text: Surface was the single biggest genuine tech surprise of the year so far. Microsoft tantalized us with a tablet that made the iPad look stale. Its snap-on keyboard made all laptops look immediately old fashioned. And it promised The Future of Computers. 
   
   We hadn't looked forward to something this much in a long, long time. Now it's here. And it's been just as long a time since a gadget has been so disappointing. Surface is good, but Surface RT sure isn't the future. Not yet. 
   
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   Why it matters 
   
   The laptop is about as far advanced as one can imagine. The MacBook Air and a horde of ultrabook clones are hitting a brick wall in terms of form and physics. The tablet, likewise, isn't exactly pushing civilization forward; it's still fundamentally a luxury device, a delightful toy for reading email on the couch or watching Netflix on an airplane. Nobody needs a tablet. It's a lovely, superfluous thing. But everyone needs a computer, unless you're planning on living by a lake and trading furs for a living. 
   
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   Microsoft's pearly promise for Surface was to pioneer a strange new kind of gadget: all the grace and leisure of a tablet, combined with the ability to actually make stuff that a computer brings. Convenience with input. Type, edit, change. Work. Power! Microsoft claims outright that Surface will bring together the best of everything that exists—the elusive union of laptop and tablet. Or at the very least, with Surface RT, a tablet that you could actually use as your primary computer. 
   
   The men who built the Surface from a pile of cardboard prototypes into the thing I've been using for the past week stood in front of me at their headquarters and said exactly that. Microsoft is trumpeting a historical change here. And it has a recent track record of building exceptional things. Sure, there's a Surface Pro version coming up that'll have full, powerful laptop guts, and run the same software any PC can—Microsoft's best shot at being your only computer, forever. But even this RT variant is supposed to give us some overdue synthesis. Plop it down on your desk and get things done. 
   
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   Whether Microsoft can keep this promise matters more than anything else in technology this year. Surface could be the blueprint for the machine you'll be typing on well into the next decade. No pressure. 
   
   Using it 
   
   Surface is Microsoft's attempt to out-Apple Apple. The thing is designed to hell and back, and most of the time it shows. This means a lot of attention to detail—attention that sounds silly until you actually hear it—like the kickstand with an extra, custom-designed hinge to guarantee a satisfying chkkk every time it's snapped shut. Is that superficial? Only if you consider something you're going to potentially hear and touch multiple times every single day superficial. Otherwise, it's just damn thoughtful. 
   
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   And most of the time, Surface is a thoughtful computer. It's a beautiful computer, in your hand or on a tabletop, its shifting angles clean and secure like a Danish prison. It's a little too heavy—slightly heftier than the iPad 3—but otherwise comfortable to hold, with an angled bezel that melts into your hand. There's a convenient USB port that, unlike other tablets, doesn't look like a gaping open sore on the delicately chamfered side. The screen doesn't hold up against the crispness of the iPad's retina resolution, but still manages a lovely colorful pop to suit the colorful, poppy Windows 8. All over the Surface, these little details reflect the meeting of large brains. 
   
   But more importantly, Surface is handsome. That ineffable Hey, this thing feels good quality is lacquered all over Surface. You'll appreciate it every time you pick it up and turn it on. It's a simple, joyful experience. Open the Touch Cover keyboard/trackpad hybrid, snap out the kickstand, and lay the thing on your desk like a laptop. Start writing an essay. Flip the cover all the way around, hide the keyboard, and give yourself something substantial to grip like a tablet. Start swiping the web. Or prop the kickstand against the folded-back cover to create a stable base while you watch Netflix on a coffee table. Switching configurations is a cinch, and it's entirely intuitive. The Touch Cover feels as integral to the Surface as the binding of a book to the sandwiched pages. There's every reason to believe most computers will look and feel something like this, someday soon. 
   
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   The Surface is instantly more charming than any Windows device that's come before it. It's nearly the perfect size, and the form is almost beyond reproach. If you want a tablet, use it like a tablet. If you want a laptop, use it like a laptop. Both modes seem right, like a genuine seachange step forward. The Next Kind of Computer can be slipped in a bag, power up a bright display nearly instantly, run an operating system that loves being touched, and equally importantly, have a keyboard you can use to actually get work done. 
   
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   Tablets aren't for work. That's the old refrain. But if they're going to be more than great toys someday, tablets have to become every bit as viable as a desktop tower as a way to write (and edit) long emails, presentations, and poems. Surface RT is the first evidence we have that this is possible, because you'll use it like you've never used any computer before. Your brain starts to rewire itself, and it's delightful. 
   
