Beneath the Surface

Oh, isn’t this always the way? We’re all set to call it for Apple, with no Android tablets really making a dent in the market and leaving everyone feeling a bit silly about the whole thing, when who should walk up with a new tablet design but skinny, khaki-wearing Microsoft, while Alex Clare plays in the background. Weren’t these guys getting beat up for their lunch money last time we saw them?

Still, they’ve definitely been busy. The new toy is called Surface (not to be confused with their experimental tables), and it’s built like a glass-covered tank. Designed to run the upcoming Windows 8 with the Metro interface, the tablets come in two flavours, one powered more like a mobile, and one like a laptop. And it’s the laptop one that makes this interesting.

The current use of a tablet is to consume media – read blogs, emails, check out websites, play a movie, ignore porn, that sort of thing. Sure, some DJs run a set off an iPad now and then, but it’s more of a novelty than a real tool, for which you still need Ableton Live and a decent laptop. But Microsoft is trying to make a tablet run full programs, sticking a kickstand and a real keyboard into the cover, meaning that the same things that run on laptops will run on this guy.

That’s killer news for students and workaholics who want to be able to carry real programs around with them on a device the size of a clipboard. The real question is whether buyers make that jump (and, ya know, what the thing costs).