I was at the Microsoft office in Cambridge (MA, US) the other day, and they had a Surface there. It was much the same; a neat toy, but ultimately a distraction.

I was at the Microsoft office in Cambridge (MA, US) the other day, and they had a Surface there. It was much the same; a neat toy, but ultimately a distraction. They spent serious engineering resources on it, and it amounts to something that will sell a handful for companies to put in lobbies as a something fun to play with. Given the wear patterns on it, it looked like it was mostly used for playing checkers. Now, the Surface could actually be a neat product. If it were affordable enough for any small office, or for people to use in their home, it would probably sell well. If they actually developed only one tablet platform, that scaled up from their phones to the Surface with only minor modifications to UI, they'd have a serious contender for a touch based platform. But with something that's just a toy for companies with extra money to spend entertaining their guests, with its own APIs so that software isn't portable between it and other products, and no real significant tablet offerings to fill in the gap between the phone and the Surface, it just doesn't make that much sense. I doubt that they can be making much money on it.