   Flip out the keyboard. Hit power. Swipe up to unlock. Type in your password. A dozen super-colorful tiles give you a snappy report of what's new: Who's tweeted at you, what's arrived in your inbox, news headlines, photos of your beautiful face, and incoming Facebook IMs, as they drop. You'll touch one thing, scroll to the next, swipe another, then begin typing, merging habits you've picked up since your parents first let you set hands on something that ran off batteries. Surface presents you the Internet all at once. 
   
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   Browsing in Internet Explorer is just as easy a flopping into a couch-cushion Netflix marathon, or working in the full Microsoft Office suite. It all feels seamless, natural, a culmination of useful things. This ease, the effortless transfer between watching stuff and making stuff, reading and writing, listening and talking, it permeates Surface with the mark of The New Computer. This is what netbooks were supposed to be, before we realized they were all completely horrible: small, powerful, flexible, skinny computers that can do a ton of things easily. 
   
   You can thank Windows 8's radicalism for that. Traditional Windows would be absolute hell to use on this—or hey, so would OS X. But Metro is the best foundation for The Next Computer I can imagine, and if you can get over UI squeamishness, you'll love it. It'll make you more powerful the more you rub your hands on it. It is that good. Or at least it could be, at some point. 
   
   No Like 
   
   We're not there yet. Surface is a fantastic promise, and holds fantastic potential. But while potential is worth your attention, it's not worth your paycheck. Surface RT gets so many things right, and pulls so many good things together into one package. But it is undercooked. For all Microsoft's claims to hardware perfection and software revolution, Surface RT is undone by too many little annoyances, cracks, and flaws. After the initial delight of an evolved tablet wears off, you'll groan—because Surface brings the appearance of unity, but it's really just the worst of both worlds. Instead of trading in your laptop and tablet for Surface, a cocktail of compromises that fracture the whole endeavor, you'll miss them both urgently. 
   
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   Want to use Surface RT as a laptop? Sorry, the Touch Cover is a letdown. It's a phenomenal engineering effort, and the most terrifically-integrated mobile keyboard ever. It doesn't compare to the junky Bluetooth options you can slap against your iPad. Microsoft's keyboard cover is perfectly integrated with the device, and touch typing on it is actually possible. You can't say the same for the iPad's glass. 
   
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   But it only approximates a real keyboard—the buttons are pressure activated, barely buttons at all, and spaced in such a way that typos are inevitable and constant. Unlike the first time you pinched an iPhone or gazed at E-ink, there's zero that's instantly intuitive about the Touch Cover. And in order for this to be a brave new computer, Touch Cover had to be instantly intuitive, an immediately responsive thing to touch and work with. But rather than feeling like you've instantly grown an extra brain lobe just by using it, Surface's mega-hyped keyboard cover feels like it requires one. You'll feel clumsy. You'll write slowly. I tried writing this review on the Surface, but I would've missed my deadline by a week. You'll get better—it will probably take weeks to hit a stride—but this thing was supposed to be a breakthrough. A perfect interface. Instead, it's just a half-broken death march up the learning curve. The trackpad, sludge-like and jerky, is even worse—particularly galling compared to the super-smooth touchscreen—and unlike the keyboard, will never get better with practice. 
   
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   The Touch Cover also approximates, dismally, the sturdiness of a laptop: thanks to the cloth-like floppiness of the thing that's necessary for making it easy to open and close, it can't support itself on anything but a flat, rigid (apologies) surface. You can't type on your lap, like laptop. It's hard to imagine what a design solution out of this would have been, but that's Microsoft's job, not ours. 
   
   Perhaps most galling is the Touch Cover's $100 addition to the Surface's already pricy $400 base MSRP—akin to selling your windshield wipers separate from the car. Microsoft also offers a Type Cover, that promises actual physical keys instead of the flattened solution, but that will add critical bulk to your Surface experience—along with an extra $130. Another letdown—and a pretty outrageous one. 
   
   But it's Windows on Surface RT that's the greatest letdown of all, the lethal letdown, because it's not Windows 8, but Windows RT. You can't tell the difference by looking at them, but you certainly will once you use it. Windows RT is underpowered (everything opens and syncs slightly too slowly), under-functional (you cannot install a single app that's not available through the Windows RT app store, which offers a paltry selection), and under-planned (the built-in apps can't feel like Lite versions of something better). You'd be right to note that many of those limitations apply to the iPad as well, but no one could mistake iOS for OS X the way RT apes Windows 8. And even if it's a plight common to tablets, Microsoft—for better or worse—has hyped Surface RT as being so much more. 
   
