Microsoft Surface tablet: The Good and the not so good.

Almost five months after the launch of the Surface tablet, I finally had a chance to spend quality time with it. In the past, my time with the device was limited to less than 30 minutes which didnt constitute enough to write about it. I have had a device with me for a few hours now and I have played with it decently enough to write this brief review. This is by no means a comprehensive review of the product. For that, you should read this. My piece is really one of an extended first impression. If you are interested in knowing more about the recently released Surface Pro tablet, read here.I picked up a Surface today at my local Microsoft store along with a Type keyboard. My job requires me to benchmark the performance of the best in class devices in the business and I wanted to add a Surface to our library. I have categorized my experience into two categories- the good and the not so  good.[gallery ids="1023,1029,1028,1027,1026,1025"]The GoodHardware is great.The best part about the Surface is the look and feel of the actual hardware. It seems extremely well build. It looks great and feels solid. Front and back, it looks and feels great. The kickstand is as advertised. Feels really well made.Display feels richThe display is rich. The Surface is a 1366 x 768 tablet in a sea of much higher resolution screens. But from a color depth and clarity of display standpoint, it feels rich. Apps tell a different story but that is for later.Windows 8 is innovativeI have written about my experiences with Windows 8 on a non-touch PC. On the Surface, some aspects of the OS shine. It is generally responsive and native apps like IE, Bing Maps, Bing Finance and others are designed for the OS. While I have quibbles about the apps themselves, they seem well suited in general for the touch experience.Good Battery LifeIn the limited hours time I have spent with the device, battery life has been good. I havent let it drain fully yet but it is holding up very well.Multitasking and User ProfilesMultitasking is easier on Windows 8 than iOS and Android. It is simple and easy to switch between apps. It is also great that the OS offers the ability to create multiple user profiles. Something Android didn't add until recently and iOS still doesnt offer.Touch Experience is goodI didn't feel very many hiccups with the touch experience and response. Apps responded to touch very quickly and the drawing apps showed that the device was tracking the fingers pretty nicely.The Not So GoodAnd now for the not so good parts. Unfortunately, there is more of this than the good and much of it has to do with the software. The software doesnt seem ready yet for primetime competition with the likes of iPad. And there are quite a few reasons why.Out of the Box experience left a lot to be desiredOne of the biggest reasons for the tremendous success of the iPad is its out of the box experience. While Microsoft has done a good job with packaging the product, the out of the box experience is pretty lacking. Here is my laundry list - the device takes forever to setup, it feels like a Windows PC and not a tablet and in my case, the wifi just didn't work. In true Windows style, I had to disable the adapter multiple times before the Surface was able to do a Wifi scan. Disappointing.The hardware is not perfectWhile the overall hardware feels good, there are some misses. The kickstand, robust as it is cannot be adjusted. It is open or close. Nothing in between. This leads to a weird situation when the device is used anywhere outside of a table.The device is heavy and long. The Surface cant be held in one hand for more than 10-15 minutes and it feels heavy. It is also too big to be used in hand for prolonged periods of time.An OS of many weird choicesOn one hand, the tile based system is the right way to go for touch devices. But Microsoft hasn't made the jump cleanly. There is so much of the PC based interactions that it makes for an awkward experience. Saving a document takes you to the PC non-touch experience that is difficult especially without a keyboard.The desktop mode is an afterthought for reasons that are not very obvious. Across the board, as I spend more time with it, the dichotomy between the Windows 8 of the old and the new touch experience is very evident.Updates and other PC quirksI was told that there were multiple Windows Updates that needed to be applied, much like a PC. I thought tablet OS didn't need to be updated like PCs but I was wrong. iOS and Android core OS updates are very much in the background or rare. My Windows Update took a good 40 minutes. And I wasn't sure if it had frozen or was just taking time. I hope this does not happen often.Simple tablet specific tasks like increasing the font size of a page were not  intuitive enough to do. I was reading a page on Bing finance and felt the need for a bigger font size. After 5 minutes of trying, I gave up. Could not get it done. It is entirely possible, I missed it. But hey, it wasnt obvious at all.Apps are lackingApps are lacking. And whatever apps are available look like they were afterthoughts by the designers who reserved their best effort for iOS and and/or Android. Free apps are missing a lot of good ones and the paid apps are inconsistent. Take this example. In the top paid apps, there is a version of Facebook called (Facebook Mobile) developed by AnKo Software for $2.99. It has 4 stars. In the Top Free apps category, there is an app called Facebook Touch developed by FBTouch and carries 3 stars. Here is the kicker. I still have not found the official Facebook app for Surface. And no Twitter either.Microsoft Office is not ready for touchI havent used Office on the new Surface Pro tablets or any of the touch ultrabooks but on the Surface, Office is not well flushed out. There are tasks that show a traditional Windows interface not suited for touch amidst those written specifically with touch in mind. Long form typing was hard with or without the keyboard as is the case with many tablets. Overall, the experience was not anywhere close to that on a laptop or PC.The Touch and Type Covers are not there yetI had to choose between the Touch and the Type cover in the Microsoft store. The Touch cover felt very weird and the Type cover seemed better of the two and so I went with it. When I got back and tried the Type cover on, it didn't feel that great either. While the Type cover is a step in the right direction, it is not anywhere close to a real keyboard typing experience on a PC or a laptop. It is hard to explain but it just doesnt feel right.The Type cover is also bulky. When it is open, its great but when the cover is folded back, holding the device feels awkward with the fingers resting on inactive yet physical keys on a keyboard. The Type cover needs to be removed when not in use but the tablet is in use. It makes it cumbersome but thats the only way.ConclusionSo what does it all translate to?. The Surface has a lot of good first steps for Microsoft and there is a lot of potential to improve with future iterations of the hardware and software. The base from which MS can take the leap is all there and in place. But Surface is not a tablet I would recommend for $499. It has a lot of raw edges both in hardware and more so in software that need to be ironed out before it can compete with the rest of the industry. It needs work. The DNA is there. The motivation is there. Soon the product will get there. It is not there, just yet.