Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are a lot of tech reviews out there on this product listing many of the pros and cons. I meant to keep this short, but it's a pricey piece of technology and I did a LOT of research on it and it's competitors. I'm no tech expert, just a college student who was in the market for something more portable than my bulky heavy 15.6" Toshiba laptop. Overall, I would say that there are better and cheaper options if you want a strictly media oriented device; if you want to watch movies, listen to tunes, cruise facebook, etc. go with something cheaper. This does all of those things, but you can achieve this goal at a lower price point. NOTE: I DID NOT BUY THIS THROUGH AMAZON. I GOT THIS FOR $599 (with touch cover) elsewhere. Screen: Awesome. I've watch netflix on this thing without ever noticing any complaints at all. I ordered a micro HDMI to hook it up to my TV, but I haven't actually tried it yet. Storage: Not great, but has some advantages. Even though this is a 32 GB product, about 16 GB of that is used up by the OS. SO you have about 16 gigs left over. Not a big deal, since it has a micro SD slot, which is appealing. More appealing, I would say, is that it has a built in USB drive to which you may connect any number of devices (keyboards, mouses, printers... more importantly thumb drives with endless storage capabilities)... I keep a 16 GB thumb drive on my keyring which pretty much solves all my problems (especially because it readily accepts a USB device) Cloud? available, but not necessary in my case. Apps: Pretty sparse. I don't fret this point because the app market for this product is new. It is sure to grow, and if it doesn't I don't care. Why? Because I bought this thing to do WORK, not play games and watch movies. Which leads me to the bigger point; this comes with fully function versions of excel, word, and power point... Functionality: Good, but could be better. As a college student (I deal mostly in the sciences) this is great. I have instant portable access to excel which is super important for lab write ups and data analysis. This is the primary reason I ultimately selected this tablet. The word application is great. I typed out a 4 page paper a few evenings ago while on the go with few problems. It does take some decent typing skills and some getting used to to make real use of though. Touch Cover: very cool. Mostly easy to use, but the space bar some times misses, and the delete key is just slightly out of comfortable reach. Also, after a few days of use there is noticeable wear on the space bar and mouse touch pad area. I am hoping this is just some skin oil residue, but it doesn't seem to want to come off with some light cleaning. I am worried that this part of it may wear out quickly. Battery Life: Excellent. Period. I spent about 4 hours of almost continuous dorking around on the internet and playing on netflix... and it still had 60% left after all that. Not sure how that hold up to other tablets, but it blows my laptop out of the water. I don't dream of bring my laptop somewhere without the power source. With the Surface, I just leave it at home, and don't think twice. I could go on and on. But I would say that the tablet functions are cool, the touch options are easy to figure out, and the option to go to a "desktop" view really helps you transition into, what I believe, is the closest thing to a tablet/ laptop hybrid. Love it overall, but there are a few annoying aspects. great for work, good for entertainment, but if entertainment is your primary prerogative, go with an iPAD or better yet (for the price) kindle Fire/ HD. [EDIT] 2-10-2013 - I had to ditch the touch cover and replace it with the TYPE cover. I had a lot of problems with the touch cover; missing key strokes, missing the space bar OFTEN, and spending as much time deleting typos as I did actually typing meaningful words. I sometimes had three or four words strung together without spaces between them because of the space bar issue... VERY annoying. The touch cover is 10 times better. There are still issues with missing key strokes, but that is WAY less of a problem with the type cover. THE TYPE COVER IS EASILY WORK THEN EXTRA 10$!!! (And it doesn't add an appreciable thickness to its folded up orientation.