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   In the end though, this is nothing more than Microsoft's tablet. And a buggy, at times broken one, at that, whose "ecosystem" feels more like a tundra. There's no Twitter or Facebook app, and the most popular 3rd party client breaks often. The Kindle app is completely unusable. There's no image editing software. A People app is supposed to give you all the social media access you'd ever need, but It's impossible to write on someone's Facebook wall through the People app, Surface's social hub; the only workaround is to load Internet Explorer. Blech. Something as simple as loading a video requires a jumbled process of USB importing, dipping in and out of the stripped-down desktop mode, opening a Video app, importing, going back into the Video app, and then playing. What. 
   
   The app selection, overall, is worse than the already pathetic Windows Phone app fare, looking like the software equivalent to a barren Soviet grocery store. The difference is that Windows Phone, used in quick, informative bursts, skates by on the strength of its excellent with integrated features. At the moment, there's just not that much to do with Microsoft's über-tablet. Surface is weak because Windows RT is weak; a tepid tablet OS pretending to be a computer's. 
   
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   You can do work, yes. But productivity is limited to a "preview" (beta) version of Microsoft Office. It also hurts that Office requires plunging into Windows RT's Desktop mode, where users of actual Windows 8 are able to install a decade's worth of legacy software. Normally, this would compensate. But RT users can't install any of this older software. None of it. Desktop mode is entirely worthless in RT, a cruel tease of non-functionality. It'll only remind you of how much you can't do with your Surface, and is going to confuse the living hell out of most people who buy one—especially when Surface Pro, built on x86 architecture and perfectly compatible with all of those legacy programs, steps in a few months from now. 
   
   I pity Microsoft's retail staff. 
   
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   Should you buy it? 
   
   No. The Surface, with an obligatory Touch Cover, is $600. That's a lot of money. Especially given that it's no laptop replacement, no matter how it looks or what Microsoft says. It's a tablet-plus, priced right alongside the iPad and in most ways inferior. 
   
   That could change. Maybe there will be a new Touch Cover that retains the original's terrific physical qualities while actually allowing good typing. Maybe the quasi-vaporware Surface Pro, which eschews Windows RT in favor of the real-deal Win 8, will make all the difference, opening itself up to the open seas of PC software (for several hundred dollars more). Maybe the app store will look different in a month, or a year, and have anything to offer. Maybe. But remember that Windows Phone—which has swelled from mere hundreds, to tens of thousands, to over a hundred thousand app offerings over the past two years—is still a wasteland compared to iOS and Android. Poor precedent. Maybe Windows RT will be different. Maybe. 
   
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   But those maybes aren't worth putting money on. As much as it looked (and even felt) like it for a bit, the future isn't here quite yet. 
   
   
   
   Microsoft Surface Stats 
   
   Price: $500, $130 extra for Touch Cover 
   
   Screen: 10.6-inches, 1366x768 pixels (16:9) 
   
   Processor: 1.3 GHz Quad Core Tegra 3 
   
   Storage: 32 GB, microSDXC expandable 
   
   Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g/n 
   
   RAM: 2 GB 
   
   Connectivity: 1 USB 2.0 port, HD video out 
   
   Weight: 1.5 Pounds 
   
   Dimensions: 10.81 x 6.77 x 0.37 inches 
   
   Battery: 8 hours reading/7.5 video (advertised) 
   
   Gizrank: 2.5 ||||| Story highlights Microsoft's first tablet is beautifully designed outside but software still needs work 
   
   One of the device's weakness is its small app selection 
   
   The Surface starts at $499 for a 32GB model 
   
   When Microsoft first demoed Windows 8 at the Wall Street Journal's D Conference in June 2011 , it was instantly obvious that it wasn't a Windows upgrade in the conventional sense. Instead, with its radically new, touch-centric interface, it was an attempt to reimagine the PC for the post-PC era. A wildly ambitious attempt — maybe even a visionary one. 
   
   But for all Microsoft's power and influence over the PC industry, it was in no place to reinvent the PC single-handedly. Sure, it could write a new operating system. It could also make suggestions to its hardware-manufacturing partners, But it couldn't, you know, try to build the PC of the future. 
   
   Except that it did. 
   
