Surface Tension

Microsoft has a new, cheaper version of its Surface tablet. The Surface Go is a 10” table for C$529, which puts it close to the cheapest iPads. That seems like a good move. I never understood Microsoft’s early attempts at a tablet. In general, I don’t understand why they feel the need to make tablets, but that’s another issue. The first Surfaces were very high-end, and I wondered how much market there is for tablets that are more expensive than nearly all laptops. On top of that, there’s the question of how many people want a super expensive tablet but haven’t bought them from Apple. It’s like when VW periodically tries making an expensive car; it may well be a nice car, but I’m not buying a luxury vehicle from Volkswagen.

But with the Surface Go, Microsoft seems to have taken a sensible approach to deliver an inexpensive but still powerful tablet, so they apparently think there’s a good market there. That’s interesting, because it’s been about ten years now that computer makers have been fussing around trying to make a new computing format, something that’s portable, affordable, and convenient.

First we had the netbooks. They started off as microscopic laptops with flash memory and custom Linux-based operating systems — essentially they were small versions of today’s Chromebooks. That seemed like an intriguing idea, but people weren’t ready to make such a big break with the past, and soon netbooks had hard drives and Windows, which made them less cheap, portable and usable.

Then tablets took off, and while they’ve been popular, they haven’t been super-profitable for manufacturers. And as a personal observation, they’ve been kind of an awkward proposition: you can get a really cheap tablet which you can use for many things, but it will be far from a replacement for a laptop/desktop. You can use it for e-mail and some web surfing, but many web pages won’t work well on a small screen and underpowered processor. And slightly larger jobs like typing this blog entry won’t be easy.

But there seems to be a new format coalescing: you can get a 9.7” iPad with a keyboard case for about $500, and now Microsoft is aiming at a similar price-point. I find that tablets at this level are much more capable what with their screen and computing power, and an unobtrusive keyboard opens up many more uses, while still keeping the device more portable than a laptop. And sure enough, I’m typing this on one of those iPad/keyboard pseudo laptops.

So I think we’ve finally figured out the formula for a new computing format. I don’t see this replacing anything: there’s still things laptops are better at, smaller tablets are significantly cheaper, and phones are much more portable. But the 9-10” tablet/keyboard is a very useful setup. My apologies to that kid in the “what’s a computer” Apple commercial. You were on to something. But it’s still a computer.