[Nexus 10 General] HoushaSen:
As you can see from my signature, buying tablet is almost my hobby now... Though I generally liked transformer Infinity, it still was not quite perfect system for me. After seeing Nexus 10, Windows 8 tablets, I have decided to place myself one more time back into the market. I generally follow these extensively. So for those who are thinking about Nexus 10, I just like to give some information I have found so far about couple potential alternatives (at least I came across).

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Windows Surface Pro

Briefly about this. If the specification is as currently listed on the web, I am not so sure about if its worth the wait. Sure I like full HD screen but price will still likely be high. But there are rumors that Microsoft may be holding its release until early next year to secretly incorporate next iteration of Intel chip (Haswell), which will give extended battery life, even better GPU performance than 4000.

Series 7 Slate (2011 model)

So why I included Samsung Slate 7 here rather than Ativ Smart Pro. One major reason is that slate 7 was released almost a year ago, but if you look at its specification aside from not having high resolution screen, and an older generation Intel SandyBridge chip, it is fairly similar to other Windows 8 tablet currently/soon to be released on the market. In fact, despite older i5 I believe it is still faster than the newest Atom processor that most lower end Windows 8 tablet uses. So if you can give up the high resolution, (which is probably hard thing to do) this suddenly becomes attractive option on spec wise.

Then you ask, but the price is 2x that of Nexus 10 32GB. It is correct (sort of) and I don't think its worth that much now; however, since Samsung is releasing newer model of series 7 i.e. Ativ Smart Pro, I am guessing Slate 7 will see a significant drop in price, and perhaps we may see on black Friday sale. In fact, refurbished one already sells at $850 at tigerdirect: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...kwCjCV1-CjCE&gclid=COn6mo-Iy7MCFe5FMgodNwEAvQ

The other may ask but its originally came with Windows 7, so does it really work well with Windows 8? The answer is that actually very similar model was used for Windows 8 development i.e. supposedly this was used as Windows 8 build unit. So my guess is it should and several reviews confirmed such. http://www.samsung.com/global/windo...Series_7_Slate_Windows_8_Consumer_Preview.pdf

Now if you can find a deal, I think Slate 7 with Windows 8 installed have several benefits.

1. Wacom Digitizer support - Those coming from Galaxy Note 10.1, we know captive screen with touch mimicking stylus won't just do the job.

2. Windows Legacy application support - No need to wait until office released next summer for Android. You can download preview version of office 2013 for free. And of course more real windows application. Someone even reported it worked with Skyrim, though I wouldn't bet on that.

3. Keyboard Dock - Unfortunately unlike Ativ Smart series, there is no clamshell dock (as in transformer series) but it has docking station, and just as in Nexus 10, there will be bluetooth keyboard support. So you can easily set up home/office desktop setting.

4. MicroSD - Yes

Downside still exists

1. Weight - Relatively heavy.

2. Battery life - Reported max is 7 hours by samsung, which means probably 5-6 hours.

3. Again no high resolution.

Exynos 5 vs. Sandy Bridge

Though Sunspider is by no means standard or great way to assess the actual power, but according to couple sites Nexus 10 has Sunspider score of 900's; whereas, Series 7 Slate had 500's. http://sortable.com/tablets/Samsung-Series-7-11.6-Slate-vs-Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-10.1

*Though Chrome book using the same Exynos chip also had down to 500 or 600's, so may simply be the current implementation of Android OS, or Samsung's optimization.

Now writing all this, I myself is still debating whether to grab Nexus 10. If it had microSD, docking keyboard, and Inductive stylus support would have been golden... but for now particularly lack of expandable memory holds me back (just as many of you are concerned).

So just throwing another potential here for those of you still on the fence as I am sure many of you haven't thought about Slate 7 (an year old system) as potential.