   In June of this year, the company unveiled Surface , a pair of tablets it designed from scratch. (One, Surface with Windows RT, runs Windows RT, the version for devices based on ARM technology; the other, Surface with Windows 8 Pro, uses full-blown Windows 8 and isn't due until early next year.) They're iPad competitors, and that's important. But they're also PCs — the first ones that Microsoft has created on its own in its 37-year history. As such, they're the clearest possible expression of where the company thinks the PC should go. 
   
   Surface for Windows RT goes on sale at Microsoft Stores and some temporary pop-up retail outlets, and at Microsoft.com , this Friday. It starts at $499 for a 32GB model: the same opening price as the current full-sized iPad, but with double the storage. Microsoft provided me with a unit for this review, and I've been using it for a little over a week. 
   
   If you were excited by Surface based on its unveiling in June of this year , I think there's a good chance you'll be excited by the shipping product. And if the idea left you skeptical — well, you probably won't be won over by this initial incarnation. 
   
   At that June Surface event — and then at a smaller press briefing at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters last week — company executives spent so much time lavishing praise on their own design choices and technical innovations that I wondered if they'd somehow convinced Apple's Sir Jonathan Ive to tutor them. 
   
   It turns out that much of the self-laudatory hoopla wasn't wildly off base. The Surface hardware is indeed a beautiful piece of work, one that's worthy of comparison to Apple's designs even though many of Microsoft's specific choices are distinctly un-Applelike. 
   
   Its slate-colored magnesium case, manufactured using a process Microsoft calls VaporMg, is really, really nice. It's good-looking, it's sturdy and it helps keep the weight down — Surface is only slightly heavier than the iPad at 1.5 pounds, even though it has got a substantially roomier 10.6″ screen. Microsoft also says that the case is pretty much scratchproof, though you might want to be careful about tossing the tablet in a backpack: I noticed that the Windows logo on the backside of my review unit began scraping off almost immediately. 
   
   Surface has a kickstand — a fold-out flap on the back, which, when used in conjunction with a keyboard cover I'll talk about in a bit, lets you use the tablet like an undersized laptop. The care that Microsoft poured into it shows: When it's closed it's flush with the rest of the case and when it's open it keeps the tablet perfectly stable. And the hinge has a luxe feel, reminiscent of the high-end car door Microsoft says was its inspiration. 
   
   (I just said that you can use Surface like a laptop, but when I first saw it, I wondered if the kickstand would prevent you from using it in your lap at all. Not in my experience: I was able to balance it and the keyboard cover on my thigh without worrying too much about the whole contraption tipping over.) 
   
   That 10.6″ screen has 1366 by 768 pixels; Microsoft used its ClearType technology to improve text display, and glued the touchscreen directly on the LCD, which makes for a thinner, less reflective display. At the Redmond press event, a Microsoft engineer argued that despite the lower resolution, the screen beats the iPad's 2048 by 1536 Retina display in some circumstances; he also said that people who are 45 and above generally can't tell a Retina screen from a lower-resolution one. 
   
   My 48-year-old eyeballs have no trouble telling the difference between iPad Retina text and the Surface's ClearType — but overall, the Surface's screen is one of the best I've seen on a tablet. 
   
   The screen, incidentally, is 16:9, an aspect ratio designed with Windows 8′s panoramic interface in mind. It lets you see more apps without panning, and is well suited to the feature that allows you to snap a widget-like version of one app on the side of the primary program you're using. Microsoft thinks Surface buyers will use the tablet mostly in landscape mode; it works in portrait orientation too, although the aspect ratio leaves it looking like a small-but-tall magazine. 
   
   Surface has basic cameras on the front and back, as you'd expect from any $499 tablet. It also has a USB port and a MicroSDXC slot that lets you add extra storage, two features that add to its PC-like personality. Microsoft doesn't seem to be making a claim about battery life except to say that the tablet is designed for "all day" use, and in my time with it, it lived up to that vague claim. 
   
   One minor nit about the hardware: I found that I needed to wriggle the magnetic power connector into place in a way I don't with Apple's MagSafe connectors or even run-of-the-mill, nonmagnetic ones. 
   
   So that's Surface's basic hardware — not flawless, but darn nifty overall. If it ran Android, people might well conclude that it was the best Android tablet on the market. 
   
   But this tablet is defined by its operating system: Windows RT. 
   
