Keyboard
A frustration for many users of the iPad and other touchscreen devices is the keyboard. While it's possible to get somewhat proficient at tapping spots on a flat screen, most acknowledge it's impossible to get e-mail and other documents written as quickly as with physical keys.
Sure, there are third-party keyboards you can buy to add onto the iPad, but they can be clunky.
The Surface keyboard will be part of its Touch Cover, which is connected with magnets and flips open. There will be a version with pressure-sensitive flat keys and another with more traditional raised keys called a Type Cover............
Size
Apple has made such a compact, stylish tablet that many of its competitors look chunky by comparison. That's not true of the Surface, at least as it was demoed Monday.
First, its display screen is 10.6 inches, almost a full inch bigger than the iPad's. And the company says it's optimized to have essentially the same dimensions as a movie screen: So, farewell black bars when watching video...........
Power
Especially with the Windows 8 Pro model, Microsoft has set out to blur the line between tablets and the new wave of light, slim ultrabooks and their predecessor, Apple's Macbook Air.
Tablets have always been a hybrid hovering somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, best used for game playing, Web surfing and media consumption. Microsoft wants the Surface to be something you can actually do some work on.
The Windows Pro model will run on an i5 Intel processor and come with up to 128 gigabytes of internal memory (the iPad currently goes up to 64).
Power
Both versions of the Surface come with two USB ports (2.0 on the RT and a faster 3.0 on the Windows Pro). The lack of ports has been one of the few persistent compaints about the iPad.
These ports open up the possibility of extra storage, printing and other external capabilities that should be easier and quicker than the workarounds iPad users need involving cloud storage, Wi-Fi connections and the like.
Xbox SmartGlass
The Xbox SmartGlass feature, which Microsoft rolled out at this month's E3 video gaming expo, will work with the iPad and Android tablets.
But it's not hard to envision Microsoft optimizing the technology for its own piece of hardware.............