I own an iPad 1 and an Asus Android tablet but it's basically a tablet, you can't really work on it. I like most I assume use their iPads for mainly surfing the net, watching movies, reading books and responding to quick emails.  I think this Windows Tablet has a lot of potential.

It's basically a full PC packed into a tablet and it's got a USB port ... AND it will have OFFICE.

Check it out.  If it has a good battery life and can function fully as a PC, then it's gonna grab iPad's market share like how Windows is dominating with PCs.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx

Don't know yet but if they keep it around the price of iPad, it should do well.  Windows 8.

There is a Microsoft Store at the Mall of America out here. One of the guys working there had a Windows 7 tablet, but had the release preview version of Windows 8 on it.

He let me play around with it for a good 15 minutes. I have to say, this is the best tablet experience I have had yet. It is a dream for multitasking (relative to other tablets). Another cool feature I like is the ability in landscape mode to split your keyboard in half. Each half on the keyboard goes to the lower right, and lower left corners of the screen. This means you can type with your thumbs in a manner used on cell phones that have the full slide out keyboards.

The thing ran fast, naturally ran Windows Office etc.. It is difficult to describe what makes its interface so great and different, you will have to try it for yourself. I was skeptical at first, but that skepticism has been put to rest. I will buy the Intel version when it comes out. Now on to what I know of pricing:

There will be two versions released by Microsoft (other companies will release their own versions too naturally).

One model will run on the ARM processor. This one will be more similar to the Apple and Android tablets. I mean this in terms of speed, pricing, and type of applications that can be used. More for the casual gamer/internet browser/ email checking type of crowd. Most talks I hear that it will cost about $500 - $600+. There are some crazy rumors that I hear about Microsoft selling it at a loss to saturate the market to get their name out there. Based on this rumor, it is supposed to cost about $200 - $300.

The second model is one with an intel i5/i7 (don't remember which, bets are on i5) chip. Naturally with this x86 process, pretty much any Windows application you have already should run on it. So it is basically, a windows laptop, in the form of a tablet. With that being said, it is designed to compete with Ultrabooks. The price on these I hear are to be like $1,100 to $1,300. Much like a "higher end" laptop. This is the version I will be buying personally (you can run game emulators on it, and it has a usb port to plug in a controller or whatever).

The ARM tablet is supposed to come out late October, and the Intel based tablet is supposed to come up 3 to 4 months later. This is all I can remember off the top of my head. Hope this helps.

Competing with Ultrabooks? lol! Microsoft is gonna piss off a lot of their hardware partners (Asus, HP, Sony, Acer, etc.) It's a software company going into hardware (like Apple but Apple doesn't license out their OS ).  Yeah, I want the full feature one like a notebook.  Hope it comes out by Christmas holiday!

Don't see an HDMI port, would be nice to stream movies to TV.  The iPad does a horrible job at it, their adapter is like $50.00 (generic ipad to composite adapter will eventually not work when they update new iOS), and you need an HDMI extension cable.  Android does a better job with any generic HDMI cable.