The whole PC market is circling the drain and Microsoft doesn't want to get sucked down with it. The Surface is an effort to push PC hardware to higher standard

The whole PC market is circling the drain and Microsoft doesn't want to get sucked down with it. The Surface is an effort to push PC hardware to higher standards, to show what the platform is capable of if you aim for something other than "cheapest possible". > Since windows pc makers have essentially lost the ability to do much R&D and Design because of their brutal margins... This is their own doing. They race to the bottom, they end up in a knife fight to the death. If HP, which has significant engineering chops, started making good hardware and focus their teams on making a few great products instead of a dizzying array of marginal ones they'd probably find more success. For example: The HP Z1 is a great concept, but it barely gets any attention and is almost impossible to find in retail channels. Microsoft was able to trot out their version of same and it was as if this thing didn't even exist.