I think all of the products are surprisingly compelling, but the naming has arguably become an even bigger and more glaring issue.

The original Surface lineup was very compelling. The only real issue with it was the majorly confusing marketing message with having two products with a major qualitative difference sharing essentially the same name.

It kind of pains me that rather than learning from their $900 million mistake, they've essentially doubled down on it and somehow managed to create two products with even more similar sounding names. I think that they're once again going to confuse some people about the respective capabilities of each machine with this naming scheme.

You could argue the same point regarding Apple's naming of their Macbook line prior to the discontinuing of the original Macbook moniker. Even now, the difference between the standard and the advanced Macbook line (purely on naming) are the words "Air" and "Pro".

I disagree with your point as I don't see any kind of major qualitative difference between an Air and Pro. Both are very similar computers that run essentially the same software - one just operates faster than the other. That's a quantitative difference.

As far as I understand it, a Surface and Surface Pro run completely different types of software. Windows RT cannot run normal Windows Apps. I would view this as a major qualitative difference in the type of machine it is and such a similar naming strategy is confusing and not warranted.

I think they're both actually looking like pretty good machines yet again and both have their uses, but I think the message about what they are is going to be confusing to the marketplace because of the naming. I don't work in branding for a big corporation, so maybe my opinions are wrong. But Microsoft ended up with a warehouse full of unsold Surface RT's last time and I think that this is a big part of the reason why.

No, I don't think you could argue that at all.

The Air/Pro/normal macbooks all run the same software binaries. Microsoft was/is selling two products with different machine architectures that run different software but with almost identical names. That's a marketing and customer-service disaster.

> I hope this is compatible with my Surface Pro

Everything's compatible with the SP. Only the original Surface is missing the extra contacts on bottom for some of the new hardware.

Myself, I'll be picking up the Power Cover when that shows up (I'm expecting 2014), but not replacing the tablet. 8ish hours of battery life is plenty for me.

I'll save the big money for a real laptop when the rest of the PC makers finally put some Haswell-based stuff on store shelves this holiday season. That it's taken them over a year since the MBA is pathetic.

The only thing that keeps me from using SP2 as a desktop replacement is the GPU. I still like to do some casual gaming every once in a while, and Intel's integrated graphics are too far behind nVidia/ATI's discrete offerings in other ultrabooks.

The Haswell Airs came out in June and the Windows Haswell Ultrabooks were for sale beginning in August. The gap was only about 3-4 months.

Any word on why it's taking manufacturers so long to get Haswell-based devices out?

Just yesterday, I was talking to my friend who works at Intel (on audio for Haswell tablets). He mentioned that Haswell isn't stable enough yet. I didn't get into the details though.

Lots of unsold Ivy Bridge CPUs

> * Surface 2 loses the low-density screen. I enjoy that low-density has been deprecated.

The 1.5X screen of the Surface 2 is definitely better than its old 1X screen, but will that be competitive with the 2X screens in other tablets (Android and Apple) at the same or lower price points?

No, not on screen clarity (though color accuracy competitiveness is still uncertain). I would personally prefer a 250+ DPI display. But retiring the abomination known as "1366x768" is long overdue. So as you say, the progression is definitely better.

All considered, I'd much prefer to sink R&D into a 250+ DPI large form-factor desktop display than cram even more pixels into my Surface. The monitors I stare at for hours on end each day are 3x 30" LCDs and their pixel density, and the resulting relative clarity (or lack thereof), leave a great deal to be desired.

We are getting 31" 4K displays this year that come close (doesn't have to be 250 DPI at desktop viewing distance, but the high 100s would be nice). They are expensive ATM, but should come down in price pretty quickly. The only question I have is if Windows and its application ecosystem will be ready for it? There seems to be a lot of scrambling right now to prepare for a new high DPI status quo, so I'm very optimistic.

Interesting that it wasn't announced anywhere, but during a Reddit AMA, the VP in charge of the Surface said an LTE model was coming early next year.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mz20e/hi_im_panos_pan...

For those interested, the event stream can be viewed here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/surface/surfac...