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Comment by andrewljohnson | Hacker News Reader

* EDIT: Didn't see the article had more pages. Please disregard my silly comment. I feel a bit dumb, but the control to go to the next page is non-standard and confusing if you ask me: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5owebbhai6oxazt/Screen%20Shot%2020...

This review doesn't say a thing about the device. He doesn't say anything negative, he doesn't say anything positive. He just says it's worth considering, and heavily quotes a random Microsoft exec. He says he "gets it" but doesn't say what that means.

I have no idea what the point of the article is, or what information it's supposed to convey. He could have simply said "Microsoft has a tablet."

I'd say it was a PR piece if it didn't sound so darn blase on the whole thing, but I guess that echoes the exec he quoted. Is Microsoft's communications strategy simply to convince people not to talk about the features or functions of the Surface?

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Is it possible you didn’t see that this review has multiple pages? You seem to have only read the introduction and setup (where the tone you encountered isn’t something special: at the start most reviews paint a picture of the environment a product is in and what the company that is selling the product says it wants the product to be).

Correct, my bad!

Snippets from the last page:

"As a device, Surface is incredibly well executed.

Surface is the most flexible tablet I've ever used.

Multitasking, task switching and the ability to have multiple applications active on the screen at once are all big advantages that Microsoft enjoys. For productivity workloads, Surface is without equal in the tablet space.

Content consumption is also great on the device. Surface's display isn't industry leading but it's still good. Reading emails, browsing the web flipping through photos and watching videos are all good fits for the platform - just as good as competing solutions from Apple or Google.

I would have liked to have seen faster hardware inside, and there are some rough edges that could use smoothing out (e.g. the power connector and HDMI output come to mind) but overall the device is easily in recommendable territory.

If you're ok being an early adopter, and ok dealing with the fact that mobile devices are still being significantly revved every year, Surface is worth your consideration. If you've wanted a tablet that could really bridge the content consumption and prodcutivity device, Surface is it."

I agree, this is unusual for Anandtech. It seems you could summarise the 12 page review as 'meh'. Maybe they didn't have enough time with it to get into any more detailed analysis.

Also, I get the impression that Microsoft has been set a lower bar -- almost encouraged for just having a go in this space rather than comparing it to existing products. E.g. how does the Type Cover compare to the range of 3rd party products available for the iPad for < $129? How much better is the Touch Cover to onscreen when taking into account predictive text & auto correct? Not much to go on in this review. Maybe MS haven't given a lot of time for people to spend with the product.

>> Maybe MS haven't given a lot of time for people to spend with the product.

I remember to have read that he was playing with the device for almost 3 weeks. That's seems long enough.

Any separate typing surface is superior to a touch screen surface. Touch screen keypads cover massive parts of the screen, force constant hand shifts, and constantly reposition content on the screen. Auto-correct and predictive corrections try to cover for problems that shouldn't exist.

I fail to see how the review can be characterized as "meh". It comes off as guardedly impressed to me, and definitely looking forward to the next revision of the hardware.

Hmm. Just saw a Surface commercial on TV while I was writing this. Looks like the war is a "go". Beneficiaries: Everyone.

Besides, auto-correct and predictive text can work with physical keyboards too.

They're just not that needed there. Or maybe that needs getting used to and it must never get in the way of normal typing.

Although, now that I think of it, Word has auto-corrected common typos for ages now and in more recent versions it never caught something it shouldn't have (unlike Word 97).

I don't get why you think the article did not say anything about the tablet. It did review and compare various aspects of it such as the performance, display, battery life with other tablets on the market.

It did not cover the software in details but I think that is the part of the review. Windows 8 by itself has been covered in detail elsewhere.

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