It has an awful lot of affordances to make it look like it might be a laptop replacement -- the keyboard covers, the desktop mode, Office. It's obviously not suitable simply as a laptop, nor is it a very credible straight-up replacement for an iPad, at least at this point.

So if it was going to succeed at something, the most likely outcome would be as a good-enough laptop replacement and a good-enough tablet replacement, even though it would be a compromise as either. Instead, the reviewer came to the conclusion that it was more of a "neither fish nor fowl" product. Having not had a chance to use one myself, I nevertheless suspect that will be my conclusion when I have a chance to try one out.

I get that it was not a replacement for a desktop. That's a given. but I don't get "not a replacement for iPad" part. I don't see why it is not a replacement for iPad for doing most of what people do on iPad, browse, game, read, watch, listen, etc. If you consider broad app ecosystem, nothing is going to be a replacement for iPad except iPad. Agreed Windows8 doesn't have a whole lot of apps at this point but its not even released yet.

Android doesn't have nearly as many tablet apps for full-size tablets as iPad has, but it definitely has an app ecosystem. Windows RT is starting almost completely from scratch -- like previous marketplace failures like the Playbook and the TouchPad.

If Metro apps take off, then in 6 months to a year, Surface could be a completely viable iPad replacement. But right now, you would have to have a pretty limited set of needs to be satisfied with a Surface.

Worse, I've read more than one review claiming that the software is still glitchy. While understandable in a 1.0 product, that's a huge disadvantage when compared to the famous stability of an iPad.

So while I'm sure there will be some interest just because it's a cool-looking product, I don't think more than a small minority of users will find it a realistic substitute for an iPad.