Not sure about those particular tablets, but we bought a base model Surface Pro 4 on Saturday. Ya know, it works like a regular Win10 PC. Regular keyboard (that feels really nice, surprisingly), nice screen, and most of the stuff one would expect from a typical lower-end laptop. I can think of just a couple downsides: only 1 USB port (wish they included at least one MicroUSB port with the single full-size port), and it uses DisplayPort instead of HDMI. While I'm sure DisplayPort is the bee's knees, HDMI is available on just about any decent screen you can buy today. Adapter worked fine, but still. And I get it - the HDMI port is huge in comparison.

We briefly thought about an Android tablet but it seems that those are simply really big phones that won't make calls. Can already do that stuff on our S7 phones so an Android tablet seemed redundant.

As far as Win10 goes, my complaints are centered around the settings. Control Panel was easier for me to navigate in 7. Though the "Ask me anything" bar does make finding stuff a fairly simple task, so long as you know what to call the thing you're looking for. Other than that, it has worked well for what we do around here.

You actually met Satya Nadella? That is amazing!
Did you get the contact of his dealer? Se seems to be smoking some strong stuff.

Microsoft is the third most popular OS on tablets today. Just as they are on smartphones...


In truth, MS is bringing out some interesting hardware, and personally I welcome the competition. But I think that Nadella is correct in focusing the company on other markets.

Nothing wrong with Windows 10, it's the best OS money can buy on any platform. It's way better than the tragedy that is MacOS, which used to be the best and on mobile ... wow no contest. Android is spyware on a stick, fragmented and insecure, while iOS is old, clunky and walled off.

Also, what's a tablet anyway these days? A large phone or a thin PC? The "tablet" idea was basically a large iPod touch. Remember iPod touch? Not many do. For good reason.

Now PCs can be so thin and small that they're "tablets" and phones can be so large as to be tablets with phone capabilities. Computers don't follow marketing terms and tablets is just about obsolete as one.

Oh boy, oh boy... I could think of a few things wrong with it, as well as MS' various shady business shenanigans during the last few years. Either way, even you make it sound like it is merely the lesser evil compared to the alternatives.

Isn't MS actually getting closer to Apple's "walled garden" philosophy with each new OS release? And I doubt Windows was ever the best choice if you're worried about spyware and system security.

Probably so. There is a whole new generation of internet users who hardly even touch a PC. Like my wife, she is online all the time doing all kinds of things... with her phone. The only time she might touch a PC (laptop) is when doing some a bit more demanding online banking stuff, but even that might change if and when our local bank improves its mobile app (now it is missing features that the web interface has).

I'm still mostly on the PCs though, but I still use a mobile phone for internet stuff when on the road with no laptop etc.

That's exaggeration, but for the first time in decades Microsoft is facing stiff competition in personal computing and internetting. Just to think that quite many popular applications and tools nowadays (also for social media etc.) don't even get a Windows version anymore, only Android and iOS.

I admit I haven't really used them, but at this point I'd end up buying a 1in1 laptop instead, if not for any other reason but that it probably costs less (than a 2in1 laptop with otherwise similar specs).

I personally couldn't care less if the laptop has HDMI or DisplayPort. I have both a HDMI-HDMI and DP-HDMI cables on my TV, and I don't feel any difference connecting a HDMI laptop, or a DP laptop, to it. I just have to connect the right cable to the laptop. :)

Is there some feature you are missing from having to use the DP port (instead of a HDMI port)?

Basically that, if you have big enough screen on your phone, a tablet (Android or iOS) might seem quite redundant. Our trusty Android tablet was used mainly for watching some quick Youtube videos and such, as it has a bigger screen than our phones. Then again a laptop could do the same, but then you can get Android tablets quite cheap nowadays...

What kind of games are you running on the Surface tablet? GOG DOSBox games work fine too? How much storage space does it have? I dislike the "light laptops" which have something like measly 32GB of storage space, I find that laughable. 500GB HDD (or SSD) is the minimum for me.

I sometimes looked at some Surface tablets... but just kept thinking how much better "real laptop" I could get for the same price. Like last weekend I was very close to buying an Acer 15.6" gaming laptop which seemed to have quite good specs for its price. It had NVidia Geforce GTX 960M, some Intel i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD(!!!) etc... and it was discounted to 799€ (normal price well over 1000€).

The only thing that kept me from buying it was that... well, maybe it isn't that much more powerful than my old gaming laptop, so it would have been redundant. But still I felt that was an exceptionally good deal, a pretty ok gaming laptop for a cheap price. Especially the relatively spacious SSD surprised me, usually the stupid SSDs on <1000€ laptops are 128GB or 256GB.

I think that Freesync\Gsync work only with DP.
I doubt that many people have laptops with such features for now, however.

I am exaggerating for effect, I'm not making a thesis. But yes, my point was that Windows 10 is the lesser evil compared to the alternatives.

Perphaps you can see movement towards walled gardens or spying, but Apple and Google are all out in those areas. Microsoft flirting with some elements of these is nothing in comparison.

Windows itself is perfectly acceptable if you want to enjoy good system security and no spyware - the point was that Android is spyware. That's it's purpose in this world, it is Google's metadata gathering machine. The usage data Windows 10 collects is actually peanuts compared to Android and aren't used in commercial application, unlike Android.

Third party spyware is another thing entirely and can afflict users of any platform.

Missing feature? Not that I know. It's more about compatibility without adapters, and it seems - based on my very informal "data" of looking while shopping - that DP ports are not nearly as widespread.

No games on there... yet? Maybe someday? It's mostly for her for now, and will likely take on some business duties here and there for those times when my admittedly too-big laptop is, umm, too big. ; ) Our base model Surface comes with a 128 GB SSD, and we can double that easily with a Micro SD card for ordinary storage such as our music files. That oughta be plenty for our purposes.

It was one of those things where we had to replace the desktop, and she decided to try out portability for a change. Really couldn't decide between a tablet or laptop and she liked the idea of having that slate to work with, but also having a real keyboard available for typing, so we figured this was a decent way to go. Comparing top-tier large tablets and the Surface, the price bump wasn't that much. But it's definitely more than a regular laptop. Kind of an in-betweener then.

Surface Pro should work fine for what we plan to do with it. For my primary gaming machine, it wouldn't work - and that's where the big Sager comes in.

Anyway, it's a neat option for someone looking for some nice PC hardware but also for whom a tablet form factor is useful.