   Despite the lack of an "8″ in its moniker, RT has precisely the same user interface as Windows 8. It has the colorful Start screen with auto-updating Live Tiles, each leading to an app or service. It runs the same bundled Windows 8-interface apps: Internet Explorer, Bing, e-mail, a calendar, a news app and more. Everything's touch-friendly and fluid. It's not the Windows we've known, but it's a good start on an interface that might carry Microsoft through the next couple of decades of computing. 
   
   Like Windows 8, RT has the Desktop, an area that's essentially Windows 7, except without the Start button. As with Windows 8, switching back and forth between new Windows 8-style apps and the Desktop can be an oddly disjointed experience, as if you're teleporting between two very different planets with very little warning. 
   
   On Windows 8, the Desktop has a huge saving grace: It lets you use any old-school Windows program. Windows RT, however, can't run them. They were all written for computers based on x86 (Intel) technology, and are incompatible with Surface's ARM processor. 
   
   So why is Desktop there at all? Mostly to run four Microsoft Office 2013 programs: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. All come bundled with Surface, and all are largely identical to their Windows 8 counterparts, despite being "preview" editions. (Surface buyers will get the final versions free.) 
   
   Anyone who's ever struggled to get work done on a tablet with a stripped-down office suite in a Microsoft Office world will appreciate certain things about Surface's Office apps. They support the official Office file formats perfectly and have industrial-strength features such as Word's revision tracking. 
   
   Still, I found them the least satisfying thing about Surface. They're the one part of this product Microsoft hasn't reimagined. Instead, it has just tweaked the apps slightly, giving them a Windows 8-type look in certain areas and rejiggering everything else to make it slightly easier to use with a fingertip rather than with a mouse. They work, but the whole experience feels like an exercise in compromise. (I have my fingers crossed that Microsoft has a real Windows 8-style version of Office in the works.) 
   
   If you plan to use Office much, you'll certainly want one of Microsoft's keyboard covers; the Touch Cover isn't included with the base $499 Surface, but a black model comes with the $599 version, and additional colors are available for $119.99 apiece. Snap one on, using the magnetic connector, and the Start screen automatically changes color to match — pretty stylish. 
   
   The Touch Cover is super-thin and clicks on and off in a jiffy. (I did find that I occasionally had to remove it and reclick to make it work.) The keyboard's on the inside and draws power from the connector; there's no need to futz with Bluetooth or worry about charging it. The nonkeyboard side has a fleecy surface that feels great in your hand, and the whole thing folds back. 
   
   When I first saw this cover in June, I kept an open mind about it. In fact, my mind was so open that I wondered if Microsoft had managed to produce a flat, one-piece keyboard that wouldn't leave many people pining for clacky mechanical keys. 
   
   Actually, even at the June event, the company had tipped its hand: It also showed off the Type Cover, which is much like the Touch Cover except that it has discrete keys with real travel. If the Touch Cover had been a miracle, there wouldn't have been a need for the Type Cover. 
   
   But if your benchmark is on-screen keyboards rather than conventional physical ones, you might be tickled with the Touch Cover. The keys are surprisingly spacious and there's no need to fumble through multiple modes to get to digits and punctuation. More important, moving the keyboard off the screen frees up the full screen resolution for whatever app you're using — a plus in all scenarios, and close to a necessity with the Desktop Office apps, all of which work better when they don't have an on-screen keyboard in the way. 
   
   As with any unfamiliar input device, I got more comfortable with the Touch Cover as I used it. But if I were buying a Surface to use for anything other than extremely light productivity, I'd spring for the $129.99 Type Cover instead. It's also impressively thin, but comes infinitely closer to a notebook-like feel. 
   
   Both the Touch Cover and the Type Cover sport a tiny touchpad. It's approximately the size of an unfolded matchbook, and I found it adequate in a pinch, but nowhere near as nice as a full-sized touchpad on a full-sized notebook. (With the Windows 8 experience, the bigger the touchpad, the better the experience.) With a cover on, I tended to do as much as possible from the keyboard, and simply touch the screen otherwise. 
   
   With Office and a Desktop version of Internet Explorer as Surface for Windows RT's only major traditional-Windows apps, anyone who plunks down $499 or more for a Surface today will be largely dependent on Microsoft's Windows Store for software. That's the biggest gamble such buyers are making. Windows 8 is launching with 5,000 apps in the U.S. version of the Windows Store, most of which should be available for Windows RT; they include name-brand wares such as Evernote, Hulu, Netflix, Microsoft's own Skype, TuneIn, a bunch of games and more. 
   
