This thing (Surface RT) is pretty awesome, particularly in usability and productivity.
Other than games/app selection, and the resolution (although that depends on what you are doing, Clear Type is no joke), this is a much better tablet by far. The fact that I can simply connect to my homegroup/network and drag files over (or, even better, just stream them through whatever app 90% of the time) without using a special app or program or iTunes gives it an immediate leg up.
It's not perfect. I don't know how the app selection will play out over time, for one. The OS and built in apps like Office eat up a lot of space - I had around 16GB free to start. Touch cover takes some getting used to. For the next iteration, they need to etch a white line in the space bar - it's a little hard to see on the black cover, and the line would help. I'd also like there to be a true split screen option for apps (although the current 75/25 screen split is useful with some apps). Dunno if there are underlying reasons for not having a 50/50 split as an option, but it would be nice. Most everything I have quibbles with can be fixed in updates. iPad 1 was bare-bones (no multitask, etc) before they updated the OS, so I'm sure Surface will continue to improve on that front.
I like the iPad and Android tablets fine. I've owned an iPad 1, iPad 3, and currently own a Nexus 7. I intend to get an iPad Mini in the future. As pure consumption devices they're great, and both top the Surface in a lot of ways on that front.
My biggest problem with the iPad was that everything took several steps, or in some cases separate apps, to get done. For instance, something simple like a comic reader. For most iPad readers, you have to transfer files into the app itself through iTunes. I finally found one, ComicGlass, which has a separate desktop server program you can download from their website which lets you transfer files directly. But you still have to download the files to the device before you can open them. Every single one of the Surface comic reader apps I have tried so far lets me draw files from the homegroup and I can either download them to the tablet or just stream them directly. Every single one. I didn't have to download a separate server app, or transfer them through an iTunes-like program. "It just works." This same thing applies to every video and music app I have tried, as well.
Another frustration was word processing. Every writing app on iPad or Android seems to use markdown or plain text as the main format. Plain text gives you dick for formatting options, and markdown just plain sucks assholes. Sure, a lot of them let you save in various formats including .doc, export to Dropbox/Box/iCloud/etc, but 9 times out of 10 whenever I would open the file in OpenOffice the formatting would be broken and I'd have to spend time correcting it. Then it would get broken again when I imported it back into the tablet app. Everything seemed to be a workaround for using the actual Office program, and was a pain in the ass to use. Google Drive/Docs worked the best out of all of them, but you had to be connected to the internet to edit. I heard Office RT sucked at launch, but I updated it (568MB!) and it works great, so I never experienced any shitty performance.
I'm not going to totally replace Android or Apple tablets with this. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. If you're someone who wants to actually get some work done while still being able to play with a tablet and your budget is $600 or less, though, this is pretty much the only one you should be looking at (of course the pro will be better, but that's $900 for the base model).
My one regret is spending $25 on that 32GB micro SD card, now that I know I can just stream things. It's a Class 4 card, too, so if I did the mounting trick it would probably just slow down the system
/wallotext
