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However, she added: “I keep scratching my head over who Microsoft expects to buy the Surface Pro. It’s not as good of a tablet, in terms of weight/battery life, as the Surface RT is. But it’s also not as good of a Windows 8 PC as other OEM-produced devices, coming in at lower price points with better battery life and other specs.”

Steve Kovach, writing for Business Insider, praised the specifications on the new Surface, but not the experience as a whole.

“The Surface Pro has some impressive hardware specs for such a unique form factor. It can go toe-to-toe with any other thin and light laptop,” he wrote.

“(But) you can’t rest the Surface Pro comfortably on your lap without it flopping around. You can’t adjust the angle of the screen when it’s propped on a table with the built-in kickstand,” Kovach added.

“You need to spend at least another US$100 to get the full laptop-like experience with one of the special keyboard covers. At 10 inches, the screen feels a bit small for traditional desktop computing.

”The cheapest model only has 23 GB of free storage, so you’ll have to buy a separate memory card because you’ll definitely need more than that.“

David Pierce, writing on The Verge tech news site, singled out the high quality of the screen, quick startup time, the USB port on the charging hub and pressure-sensitive stylus.

But he criticized the lack of Microsoft’s Office suite of applications – which have to be purchased separately – and its general awkwardness.

”Even a well-executed Surface still doesn’t work for me, and I’d bet it doesn’t work for most other people either,“ Pierce wrote.

”It’s really tough to use on anything but a desk, and the wide, 16:9 aspect ratio pretty severely limits its usefulness as a tablet anyway,“ Pierce added.

”It’s too big, too fat, and too reliant on its power cable to be a competitive tablet, and it’s too immutable to do everything a laptop needs to do. In its quest to be both, the Surface is really neither.“

© Thomson Reuters 2013

Watch Microsoft’s video introducing its new Windows 8 software.