   Many of the Windows RT apps I tried make smart use of the Windows 8-style interface. Compared to the 275,000 iPad-optimized apps in Apple's store, though, there simply isn't much there. If Surface's earliest adopters are pleased with their purchase a year from now, it'll be because the Windows Store's offerings got beefier fast; if they're nonplussed, it'll be because the selection remained too meager. 
   
   All of which leads to one question: Who should consider buying a Surface with Windows RT? Not anyone who wants the most fully fleshed-out tablet experience right now — for that, the iPad still has no rival. 
   
   Surface offers slick industrial design, an inventive interface, full-blown Office apps that haven't been truly optimized for tablets and two very clever keyboard options. If part or all of that proposition appeals to you — and you're optimistic about the Windows Store — this tablet is worth a look. For an audacious version 1.0 product, it's impressive. Now it's up to Microsoft to prove that it's serious enough about this PC business to forge ahead with Surface until it's impressive, period. ||||| It has ports and jacks that iPad owners can only dream about: a memory-card slot to expand the storage, a video output jack and a USB 2.0 jack. You can connect almost any USB device: keyboard, mouse, flash drive, speakers, hard drive and so on. 
   
   Each Surface model has double the storage of the same-price iPad. For example, the $500 Surface offers 32 gigabytes; the 64-gig Surface is $600. 
   
   There are some disappointments on the spec sheet. The battery life is advertised as eight to 10 hours, less than the iPad. There’s no cellular version; it’s Wi-Fi only. The screen is very sharp (1,366 by 768 pixels), but it doesn’t approach the iPad’s Retina screen clarity (2,048 by 1,536 pixels). 
   
   And you can charge the Surface only from its wall adapter — not from a computer’s USB jack. Microsoft’s reasoning is that you won’t have a computer to charge from, since your days of carrying both a tablet and a laptop are over. Besides, a wall outlet recharges far faster than USB can. 
   
   The front is all touch screen. The edges of the black magnesium body are angled and crisp, like a prop from a Batman movie. 
   
   Then there’s the kickstand. The lower half of the back is a hinged panel, held shut magnetically until you pop it out with a fingernail. It snaps to a 22-degree angle, ready to prop the tablet sturdily upright. 
   
   A lesser kickstand would add weight, bulk or ugliness. But this one is razor-thin and disappears completely when you’re not using it. 
   
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   You do use it, though — especially when you flip open the optional keyboard. 
   
   Yes, keyboard. You know Apple’s magnetically hinged iPad cover? Microsoft’s Touch Cover is the same idea — same magnet hinge — except that on the inside, there are key shapes, and even a trackpad, formed from slightly raised, fuzzy material. Flip the cover open, flip out the kickstand and boom: you have what amounts to a 1.5-pound PC that sets up anywhere. 
   
   This is nothing like those Bluetooth keyboard cases for the iPad. First, the Touch Cover is much, much thinner, 0.13 inches, cardboard thin. Second, it’s not Bluetooth; there’s no setup and no battery hit. The magnet clicks, and keyboard is ready for typing. Third, when you want just a tablet, the keyboard flips around against the back. The Surface automatically disables its keys and displays the on-screen keyboard when it’s time to type. 
   
   Photo 
   
   You can buy this cover, in a choice of colors, with the Surface for $100, or later for $120. 
   
   It’s an incredibly slick idea, but the keys don’t move. You’re pounding a flat surface. If you type too fast, the keyboard skips letters. (“If you type 80 words a minute on a keyboard and 20-30 on glass, you should be in the 50s on the Touch Cover,” says a Microsoft representative.) 
   
   Fortunately, Microsoft also offers the Type Cover ($130), with real keys that really travel. At 0.24 inches thick, it’s not as unnoticeable as the Touch Cover, but Microsoft says it’s the thinnest moving-keys keyboard on earth, and it types nicely. 
   
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   So that’s the amazing, amazing hardware. Now the heartbreak: software. 
   
   This computer runs Windows RT, a variation of Windows 8, which Microsoft hopes will run on all PCs from now on. RT is wildly different from the old Windows. You’ll be thrilled or appalled, depending on your fondness for change. 
   
   In this Windows, the Start screen is a patchwork of colorful, interactive tiles. You tap one to open an app, swipe down on one to “right click” it, swipe across to reveal more pages of them. Each tile is also a tiny dashboard, showing your next appointment, latest Facebook post, today’s weather and so on. It’s fast, fluid and fun to use. 
   
   Swiping in from the edges of the screen summons useful hidden panels. Swipe in from the top or bottom to reveal your app’s menus; from the left to switch apps; from the right for important controls like Share and Settings. 
   
