Personally I’ll still go with the Atom when it finally comes time to retire my old 1st-gen iPad. But I’d never considered this angle before, and I can see the appeal.

Beyond that, an Atom tablet obviously isn’t meant to run heavy-duty development software any more than the Surface RT is. That’s the point: these are two different hardware solutions meant to deliver the same basic experience, at the same basic price-point.

Only one clearly delivers a better experience than the other.

You could buy an Atom tablet and only use the Windows Store apps, and have an experience IDENTICAL to the Surface RT. Except, additionally, you’d also be able to run x86 applications too, so if you want a better choice of browsers or email clients, you can just install your favorite. Seems like a no-brainer. For the same money, an Atom tablet’s going to be the way to go.

I have a ridiculously powerful desktop machine that runs Windows 7 and Windows 8 (dual booting) and for my computing needs it ticks all the boxes for me. There is nothing it cannot cope with and for getting big stuff done quickly, it’s the only thing I need. I also have a Windows 8 Phone and while I was slightly miffed at the issues with syncing media, it is a great phone and perfect for checking in on every online service I use. It has very solid connectivity.

My Surface will be the device I use when I really don’t need to “do” any computing/gaming/audio/video and just want to listen to tunes, read the news/books, or maybe watch a video, catch up with people on Skype or FB. It’s a consumption device and as far as I can tell so far it does that perfectly well.

It’s interesting that iOS is celebrated for being a closed system and cash cow for Apple, but Microsoft get slammed for it because a desktop Windows OS allows you freedom to install anything. The Surface RT is NOT that device, the Surface Pro will be.

What do people really “do” with an iPod? They consume media. That’s exactly what i’ll do with my Surface. I don’t care about retina screens or resolutions above 1080HD because, well, it’s a small device and you really won’t be able to tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on it, let alone higher.

Also, and this is a big thing…I just spent £34 on a 64gb sdxc memory card…so i’ll be looking at 100gb space clear, which is plenty for such a device. This has all come in at under £450.

Apps! What about Apps!! There are thousands, most of which i’ll never use, which is the same as it was when I had an iPhone 3GS. The main things I will need are present in some form or actually built in to the OS.

These are my “opinions”…I am no more right than any of you are wrong…just thought i’d share.

Also the w510 Atom power mangement left it in a state requiring “system restore” (not hte metro restore the old-school restore”) after the screen would stay dark grey and not “turn on” without a hard reboot. The w510 doesn’t allow the Metro rollback stuff FWIW. “Media not present” (32gb drive is a culprit)

WindowsRT rocks in regard to avoiding the “30 minutes to update” on an old/slow processor. Put win8 on the older w500 and see what i mean. wIntel8 has too many large updates for causals who might not pickup a tablet for a few days.

Intel makes too many promises and delivers far, far short in regard to speed and battery life… bring on the WindowsRT apps.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6324/the-iphone-5-performance-preview

Intel may play catch up for the next 2 years or so, but it will win out eventually. Intel is going tick AND tock in one year, and coupled with their tech edge, will obliterate ARM by 2015-2016.