My employer, global bio biz with 100K+ employees is trying to finish migrating the Wintel fleet to Win7 from XP. I have about 15-20 windows open during the workday, so tablets just won't cut it, nor will an interface that wastes screen real estate. Win8 would be another mega upgrade project that they will probably skip to see what comes next, as they did with Vista. There is too much inertia to jump on the latest fads for general usage, although the iFads are popular with sales and executive types, and being supported for their narrow needs (but the latest bug with iOS 6 users able to cancel someone else's meeting in Outlook by declining just their own invitation might cause some rethinking ...).

Personal use? I have tried a dozen or so Android tablets, and kept only an Archos 5 until its battery swelled up, and then went for a phablet mode Dell Streak 5 with T-Mobile pay/go $30 plan to replace that - both "beltable", and dabble around the house with an Archos 80 (seems to be similar dimensions with the iPad mini aside from being thicker) that cost $125 from Staples on sale - finally a "reasonable" value proposition "big" tablet for me..

But my go-to for travel is a Fujitsu P1620 running LInux: 8.9' convertible tablet with a decent keyboard (since it uses a trackpoint instead of wasting such precious space on a twitchy touchpad - ideal for thisThinkpad vet). I have about $300 in it for eBay purchase and 2GB RAM, and SSD upgrades - love it for travel (although I don't fly, so that's only when I get where I am going - use the Streak for actual mobile data stuff).

I just do not need Windows and all its expense and hassle for personal use aside from updating my Garmin GPS maps a few times a year (Google Maps/Navigator still cannot compare for "real world" travel use with its tiny controls) when I boot up a Virtual Box WinXP under Linux on my big old Dell D800, my home "workstation" - love the 1920x1200 15.6" screen. I dabbled with the preview Win8 in a Virtual Box for a couple hours, and quit there.

Now if I could get around UEFI, and put KDE Plasma Active on an X86 Surface with its keyboard cover, I just might get interested in that hardware...

YMMV