Probably the Best iPad Competitor Yet - The Microsoft Surface

Since Apple launched the iPad, they have been the leaders on the tablet market. Rivals weren't late to occur. Companies like HP, Samsung and so on launched their own tablets, but none of them reached the sales of the iPad.

Since then, none of the tablets seemed to be a threat to the iPad, but here we have probably the best competitor yet, the Microsoft Surface. We don't know too many things about it yet, but everything we know seems to be very threatening to Apple. There's one thing we're sure: Microsoft built this tablet to give their best in doing something better than them.

First off, it is almost with one full inch larger than the iPad. Anyway, this is not such a big deal, but it's still a plus.

A big plus is that Microsoft will also be providing a physical keyboard. I find it interesting that they took the idea from Apple with their smart covers and developed a better one, a cover with magnets that also have a physical keyboard on it as you can see. This keyboard is thinner than any third-party keyboards that you can find for an iPad. The Touch Cover is three millimeters thick and the Type Cover is five millimiters thick. Probably for this feature there will be a lot of people switching from iPad to Surface.

The Windows 8 Pro model will come with an i5 Intel Processor that is very powerful, but it's up to Microsoft to prove to us that they can take advantage of it as well. It also comes with 128GB of internal memory compared to the iPad's maximum of 64GB that is twice smaller.

Here is another interesting feature. The RT version will come with two 2.0 USB ports and there will also be a Pro version coming with 3.0 USB ports which drives me crazy. Think only of how hard it is to print something with an iPad than with something that features USB ports.

It is also expected that they are going to bring the Xbox SmartGlass that Microsoft presented at the latest E3 video gaming exposition.