Windows 8 has a new face, or rather Microsoft does. At the special Windows 8 event which took place in L.A. back in late June, Steve Ballmer and his colleagues took to the stage to unveil Surface, which just got some official pricing and hit pre-order status on the tablet’s own website earlier today.
Windows 8 arrives in two forms when it launches at the end of the month. Some devices, including one version of the Surface tablet offer the full desktop Windows experience, complete with the new tile-based Windows 8 UI and the desktop interface users are more familiar with. The second version opts for a tablet-centric mobile experience and also favours ARM-based mobile architecture. This version, dubbed Windows RT is the mobile tablet OS Microsoft are sending into the den of iPads and Android tablets to face off against.
Specs-wise, both versions of Microsoft Surface stack up well against the leading Android and iOS devices, check out our round-up here. The user-experience is of course different in that, the iPad runs Apple’s mobile OS (iOS 6), whereas both iterations of Surface are technically providing more of a desktop computing experience. The official price for the Microsoft Surface RT will be £399, whilst the Touch Cover (the soft-touch keyboard cover that attaches magnetically) will retail for £99 and be made available in black, white and cyan, whilst the Type Cover (the more robust detachable hardware keyboard) will retail for £109.
We’ll know more when both the Surface Pro and Surface RT models hit retail in the coming weeks.
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