I've only seen one person using a Surface.. but they work for Microsoft.

Maybe things are different in Silicon Valley vs. everywhere else.

Last time I went to the Microsoft store to get a replacement for my Surface keyboard, they were all sold out; so were all the Best Buy stores in South Florida except two far-flung ones. So people are definitely buying the Surface, at least the Pro one..

I highly recommend the Surface if you are curious about Windows 8.1 and want something with a highly portable 10" form factor. I think many coders would find 10" a bit annoying to work on, but I've managed to fill up every space I inhabit with monitors and stuff to make it a bit easier on the eyes.

I bought a Surface Pro 2 last week and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. It's a jack of all trades, master of none, but it's already my go-to device for everything.

Have you used it for note taking? I am looking for the master of text + equation + diagram note taking and I thought surface pro might be it.

Thanks

I bought it partly to be a note taking machine in meetings. I have no experience with taking notes on any type of tablet or laptop and it still hasn't clicked for me, but that's not a problem with the Surface.

The type cover is surprisingly good. I've owned laptops with worse keyboards. It's a little loose balanced on your lap (although it's workable) but fine on a desk. I need to get a Bluetooth mouse though because the touchpad is terrible (and of course very few desktop apps are comfortable when using touch/pen).

I find drawing on the screen is a little weird because it doesn't have the friction of pen and paper, but it's comfortable to hold and write. I've tried styluses on iOS and the Wacom pen is just miles better.

I've tried 4 programs and apps. OneNote (Modern app) is pretty good for handwritten notes. It does pretty much everything the desktop version does. Evernote (Modern app) is like the iPad version, i.e. very stripped down and it doesn't support pen input. Of course you can use the full desktop app, which does support ink notes. Windows Journal is a bit of a legacy; so far I prefer OneNote for handwritten entries and mind maps but Journal is the only packaged program that does handwriting recognition. There's a desktop app for handwritten math formula entry but I haven't used it. Finally, because I take notes in mind map format, I've installed the desktop XMind, where the UI does not scale on a high-DPI screen, but if you know the keyboard shortcuts it's usable.

So honestly, right now, it's not the magic note taking machine I'd hoped for. I'm finding myself using XMind the most. You don't need a Surface for that - I could have got a MacBook Air 11 instead, or simply stuck with wide format paper. I'm starting to use OneNote a bit more though. YMMV.

If that was all I used it for it would be a disappointment, but in just over a week this thing (that I'm typing on now) has completely replaced my 15" laptop, tablet and taken over a lot of the duties I'd normally do on my phone.

I have a few students using Surfaces. If you can stand Windows 8, they're pretty nice.

My recent experience is that Windows 8 is a very good touch-based operating system, and I don't just mean as a tablet OS. If you've only used it with a mouse I can understand your scepticism, but on a tablet or laptop with a touch screen (and maybe even touch-screen desktops) a lot of the weird things suddenly makes sense.

Surface Pros will run Ubuntu allegedly. Could make for a slick unit, although the cover keyboards don't look as good as a regular keyboard.

try the "type cover" keyboard. its not a regular keyboard but really thin and a nice balance.

All Microsofts' interns got surface pros as gifts, I see them in all my CS classes.

Guessing this is USA? This did not happen for UK based interns , only full time employees received surfaces as gifts over here.

Overseas always takes the short straw. In Brazil, the technical consultants I knew always complained about the hardware they got. Sales people got all the nice stuff.

That's interesting, it was the opposite here with all the developers having workstations and spec'ed up laptops whereas sale/marketing would be given some generic thinkpad.

I would of thought Brazil may be changing as they were getting a new office there and hiring when I was at the company.

To be fair, last time I had someone close in a technical role in Brazil was a while ago. Things could have changed since they got relocated (mostly to the US).

Yeah it's pretty easy to spot the Microsoft interns after that gift haha.

Sure beats the Zune I got a bunch of years ago.

In the midwest, I've been to a handful of information security conferences in the past six months and I've seen at least two Surface Pro tablets at each one. When I ask about them, the users say their work has provided them.

May be it's only me but back when I used to work in Seattle, if I found someone with a windows mobile/surface the first thing I brought up to start a conversation was, How are things at Microsoft ? Like it up there and I was only wrong one instead of ~ 15-20 times I brought this up.

But the strong sales numbers almost every quarter seems to suggest otherwise. Good going MS.

Not in SV here, I see them...occasionally. Maybe in a week of coffee shop stops I'll see 2 or 3.