I finally bought one. A Surface Pro. I've been eying these babies from when the original Surface was announced. As someone who spends a reasonable amount on-site and away from his desk, having a powerfull tablet that could connect to my NAS on hand always sounded like a great proposition. Thing is, this was an offer I could refuse as long as a) the battery life sucked, b) the price wasn't right.
The first point was taken care of by the release of the Pro2, which boasted an at least reasonable battery life of about 7 hours. The second was resolved today, as I walked into the Fnac, which must be about the most expensive place to buy anything user electronics related, and saw that they were having massive sales on the surface pro 2. So I bagged me a Pro2 with 128gig SSD for €699, which is €180 below the suggested retail price. To add to the deal, a free Type Cover 2 was thrown in. And then Microsoft had this promotion that if the store clerk didn't inform you on their great Office deals (-€20 on Office if bought along a PC), you were entitled to a free year of Office 365 Home Premium. The store clerk I was talking to was pleasantly savvy on the matter of the Surface line, even the upcoming Pro3, but we were more talking about the product then that he was trying to sell me one. He didn't ever mention the Office deal. So basically I saved about €450 
I've just begun installing my software, so not many impressions so far. I tried the pen out for a couple of minutes, and it's a joy to use. The Wacom pen was one of the main features that drew my attention and I can really see this replacing regular pen and paper for a lot of stuff.
As for gaming, this thing is as powerfull as my 4 year old laptop, which I used to play Borderlands 2 on. Even better, if I get an HDMI out, I'll be able to use this with my desktop PC and Steam inhome streaming to finally get my PC gaming started. I just can't get used to gaming behind my desk, and now I'll be able to reach all those cheap Steam games from the comfort of my couch.
Overall I'm as happy as an Aussie who just got his internet cap raised by a factor of 40 and very glad I postphoned purchasing one all those times. I don't think I'll be seeing an as good of a deal on these any time soon. Also, congrats to my wife, for arguing against getting worse deals earlier on.
Awesome deal!
yeah, 128Gig isn't much. But hey, I can add a microSD and add another 64Gig. I'm going to install all my stuff first and see how much space I've still got left. Might be I plug in a microSD from the get go and just forget it's there.
It gets eaten up with games or video. Mine is HDD is smaller and a I have a 64gb card.
If you're looking for a classic tablet, the Surface Pro line isn't really what you need though. While I'm a big fan of Win8.1, tablets who use the OS are usually a lot more powerfull than your average tablet and will come with a significantly lower battery life. The Pro2, which I got, should last for about 7-10 hours, but I remain skeptical about that. I'm loving the Wacom digitizer though. It makes navigating such a, dare I say it, pleasant experience. The type cover2 is also very cool. You have to see the backlighting to believe it.
I would like the ability to attach a keyboard for this site though. So if I see something, plug the keyboard in and go (as opposed to going back to the PC and doing that.
Would you say that is a worthy enough reason to not go with a low-price android shitablet? (which is significant, we are talking $180 versus probably $400+).
EDIT: I do have a laptop, I jsut nevr use it, I was hopign a tablt would be more of a "device" like my kindle where I can turn it on and off without any wind-up/ shut-down time penalties.
Eurogamer did a digital foundry article on them recently (well, sort of)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-what-if-you-could-play-pc-games-on-a-tablet
I never really liked android, and I do not like the concept of a tablet as an entertainment consumer device either, so I'm probably not the right person to ask.
However, since you did ask: the surface pro probably isn't for you. It's a fullfledged laptop shrunk down to a tablet.
What you're needing is a lower spec tablet. Problem with those is that they always seem to be of low build quality as well and often boast ugly displays. If you're really only thinking of using it for browsing and consuming digital entertainment, why not consider the Surface 2? It runs on windows RT (think the windows tiles OS without the desktop functionality), but that shouldn't bother you. You still get the great build quality, great fullHD screen and the option to snap those deliciously stylish type or touch covers to them. Oh, and it doesn't have a wacom digitizer. Nor does it support Steam. Think of it as MS's answer to the Apple Ipad, but with free office added in.