Can't you install Linux on the Surface Pro? It's plain x86 isn't it? Or is the EFI locked to Secure Boot?

Yeah I don't get the hate. I'm browsing in portrait mode, you mean if I watch the video it will fill my screen? Great.

Maybe call it something like, oh I don't know, Robson.

4 cores at 2.3Ghz? It might catch on fire. This is using the big.LITTLE chip right? I don't think they're designed with a thermal envelope to stay fully clocked and on for that long.

They used to have the blur effect in the earlier betas and I didn't find it noticeably slow. It was disabled on my iPad 2 from beta 5 onward.

You can use the display in an old iMac as an external thunderbolt with a single cable. Stop spreading FUD when you're clearly clueless about the details.

Which turns off the compositing window manager and is actually slower on a modern PC, not to mention uglier :p

Someone should make a modern take on the Win2k interface which still uses DWM.

How do you figure? As far as I can see they will be completely worthless other than for parts (minus the locked logic board)

FYI there is no iMessage to SMS bridge that I am aware of. iMessages go to iDevices only.

s/paperweight/glorified iPod touch/

Not even that useful, it's NFC.

Has nobody managed to make it go in WINE already?

Funny, if there were a slashdot filter for the same we might not even be reading this

I have no sympathy for pious nerds who know perfectly well that tablet Android is (at best) a desperate work in progress, buy it anyway - and then inevitably wind up back at their PC dissatisfied, frustrated and utterly underwhelmed.

Isn't it amazing what throwing away 40+ years of legacy will do? The iPad 2 / iPhone 5 hardware (as an example) is fine right now for this proposed use. Certainly almost perfect with a few inevitable software refinements. Losing your device or having it stolen will be inconvenient but with iOS 5 and automatic transparent iCloud backups now far less catastrophic for the end user than even the inevitable HD crash. The concept of forced OS maintainence (filing, backing up, software installation wizards, uninstallations, antivirus/antispyware, registry cleaners and other nonsense) being has been rightly eliminated. What a fucking mess. Battery life is now a 15+ hour non issue if you're not within reach of an ubiquitous iPhone charger.

This is happening right now.

I will cede you the possibility of a local bulk storage cache for media (the AirPort extreme or Time Capsule could already do this in theory). Besides very specialized tasks I can't see how the PC industry will manage to avoid a complete collapse in the next decade; the hemorrhage has already begun.