Mini-review: Surface 2

I finally caved last Friday and bought a Surface 2. As much as I've been "meh" about tablets, I'll concede that they're nice to have. There were several reasons I decided I "needed" one.

The first was that the iPad has been mostly commandeered by Simon, with a big squishy red case around it. The quasi-educational games on there are really engaging, and I think they're helping him with fine motor skills. My Kindle Fire HD is great for reading books and listening to music, but it's so underpowered for browsing, and even its Facebook app is slow. So I was basically without something to use for content consumption activities at lunch and during the nightly wind-down ritual.

I sold the original Surface RT I bought last year. Most of what I said in my review still holds true, but there were some definite negatives in the long run. Mostly it came down to two things. I could see pixels, and they bothered me. Between my phone (a Nokia 920) and the iPad (an early 2012 Retina model), I suppose I was spoiled. And frankly, Windows font rendering isn't great to begin with. The other issue was that anything Javascript heavy in the browser was dog slow. I sold it a month or two ago, because I wasn't using it.

For the second version, they fixed both of the issues. The new screen is fantastic, and usually I don't see pixels. The pixel density is not quite as high as the iPad, but it's just over 200. By the time you get to 220 (I think the Retina 15" MBP is that high), the dots are totally gone. The Kindle app looks great. It's no longer slow, either. Everything I've tried so far is very responsive. The reason I settled on it over some other choices were largely the same things that drew me to the original, specifically the keyboard covers, and the kickstand, which now opens at two angles. When you're eating and browsing, it's a pretty great arrangement.

In addition to the improved kickstand and screen, the unit is just slightly thinner and lighter than last year's. In fact, it's thinner than last year's iPad, and about four or five grams heavier. They've also moved to a light gray color for the magnesium shell, which doesn't get all gross and fingerprinty the way the black did. They improved the cameras a little, but like the iPad, it's not an f'ing camera beyond doing Skype.

In terms of software, it's still the ARM-based flavor of Windows, but this time it's 8.1. There are a ton of tweaks to the OS that really let you customize a lot more. The core apps are much better, and business users should be thrilled to see it now comes with full blown Outlook. I don't use it, but some people are all about it. One of the better additions is the arrival of an official Facebook app, which works pretty well for 90% of the typical functionality. The People app is much better, and I love how it aggregates the Twitter in there, but it doesn't do the same kind of contextual sharing and such like a full FB app.

Oh, and I sure do love multitasking. It's such an improvement to be able to browse and use IM, for example, at the same time.

So despite my anti-tablet sentiments, I have to admit that I dig it. It still has some quirks, but I think there's a lot of value for what it costs. I'm sure it's mostly my tastes, but I like a tablet that's almost a laptop, but not quite, and still portable like a tablet.