Microsoft Surface Pro - a serious player for the education market?

I've been working on my new Microsoft Surface pro this past couple of weeks. It's certainly been an experience, and a steep learning curve. I've spent the past five years completely reliant on Apple products, including the incredible iPad and iPad mini's. I had to get used to different screen swipes at first as the instinctive reaction is to use the iPad movements which have become almost like a form of automatic processing.  And this machine is starting to grow on me. The windows 8.1 platform is pretty cool, and of course, all the Office productivity apps which are included make using documents, spreadsheets and presentations across my Windows machines pretty seamless.

The Tablet it'self has a USB port, amongst the others, which is incredibly useful for printing and connecting other devices, if thats what you need to do. Whilst this might appear to be an advantage, the increasing use of the cloud and wifi for printing might soon make this superfluous? The keyboard is useful too and provides a useful cover for the screen when not in use.  Magnetic attachments for this keyboard and the charger are pretty cool too...

It's been said that the Windows App Store is the big let down for this tablet platform,but the range is increasing all the time. Might this soon erode the dominance of the Apple App store?  who can tell. But with Microsoft making a version of this tablet available for an incredibly low price, it certainly becomes an attractive alternative to the iPad particularly as Microsoft Office still dominates. The rest of the public sector might also consider this Tab a serious player too, on the same basis. Schools,provinces and districts using the Microsoft 365 for Education will also no doubt find this tablet a worthwhile alternative to consider. It is pretty chunky compared to the more stylish iPad, but in the mass market public sector, do looks really matter that much?

I'm going to continue working on mine. This doesn't mean I've abandoned Apple and my iPad - far from it.personally, I still think Apple have the education market dominance,particularly with their quite brilliant support and apps such as iTunesU, Garageband , and iMovie. And making the iLife suite available free from September 18th is a very canny move which will further cement their number one position at the moment.

...But the competitors, like this Surface pro and Samsung are determined to chase them hard all the way, and if I was Tim Cook, I'd be looking over my shoulder for sure. 

 All in all, good competition for the tablet market will be good for education too.

So when will Microsoft be making it available in Africa?

Here's an interesting article link  to some more information about using the Surface tablet.

  Unlock your Surface RT tablet’s hidden superpowers.