In hindsight, I now see why Microsoft did not want me to review the Surface. That was probably the right call from a PR perspective. It’s simply not a good product.

Mr. Siegler found the Surface very wanting, but this bit from his intro is the most damning part of his review.

Microsoft is taking heat for claiming more user-available disk space on its new ARM-based Windows 8-powered Surface tablet than is really there.

But I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Most companies are lying in their commercials, product pages, and press releases when it comes to how much disk space their gadgets offer users. This isn’t as big a deal for the kind of person who reads Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web. But for my parents, looking to buy a tablet, it is a non-trivial deception.

The deception actually works against the companies that use it: I suggest that many people may consider the larger model if the true size of the smaller model were more apparent.

The link above and what it describes are far more damning than any of Microsoft’s shitty advertising and messaging.

This is certainly interesting. And at half the price of an entry-level Microsoft Surface, it even comes with a keyboard!