Recently, I bought a Microsoft Surface.

At home, it’s replaced my netbook for surfing and sending emails.  Surfing the web feels very natural on the Surface’s touch screen interface.  I also opted for the touch keyboard.  This means you can type on-screen when required but still pull out the touch keyboard for more fiddly text editing and blogging.

The Surface hasn’t managed to replace my work PC for one reason; although you can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM and check your email, you can’t use Microsoft Outlook on Surface RT so there’s no way of tracking emails in Microsoft CRM.  This makes sense though as the Surface RT is aimed at consumer use and the Surface Pro coming out early next year is designed for business use.

There’s one app I must mention though.  OneNote MX!  I no longer carry my laptop to meetings – just my Surface.  I enter all meeting notes into OneNote and they are automatically synced up to my SkyDrive account.  Admittedly, taking notes on OneNote takes a little bit of getting used to; I sometimes find I have to concentrate a bit harder typing notes rather than scribbling on a pad but I’m sure this will get more natural as time goes on.  It’s also handy to take pictures of drawings etc and embed them into OneNote.

Another feature worth noting, when I logged into my surface with my Live ID/Microsoft Account, Windows 8 picked up all my profile settings from my other Windows 8 devices – even my Wi-Fi passwords and browsing history.

All in all I’m glad I invested in a Surface.  Yes you can buy cheaper android devices but adding a keyboard bridges the gap between a laptop and tablet.