From what I've been seeing from the way they sell and price their other surface devices, and according to some bloggers, MS just wants to set a reference for other manufacturers to make Windows devices. They seem to price their products intentionally higher so that they don't cannibalize Dell, Lenovo, HP and others. Don't know whether it is a good strategy or not, but that's how they are approaching all their in-house Windows devices

I doubt that's the case anymore. With Chromebook Pixel, it was understandable because it was plain as day.

In this case, it looks like they put in a lot of effort into design and the overall effort seems to show that they do want these laptops to be sold.

It's certainly not justified by the difference in component costs. My feeling is it's an attempt at price discrimination. For users running an office suite, web browser, and not much else, even the lowest spec machine is plenty. They want to compete on price for those customers. Users doing media processing, scientific computing, or development are probably more willing and able to spend more on a laptop, so Microsoft is charging more.

Well, half criticized, half lauded. There are many people around HN and elsewhere that will say that it is an entirely sound and justified decision, "and besides, if you use it every day for three years that's not even a dollar a day, why shouldn't they charge a premium?", etc.

This is what's keeping me on HDD based laptops (and windows 10 is awful on HDD), I'm fine with an i5 and 4GB of RAM is plenty, but I need that 512GB of disk space.