>"Finally, and perhaps a contributor to my decision to return the Surface Pro, the recent browser usage statistics from New Relic show that IE is down to a paltry 14.8% share across more than 2 million application instances. If that’s not a signal that Microsoft's role as THE predominant client is beyond repair I don't know what is."

I don't see how IE's browser share is relevant to the Surface Pro or Windows as a client OS. Windows Vista, the disowned stepchild, even has a higher market share than OS X[1].

For the record, I have a Surface Pro as my daily workhorse. I do everything from classes to work, programming to statistical modeling to Photoshop. It has issues, but overall I enjoy it. The only thing it completely fails at is Adobe CS, as they refuse to fix issues with high DPI Windows screens and their custom interfaces. This article doesn't even touch on the merits of the device itself, or using it for anything.

I also had a fantastic experience with the Microsoft Store, as I accidentally broke my Pen within a few hours of getting it (my fault), and it only took a 10 minute call to get a new one sent out Next Day shipping for free. Most of that was confirming the issue was the pen, and not the computer (to know which needed a replacement).

[1] http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....