If you want to use a pen workflow, Surface Pro is hands down the best choice.

The problem for Microsoft isn't that Surface Pro isn't a good pen tablet. It's that 98% of people don't want, or don't know they want, a pen tablet. Now, before the iPad, 98% of people didn't know they wanted a tablet. That's a fair point. But in the last decade, Microsoft has demonstrated zero market making ability of that kind.

On top of that, Surface Pro is probably not the ideal pen tablet for current technology. I think a cheaper, lighter, thinner device with a Clovertrail processor, digitizer, and 8+ hours of battery life would have hit the sweet spot if Microsoft wanted to make a serious go at making pen computing happen. My guess is that the battery life is going to lose them a lot more customers than the extra oomph of the Ivy Bridge is going to gain them.

You may well be correct. However, since this is Windows, there is some chance that Lenovo, Acer, Asus, MSI, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, HP, Dell or one of several hundred other companies will hit your sweet spot. It's not like you were limited to a single manufacturer.

In fact, if you think your sweet spot PC would be attractive to a lot of people, you could set up a company and market it yourself. There are hundreds of factories in the Pearl River Delta capable of producing that sort of thing at a reasonable price. Kickstarter here you come?

Most of those manufacturers sell crappy products with bizarre bits of brain damage in otherwise good machines. E.g. awesome Sony laptop that's got 2 hours of battery life, or great Samsung device that's a fax-aluminum plastic piece of shit. I wouldn't even touch a PC laptop from someone other than Lenovo, and judging by everyone else's sales figures, I'm apparently not alone.

That's the real hope of Surface--to free us from OEM's and their OEM crapware and OEM brain damage. Microsoft has a lot of money, but even it can't buy the Chinese/Taiwanese OEM's taste.

There is just a powerful marketing pitch in being able to sell a product "this is the one true way Windows 8 was meant to be experienced." There is a reason everyone raves about the Nexus 4/7/10. Surface is the only Windows 8 tablet on the market that can go toe to toe with Apple in terms of industrial design and vertical integration. The success of Windows 8 tablets lives and dies with Surface.

I'm not sure that overstating your case is a sensible approach to argument. Lenovo is not the only company with good PCs, and a handful of PC companies sell more units than Apple, so clearly people do buy them. More than 300m a year of them, as a matter of fact.

However, your point on crapware is well made. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't do anything about it (because the DoJ sued it into the ground and specifically prevented it). Also, crapware brings in money and this is significant in a market that buys on price. I don't see it changing in the near future.

I'm in a similar position. The ThinkPad Helix might be a winner, in a month or two:

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/thinkpad/thinkpad-h...

I loved the X201 tablet (apart from heating issues), but the crap resolution and 16:9 on that line makes it not worth having.

I have a feeling that this year, we're going to see a lot of decent small-sized, full res devices, thanks to Apple's Retina push. Haswell is supposed to be out mid-year so that might also help create some better devices.

That laptop looked interesting to me, so I started looking into the specs PDF, where I find this gem:

PRELOADED APPLICATIONS: Lenovo Companion, Lenovo QuickSnip, Lenovo Support, Lenovo Quick Launch, Lenovo Cloud Storage, Lenovo Settings, Microsoft® Office 2010 Trial, Intel® AppUp Skype™, AccuWeather, Amazon Kindle, Evernote Skitch,Evernote Security, Rara – Music

As people are complaining over how little free space the surface pro has, I wonder what the reaction to all of these on a 128gb machine would be...

EDIT: Formatting

Wow, I might wait for this one instead.

Samsung Smart PC Pro (include ATIV in the name for North America I think). Ticks all the spec boxes you mention, but is a bit above the price range.

I like it because it can be a full laptop, with real hinge (unlike the Surface Pro), but can still detatch to be a real tablet. Coupled with the official 360° handstrap case, I don't find its heft to be an issue in tablet mode either.

I was unsure about whether I'd have use for the stylus when I bought it, but it has exceeded expectations. It is great for inputting short text here and there (e.g. searching the web). It is also great for having finer grained input for those occasions when I want to drop into the Win8's 'desktop mode' without switching the hardware back into 'notebook mode' (i.e. avoiding the need for the mouse pad for casual usage).

cooldeal

VAIO Duo 11 Ultrabook http://store.sony.com/c/VAIO-Duo-11-Ultrabook-Laptops/en/c/S...

3rd gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor available Windows 8 64-bit 11.6" Full HD IPS touch display (1920 x 1080) Converts from tablet to laptop Digitizer stylus

Do I win a prize? ;-)

Very close, but choosing an i5 pushes the price closer to $1300 and doesn't come anywhere to "handily beating" the Surface Pro claim in the OP.

Yes, good point. Maybe Surface Pro is better value than some people think? ;-)

Do you really need a digitizer? Quite a few artistic people I know are fine with a "capacitively detectable stylus". It doesn't have 1024 pressure levels (or however much the wacom or whatever on the surface does). The accuracy of some touch screens (most notably the ipad) seems to be sufficient unless you require a real pressure sensitive surface.

Ok, poll: how many of you really want a digitizer (and have ever used one for more than a few minutes)?

Asus Zenbook Prime. $999 at B&H. 1.7GHz Core i5-3317U, 4GB, 128GB SSD, 13" 1080p screen.

Edit: Oops, didn't notice the digitizer requirement. Please disregard.

Unfortunately does not have a wacom digitiser nor touch screen...

Nope. No Digitizer. Thanks for playing.

Yes, there's an Asus Zenbook one, with a larger 11.6" screen. It doesn't have a stylus though, but unless you really care about a stylus, and you just want a laptop, then it shouldn't matter.

I don't imagine he tossed in digitizer as a requirement just for the giggles.