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After pissing off the entire OEM PC industry with their announcement of Microsoft Surface, some important questions remain that few journalists asked. The obvious ones are price and availability, but there are other important ones.

  • What about battery life?
  • Can it run in portrait mode? If not, reading books will feel horrible.
  • How does the on-screen touch keyboard look and feel like if you don't buy that cover/keyboard accessory?
  • Backup?
  • Where's the 3G version?

I'm afraid that Microsoft's focus on that keyboard cover accessory was made to hide the fact that their on-screen keyboard sucks or isn't ready. The lack of any indication about battery life may be an indication that their software isn't ready to reduce battery usage. And the lack of backup process is an indication they don't have any post-Zune synchronization software ready.

Many tech journalists and bloggers said that Microsoft is trying to copy Apple. Well, if they do, they failed. When Apple announce a product, they're in the hands of the journalists the same day and it ships a week later. Even if it ships beyond a week, price and availability is known. What Microsoft announced is a deadline to their OEMs that says that if they don't come up with decent Windows 8 tables by year end, Microsoft will. It's quite a bet, but I don't think it will work.

Published on June 22, 2012 at 21:30 EDT

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