Microsoft and hardware. Is Surface the beginning?

[Zappykins]

I am looking forward to Surface. I think they were tired of being frustrated, as they came out with the 'slate' over a decade ago, and nobody made good tablets for them. So now they are saying, "This is how it should be done." It will also be nice to have a real computer with the Surface Pro. I would have certainly purchased a Surface over the laptop I bought last fall.

And with the problems of overheating on the Xbox 360 aside, it is still an impressive piece of hardware. It's a shame that some glue and a few screws would have prevented that problem. Sony was super lucky on that one. Plus the X360 can compete just fine with the PS3 which came out a whole year later and was also to be a tech powerhouse.

The original Xbox was delayed against the PS2 a year so it could be twice as powerful.

Zune HD was a great piece of hardware - not sure why they didn't just make that into a tablet.

But as far as phones. I think not - that's why they have the contracts with Nokia. Nokia makes great phones, and should have some great Window Phone 8 out when that launches.

As far as aliening their partners, where can they really go? Apple licensed a bunch of partners back in the 90's then sued them right before they came out. It destroyed many people's jobs, and I've always thought of Apple and an untrustworthy company because of it.

The only true threat is Android. I wonder if they are tying to get Windows 8 in the next Kindle.