There's exactly one answer to that question: office. 9 hours of office in a device the size of a pad of paper.
But the problem is, the exact people who would buy RT for that reason cannot use it or would not want it for a range of other factors (for example, it cannot join a domain).
And now with the new Intel chips there is no reason at all, because you can get 9 hours of office from a full Win8 tablet.
Also, at least at my college, effectively no one takes notes with their laptops or iPads anyway. If they're out in class, it's for Facebook or something else totally unrelated to the class itself. Notes are still written down on good ol' paper.
i personally rather write in vim and output to latex... but to each it's own. I would have got a modern netbook with an extended battery and have 12hours of battery for writting on a decent keyboard.
My Macbook died a few months back, I tried the Surface RT a few days as a replacement. At first, it was strange, and my work flow suffered. But, alas, after a week, I was back to normal productivity.
It has been several months now, of treating the Surface RT as my main machine. I mostly work out of the desktop IE. Sometimes I will snap Netflix or Hulu on the side. I take the device to work, and not need to charge it (awesome). If I need to show the team something, I snap of the keyboard, and pass it around. Microsoft Office is great on the tablet. Since, it is my lady's, skydrive is not useful for me. But, it is for her. Her phone uploads everything to skydrive, and she can access the skydrive files, on the Surface. The Surface treats skydrive, like a normal drive. So, if she wants to upload a picture on Facebook (in the browser). She can select any file on the Surface or the skydrive.
Most recently, I updated it to the 8.1 Preview. Now that I have outlook, its been even better! The Surface has had constant updates from Microsoft. The first month we had the tablet, it was sluggish and IE, was not ideal. But, it did act as a full fledge browser.
This might sound like a glowing review, and it is, but the device is definitely first gen. Besides a few hiccups here and there I am still amazed at how much the RT can handle. At home, I hook it up to a monitor and work of both screens. The type keyboard is great. And, my lady and I will often watch a movie in bed or play some Wordament.
Microsoft did a terrible job of communicating what the Surface tablets do.
This is coming from a person who grew up using Mac OS. I only used PC's in my last few years of high school, then went back to Macs.
Except that I hate using Office, and my job doesn't require it.
In other words, it isn't.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/why-bo...