There are a few things this has that a "much more powerful laptop" lacks at this price and size: * high-quality wacom digitizer * high resolution screen (1

There are a few things this has that a "much more powerful laptop" lacks at this price and size: * high-quality wacom digitizer * high resolution screen (1920x1080 @ 10.6") * touch screen With that said, I'd generally agree that if you don't need all of those things, you can do a lot better price-wise. But the hardware itself, assuming it's improved upon the previous generation as claimed, was pretty good last time. They've also finally allowed double the memory and significantly increased the storage. It's a very compelling, cheaper alternative for digital artists and programmers who want to develop for the Windows 8+ native UI. I didn't buy the first one because I wanted an 8GB+ option at a minimum and I thought the storage options were anemic as well. But the newly announced model is rather tempting. However, the prices on the different options are still somewhat discouraging: "You can get Surface Pro 2 with a 64GB ($899) or 128GB SSD ($999) and 4GB of RAM, or if you want 8GB of RAM there are 256GB ($1299) and 512GB ($1799) versions as well. Surface Pro 2 retains the old front and rear cameras." http://www.anandtech.com/show/7362/microsoft-announces-surface-pro-2-surface-2-shipping-october-22 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7362/microsoft-announces-surfa... $1299 for 8GB of ram and a 256GB SSD? Really? Holy profit margins Batman!