![](http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/table.jpg)
Microsoft has indeed built its own tablet. So, she is now in the hardware business.
Make that two tablets. One Windows RT tablet runs an NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM processor, and the other Windows 8 Pro tablet runs Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i5 chips. One thing that looks really cool are new magnetic covers that are quite reminiscent of Apple's "Smart Cover" for the iPad. But they're a lot smarterMicrosoft's covers actually include a multitouch trackpad and a keyboard. There are two, as we explain in this story: a Touch Cover with virtual keys and a Type Cover with a tactile keyboard and touchpad.
Typing on the cover is twice as efficient as typing on glass, according to Microsoft. There's also a stylus.
10.6-inch devices running Windows 8, the "Surface" tablets borrow their name from Microsoft's table-sized computer that has been an impressive yet niche product for the past few years. (The original Surface has been renamed to PixelSense in a possible attempt to avoid confusion.) In announcing the new tablets, CEO Steve Ballmer stressed that Microsoft has been a hardware company for decades, producing mice, keyboards, webcams, and of course the Xbox, among other products.
While Microsoft typically lets hardware partners build Windows-powered PCs and tablets, Surface hardware is built by Microsoft. "Things work better when hardware and software are considered together," Ballmer said. In what is perhaps a nod toward Apple's so-called "Retina Display" marketing term for high-definition screens, Microsoft said the displays are so good that your eye won't be able to distinguish individual pixels. The exact resolution is unconfirmed, but we do know the tablets feature Gorilla Glass.
There’s an error in the iPad specs. It has an A5X processor, double the GPU power of the A5.
The reason the thickness is about the same is that display. It required much more battery volume and the display is thicker. The iPad dropped 4mm thickness going to 2nd gen, then gained almost another mm to fit that 3rd gen display.
The Tegra 3 chipset is pretty good. The graphics aren’t quite as good as that in the iPad, but most of that extra power in the iPad goes to drive the higher resolution display. The Tegra does have double the CPU cores though. It makes me wonder why Microsoft hasn’t published battery life claims yet.
I also wonder that a 3rd gen iPad without the retina display would look like. Probably even thinner, with a 15 hour battery life. Honestly, if you don’t care about that display (but wow is it amazing), the iPad 3 makes a lot of compromises vs. the competition.