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Microsoft Surface RT, a surface of windows?

Well I finally got a deep dive on a Windows RT Surface device (with a Red keyboard!) and at first it had quite a bit going for it. I understand there is a lot more RAM than an iPad (2 Gig vs 512 Meg) and the "Metro" interface was a lot happier than on the Windows Phone 7. I agree that Metro seems a solution for a problem no one was having but with touch it makes some sense.


Opening a legal Word document and seeing it properly rendered was fantastic, and this alone could be a killer feature.

But after the first flush of working with a very Windows like experience and an IE like Web I struck my first major issue. Using a common security authentication I could not log on as I got IE errors. You cant run the ActiveX controls etc as this is not Windows per-se.

Most tellingly (I feel vindicated for my pronouncement of its death!)  a really cool Micsosoft BI Site we worked on with Silverlight did not work. Thats right no Silverlight support!

One of the annoyances with Windows Phone is that even if you have an SD slot you cant see it! I am sorry to report the same applied to the Surface, I could not see any use for the card yet. It was invisible. I am happy to be corrected.

Lastly the price + a keyboard is over 650 / 750 dollars. This starts to look scarily close to the price of the ulralight notebooks we have been buying.  

So please can someone help me to understand the compelling business proposition ? The iPad mini seems simple but more useful for half the dollars. It will also run iTimeKeep, RoamBI, Citrix Reciever, RDP and all my other must haves.

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