The Surface Pro: A Good Idea Wrongly Executed (Updated)

By now I bet we all know of the original Surface tablet, more properly called the Surface RT which costs $500 for 32GB of storage. The main difference with the recently announced Surface Pro is the flavor of Windows they run. The RT (which stands for Runtime) is simply a tablet running Windows Phone 8 with a different interface. The Pro on the other hand is a full-fledged PC running Windows 8 powered by a mainstream Intel Core i5 processor capable of running traditional Windows desktop apps. This is something the RT cannot do because its processor, the Nvidia Tegra3, is not x86 compatible. This has many obvious advantages, chief among which is the ability to install normal PC software on it just like you would on a laptop or desktop; something Apple OS X users cannot do on an iPad. However, if the tablet is truly running ‘vanilla’ Windows 8 with no modifications, I can think of a few problems that will prevent this tablet from being a huge success.