starts with twice the storage and memory of the latest Apple iPad. It also ships with a free productivity suite that works perfectly with the suite you're probably already using: Microsoft Office.
On the other hand, Surface truly shines when you have the keyboard option (especially if you use the Office RT apps and standard desktop interface). If you buy the 64GB model (it has a micro-SD slot somewhat awkwardly nestled under the kickstand where you can add up to another 64GB) with the keyboard, it's $699. Now you're into laptop price range. But again, consider what you get: A sub-2-pound PC that offers all-day battery life and out-of the box productivity, touch-screen interactivity and connection to all your favorite online services.
There's no doubt that Surface will appeal most to Windows users. In fact this is the tablet for Windows fans. It won't win over Apple iPad owners, but for all those who hate Apple, find Android confusing and underwhelming, and are ready to enter the world of touch-screen computing this is the alternative you've been waiting for.
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