MS introduced the Surface tablet yesterday at an event in LA. From what I have gathered so far, this announcement, and the product has garnered a great deal of interest in the blogosphere. It suddenly puts MS into the tablet market producing their own hardware with an OS that they produce. This mirrors what Apple does with the iPad, and what Google is doing with the Chromebooks.
I suppose the important part of this is that now there is a real third choice. Rather than having an operating system housed on third party hardware, we now have the equivalent of the iPad from Microsoft. Given my experience in the past with both Windows Phone 7.5 and Android, this is a good position to be in. Having the hardware optimized to the operating system in the way we would expect it to be with a Windows tablet running a Windows, there should be fewer compromises made due to differences in hardware specifications. Hopefully this will result in a device that is both more stable and more functional than Windows running on third party hardware.
It also addresses a few of the deficiencies of other tablets. Currently tablets seem to have a problem with simply opening documents between apps, and even in some cases dealing with cut and paste. Surface will (according to the sources that I have read) handle documents and interoperability between applications better. It also will have an integrated keyboard/cover that will eliminate the need for a separate Bluetooth device.
It waits to been seen what Surface will mean for educators. If the price point is right, and the tablet is backwardly compatible with most of the educational software available for Windows, then this could be an excellent alternative to the iPad in education. Time will tell.
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