I had my Android tablet just yesterday, in a meeting that went from 8AM to 6:30PM, taking notes with a stylus all the while. Most everyone else had to plug in, and type. I had a keyboard when I needed it (some involved emails at lunch), but I find this far superior to a laptop for this kind of thing. And while the Surface Pro may find a niche, it's basically a keyboard-optional ultrabook, even to the price. It's going to need a plug, just like all the laptops. To me, anyway, having used Android tablets even before they got good, the fundamental thing about a tablet, the thing Apple got right after a decade of Windows tablets, is all-day untethered operation. Without that, you may not have a keyboard, but you're not a proper tablet.

The Atom tablets may fix that for Windows 8. And they'll probably run Metro apps as well as the Surface RT. But they'll offer the same real-Windows performance that's all but killed the Netbook. And if users are complaining about Surface Pro performance -- with a mid-range laptop CPU -- that doesn't bode well for Atom driven Win8 tablets. Also, Microsoft got one thing fundamentally correct in the Pro: the wacom-style digitizer. You don't have the right interface to Windows desktop with a finger driven capacitive touchscreen.