While comparing the Touch Cover to a Sinclair ZX81's keyboard is possibly a little harsh, it's still not a keyboard most people would want to use for serious amounts of typing. While there's some clever control software that makes the keyboard better than it looks, we manage around 60 words per minute on a standard keyboard, and could do barely half on the Touch Cover, even after a few days of practice.Using the Type Cover, on the other hand, we quickly achieved near-normal typing speeds – it's as good as any low-profile keyboard on the market today. Its touchpad is surprisingly useful, and the whole unit is worth the extra $10 and two millimeters of thickness in order to get something usable.Microsoft also sells a Wedge Touch Mouse Surface Edition for $69.95. It's a dainty little unit with a 2-by-2.375 inch footprint that has a touch-sensitive sloping top for clicking and scrolling, and that uses the same BlueTrack sensor as Microsoft's bendy Arc mouse, which works on most surfaces except glass.
While the mouse is stylish and easy to slip into a pocket, it's too small for long periods of operation. Most users's hands would be better served by a larger mouse or a trackball. Certainly extended sessions caused this hack's RSI to come back with a vengeance, but for the fashion victims out there it's a nifty little toy.For those of you without a Mini DisplayPort monitor, Microsoft will sell you adapters for VGA or HD Digital AV connectors for $39.99 apiece, and there's also a smaller 24W Power Supply as a replacement or backup for the Surface Pro's boxed 48W unit.So at the end of the day, does the entire package work in the real world? To find out we used the Surface as our main work machine for a week. With the Surface Pro costing as much as it does, this system really needs to justify itself as a primary PC, and it came through testing with some very strong points and a couple of niggles.Firstly, in terms of build quality, this is one of the best tablets out there. Certainly it's heavier than most consumer fondleslabs, and using it one-handed quickly becomes tiring, but it feels solid and reliable, didn't throw a hissy fit at some rough handling, and the VaporMg case is very difficult to scratch. It's also very well balanced – Microsoft isn't releasing internal pictures, but assures us there's a large 42W battery in the dead center of the unit – and it feels like they are right
Microsoft is not releasing battery stats, but we got a reasonable score from the demanding PowerMark 1.2 test, three hours and 25 minutes. That compares to two hours 45 minutes for Lenovo's rival IdeaPad Yoga and three hours and five minutes for Dell's XPS 12 using the same testing suiteIn standby mode it's likely you should get a full five days of power – we couldn't wait that long – and the unit powers up from dead in a couple of hours using the standard charger.Overall it was helpful to keep the charge topped up, but getting more than a day's business use without the charger is perfectly possible if you're not silly about what you do and use power saving modes.The display is very good indeed, and picture passwords on the touchscreen make life easier. Although the glass cover is fairly resistant to finger oils, it would be worth giving it an occasional scrub.
Screen resolution is excellent, colors are strong, and the Intel graphics can handle most business workloads without flinching, although it's not much good for hardcore gaming. In demos, Redmond showed off the speed with which it handled graphics work, but a workstation this isn't. Nevertheless it should run 90 per cent of the presentations out there – Michael Bay's not included.The ambient light sensing is responsive and useful, and the Surface is readable in bright sunshine and has a wide viewing angle, which is handy for use with the kickstand. I'm not sure that everyone would use ten-point multitouch, but it's nice to have it, and if you like the Windows 8 user interface there may not be a better machine to have it on.With regards to the operating system, there are some small changes such as integration of the handwriting recognition system and the software keyboard. Although this build of the OS didn't have it, Microsoft engineers showed us how it works, and it looks very handy, with a reasonably accurate handwriting-recognition capability.
In terms of processing grunt, the Surface Pro holds up well. There's none of the keyboard lag that some users found with the RT fondleslab, and it handles video well enough. There was some discussion at El Reg about whether using a Core i3 instead of the Surface's i5 would have been sufficient – and more power-friendly – but Microsoft wants this to be a powerful enough machine to handle big-boy workloads. It has succeeded, and the unit's cooling system appears to work well with the increased processing power.Is a BlackBerry that doesn't use BlackBerry's email service still a BlackBerry? The Company-Otherwise-Known-As-RIM (TCOKARIM*) hopes so.It thinks it's time to move on, and in an attempt to broaden its appeal to new punters the new BlackBerry 10 phones won't support the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). Instead, the devices will pick up their email directly, like any other smartphone, rather than rely on the BIS network.
Users of BlackBerry's business messaging service - BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or BES - are unaffected. And BlackBerry will continue to use the BIS servers to power BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), its unique social network.But consumers will lose the end-to-end encrypted push email offered by BIS servers if they pick up a new Z10 or Q10 phone. It's going to be a shock to some, particularly in developing markets, who get their push email via BIS, and who enjoy flat-rate roaming data for email, web and social networking.In the DNA of modern-day RIM lies the blueprints of an end-to-end email service, which it created to allow businesses to send and receive messages to and from their employees' mobiles in the days of circuit-switched 2G data in the late 1990s.Back then, you could use a Psion or a laptop to "do email" over 2G, or even one of the first, swamp-era "converged" devices such as the Nokia Communicator 9000. But it was all very slow and cumbersome: the mail protocols were not designed for mobile use. So the BlackBerry servers took on the workload, and wrapped up the traffic in a lean and secure protocol. BlackBerry's original hardware, a two-way pager, was an ugly necessity. The real USP was the service.
For years, RIM wasn't interested in the consumer market. Then it realised that phones didn't have to be ugly, and those business servers could be a huge asset. By installing its email servers within mobile carriers, and routing traffic through them while sharing revenue with those network operators, customers would be offered a flat-rate deal for their mobile data usage - and incredibly efficient email (RIM's servers were doing the polling for punters' Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts, checking for new messages).Having apparently toyed with becoming a hardware-neutral services company, TCOKARIM's strategy now is "sell great hardware", invest in BBM as a differentiator, and maintain the corporate email and management server software business.This means lowering the hurdles new adopters must leap over. With the new BB10 handsets, any old network operator's SIM will do, it doesn't have to be provisioned by BlackBerry to use the BIS infrastructure. The question "is this a BlackBerry SIM" is no longer relevant.
This is quite a rational decision to take, and many analysts were calling for TCOKARIM* to drop its BIS charges. In an LTE world, BIS is no longer such a huge differentiator as networks are now fast and moderately cheap enough to carry the message traffic. Operators now offer data bundles, and even decent roaming options.So efficient email no longer commands a premium, and while the vanilla (ie, industry standard) email transport options are not quite as efficient as BIS, the hit is proportionately smaller than it was in 2005. What really kills your battery is the huge display, the quad-core gigahertz processor, or 4G radio comms - not polling email servers.If your company uses BES, then it's as you were. You'll receive your shiny new BB10 device already set up. If not, from the email setup dialogue choose 'Work Account' and get all the benefits of secure end-to-end encrypted push email as before.If you have Microsoft Exchange sans BES, you'll use ActiveSync. This works very well, both with real Exchange and Zimbra servers. If you have a paid-for GMail business account, you'll also be using ActiveSync, and Google will continue to support this. So far, so straightforward.