   Unfortunately, Windows RT is not the full Windows. The Surface comes with preview 2013 versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint — workable, but sometimes sluggish. 
   
   Otherwise, though, Windows RT can’t run any of the four million regular Windows programs. Or the 275,000 iPad apps. Or the 17 Android tablet apps. (That’s a joke! There are actually 19 Android tablet apps.) 
   
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   Instead, it requires all new apps. They’re available exclusively from the online Windows App Store, and there aren’t many to choose from; for example, there’s no Facebook, Spotify, Angry Birds, Instagram, Draw Something or New York Times app. The total in the United States is about 3,500 apps so far; many are bare-bones or junky. 
   
   In some ways, the far more intriguing prospect is the Surface Pro tablet, which Microsoft says will be available in 90 days. It has a real Intel chip inside, and can run real Windows programs. That’s right: Photoshop, iTunes, Quicken and classic PC games on your tablet. 
   
   The Pro will be heavier (two pounds), thicker (half an inch) and much more expensive (around $1,000). For those sacrifices, of course, you could buy an ultrathin laptop — but the Surface’s keyboard cover and touch screen make it far more flexible. 
   
   But both Surface tablets, and indeed Windows 8 itself, suffer from an insanely confusing split personality. Beneath the colorful, edge-to-edge world of RT apps, the menus, icons, taskbar and overlapping windows of the traditional Windows desktop are still there. On the Surface, that old desktop pops bafflingly and unnecessarily into view whenever you use the Office programs. 
   
   (My complete review of Windows 8 will appear in The New York Times on Thursday.) 
   
   That’s not all that’s wrong with Windows RT, either. There’s no speech recognition, let alone Siri; no app folders; no automated guidance in Maps. The Control Panel offers features like typing suggestions and autocorrect, but I couldn’t get them to work anywhere. Sometimes the on-screen keyboard doesn’t pop up when it’s supposed to. 
   
   Little inconsistencies and bafflements are everywhere. Such as the way Word constantly informs me that “there is insufficient memory or disk space.” (Well, gee, Microsoft — whose fault is that?) 
   
   Look, here’s the thing. You’d have to be fairly coldblooded to keep your pulse down the first time you see the Surface: its beauty, its potential, its instant transformation from tablet to PC. How incredible that this bold, envelope-pushing design came from Microsoft, a company that for years produced only feeble imitations of other companies’ fresh ideas. 
   
   And how ironic that what lets the Surface down is supposedly Microsoft’s specialty: software. 
   
   In time, maybe the Windows RT apps will come. Maybe the snags will get fixed. Maybe people will solve the superimposed puzzle of Windows RT and Windows 8. Until then, the Surface is a brilliantly conceived machine whose hardware will take your breath away — but whose software will take away your patience. ||||| Nobody asked me about my Surface. I tried flashing it all over the place. But despite my best efforts, no one seemed curious. 
   
   At Victrola Coffee Roasters in Seattle, I sat in the front window, with a hot pink Touch Cover attached, intentionally conspicuous. Nobody mentioned it. At the airport, I broke it out at the large open-air counter of a crowded bar. I sat in a seat at the gate, facing the walkway, pounding away at its keys on my lap. On a Virgin America flight, crowded with techies, I sat up front and kept it on my tray table the entire time, swiping from app to app. On San Francisco’s Muni transit system, I tentatively typed in my seat, afraid it may be snatched on the crowded train. But no one said a word. 
   
   The only person to comment on it was a TSA agent at the Seattle airport, who told me I didn’t need to take my iPad out of my bag. 
   
   That’s too bad. Although nobody asked, Microsoft’s new tablet is an altogether curious device. It’s something completely new and different. It is, in some ways, better than an iPad. In some ways, worse. It’s brilliant, and yet it can be puzzling as well. Confoundingly so at times. It’s a tablet of both compromises and confusion. It is a true hybrid — neither fully a desktop nor mobile device. That’s reflected in all sorts of ways. It is Wi-Fi only, but won’t run traditional Windows applications. It has a full-featured keyboard and runs Microsoft Office — but it’s certainly meant to be touched and swiped and tapped. 
   
   It’s different. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Let’s at least get this out of the way: This is one of the most exciting pieces of hardware I’ve ever used. It is extremely well-designed; meticulous even. 
   
