Gadgetory

I am just back from the mall with my two new surface tablets and two different types of keyboards because I want to try out both options I'm only gonna unbox one of the tablets because I'm sending the other one off to Jeff cannot afford torture okay let's start with the tablet we have the windows RT model because the surface tablets that run Windows 8 Pro won't be available until January pretty subtle pretty subtle packaging are pretty slick modern packaging going on here nice presentation nice matte black power brick find it big and here's the tablet itself now this tablet weighs a pound and a half which is sort of similar to the iPad but I got to say when I had two of those plus the keyboards in the bag it was heavy now I feel like I kind of have to give Microsoft a little bit of a throw them a bone here because I've been complaining a lot maybe you know about the Apple lightning connector Microsoft is also using a proprietary power cable here mainly because microUSB is not powerful enough to charge a full sized tablet so I feel like I should point that out in the interest of fairness let's get to the actual tablet it's rectangular but the corners are very squared off unlike an iPad it feels a lot lighter once you get it out of the bag with the other tablet it's a little like plasticy not gonna lie a plastic you I think this might be power haha well it's powering up let's do some specs the surface tablet starts at $499 this model runs Windows RT more on that in a minute the displays are somewhat odd 10 point 6 inches it has a 1366 by 768 resolution screen with a 16 by 9 HD display it's 9.3 millimeters thick and it weighs about a pound and a half roughly the same as an iPad it has a nice metal kickstand built into the back it's a pretty speedy tablet it has a quad core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor with 2 gigs of RAM there's a USB 2.0 slot HD video out and a micro SD card slot for expanding the memory it comes in 32 gigs and 64 gigs there's a camera on the front and a camera on the back but all that Microsoft is apparently saying about these cameras is that there's 720p resolution cameras of some it's a mystery now that I've opened up the tablet let's open up our two keyboard options now you can buy a surface tablet bundled with this kind of surface touch cover it's got kind of a flat keyboard that's more touch sensitive but just slightly raised if you buy that as a bundle then it adds a hundred dollars to the cost but you can only get it in black if you want a colored model you have to pay a hundred and twenty dollars by buying it separately unless you buy it at the pop-up store and you just we talked them into giving it to you for the same price as the bundle because that doesn't make any damn sense on top of that there's the type cover option now this is also a cover for the surface but it actually is much more like a keyboard which you'll see when I eventually stopped talking and open it up that cost an additional hundred and thirty dollars and only comes in black you're keeping upright yeah well this makes sense now this is actually a pretty nice little keyboard I'm kind of bummed that it doesn't come in any colors but I can see why you would want this because the big knock tablets is that as soon as you have to get a little work done the touchscreen kind of lets you down it's pretty slick let's open the other one and then we'll try them both on for size so you can see the keys are not raised at all here pretty much just flat I think the main difference is that it allows you to use it more like a laptop because once you have the kickstand up you've got this laying flat like an actual keyboard you can kind of type away it doesn't honestly make that much sense other than the fact that it's like a pretty color let's see how they work does a case ok dang nice can't close it pretty nice little cover kind of like the Apple one I like my pink and then when I open it up it turns it on just like the Apple thing then I can kick stand Baba and I have my whole little baby laptop set up one other thing they made a point of telling me was that when I flip the cover around this way it stops working so I can't accidentally sort of type things while I'm holding it which is nice alright let's compare it to our little think pad guy here that's pretty nice actually how it snaps right on and then we have our little desk top station set up I guess that's why this only comes in black because this is the business option but I think that's kind of boring I'm gonna try these both out and see how they go but unfortunately I do have to send Jeff kanata the pink one for the torture testing a quick word about Windows RT so there are going to be two versions of the surface tablet that run two different versions of Windows Windows RT is not a botched retweet it is the version that is more like the Metro interface that you've been hearing so much about that's these tiles it will only run apps from the Microsoft app store so this is totally the mobile version of the operating system it doesn't interoperate with regular old Windows 8 you can't just install any old Microsoft software on here with the exception of office and Internet Explorer 10 there will also be a version available in January that runs in Windows 8 Pro and that'll be presumably much more like a little tiny computer although to my mind it just confuses things even more at a time when honestly you just want to say like kind of like the iPad but Windows I think it's a perfectly nice tablet I'm looking forward to using it I'm looking forward to seeing if Steven Sinofsky was right about how tough it is but I can't lie despite the line at the pop-up store today I think Microsoft has a tough road ahead