   The backside kickstand can serve as a metaphor for the entire device. Close it, and it sits flush with the back of the tablet. It’s so tightly integrated, if you didn’t know it was there, you’d think it was just a seam for the battery compartment. It has three hinges — one of which is just to give it a satisfying sound when opening or closing. (Snap!) It’s designed to be like a car door. It’s designed to make you use it. 
   
   And it’s quite sturdy, to boot. In Microsoft’s lab, we saw Surfaces that had been opened and closed hundreds of thousands of times. They still snapped open and shut like they were new. We wanted to see how easy it was to break one. It’s very possible, but you have to really try. We did manage to break off the kickstand by gradually leaning onto it, but I had to put nearly my full weight onto the tablet before the kickstand snapped off. 
   
   
   
   
   
   People will break the hinge, but I don’t think as often or predictably as, say, the glass rear panel of an iPhone 4 or 4S. One other nitpick? The kickstand has a small fingerhold to make it easy to open. But this is on the left-hand side of the device. Most people are right-handed. 
   
   And then there is the 3-millimeter-thin Touch Cover keyboard. Ever since Microsoft first unveiled the Surface, this has been a big question mark. Does it really snap on and off so easily? Is it usable? Does it even work? Yes. To everything. It’s actually quite fantastic. On this miniature keyboard, that has no actual physical keys, keystrokes fire as fast as you can type them. There is no lag. There is, however, a learning curve. 
   
   I struggled mightily with typos and finger placement for the first 24 hours. My left wrist hurt like hell. The pinkie and ring finger on my left hand were cramped. But by day three, my hands began to relax and I was typing quickly and, for the most part, accurately. After a week, I powered along at 90 words per minute. It’s not the same speed I hit on a full size keyboard, and I still have typos galore (though far fewer) but given how much I’ve improved in a week, it’s impressive. 
   
   Oddly, it is perhaps less effective as a cover than a keyboard. It folds over nicely, but doesn’t stay closed as well as I’d like. Several times, I opened my bag to a glow, like something out of Pulp Fiction, to find the Surface had lit up as the Touch Cover came open inside. 
   
   The Type Cover ($130, sold separately), which has actual keys, performs even more poorly as a cover, but it’s a spectacular keyboard. I could hammer away on it at approximately normal speed from the get-go, and made fewer typos. 
   
   One issue I did have with the Type Cover was the accidental pressing of a key. Apparently, at some point I pressed the Shift key for eight seconds, which launched a Filter Keys setting — an accessibility feature meant for users with palsy and other disabilities that may cause them to inadvertently press keys. From that moment on, the keyboard basically did not work. And because Windows 8 and Windows RT are so cloud-connected, this setting propagated itself across all my other Windows devices. It was an easy fix, and Microsoft says a software update that prevents this from happening is on the way. But I thought it spoke to how easy it can be to inadvertently do bad things with the Type Cover. 
   
   The 720p HD cameras — front and rear — are junk. There’s no other way to put it. The camera has a significant lag time when you’re taking shots, and the image quality looks about like the last photo you snapped with your Razr V3. It should be, however, fine for Skype. Just don’t expect Nana and Papa to be able to see their little grunions clearly. 
   
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target: – The creators of the hotly anticipated Microsoft Surface RT have touted it as revolutionary, improving upon the toy-like tablets of today by making it functional, with a detachable touch screen and a snappy design. So is it the future of computing? Not yet, most reviewers agree: Sam Biddle praises the RT's concept and design in a detailed review at Gizmodo that's worth a full read. But ultimately, he says it's "not worth your paycheck" in its current form, which retails around $600 give or take some pricey add-ons. Instead of being both a tablet and a laptop, it's "really just the worst of both worlds." It's also hard to use: "It's just a half-broken death march up the learning curve." Over at Wired, Mathew Honan loves the look of the machine, and like others, drools over the satisfying "snap" of its razor-thin kickstand. It's durable too, but the cameras lag and "the image quality looks about like the last photo you snapped with your Razr V3." Pretty much everyone hates the Windows RT software the machine runs on. It's a departure from Window's old operating systems—it's colorful and swipe-friendly, for starters. But Harry McCracken, writing for CNN, wonders why the new design still includes a desktop. Switching between the two interfaces "can be an oddly disjointed experience, as if you're teleporting between two very different planets with very little warning." The apps are a big letdown, writes David Pogue in the New York Times. You can't use any iPad or Android Tablet apps, nor any of Microsoft's own programs. That means no apps for Facebook, Angry Birds, or Spotify, among many others, and what is available is "bare-bones junky." His advice? Wait a few months for the Surface Pro.