Nella sua recensione del Surface, Farhad Manjoo descrive una caratteristica che tutti noi col tempo abbiamo saputo riconoscere ai prodotti Microsoft: la loro lentezza atavica.
The first problem is speed. Everything you do on the Surface takes more time than you expect. When you load an app, switch between apps, launch a Web page, go back to a previous Web page, check your email, and do pretty much anything else, you’ll find yourself waiting a half-second too long. […]
When you switch the Surface from portrait to landscape mode, its interface doesn’t switch immediately. There’s a half-second where nothing happens, enough time to make you wonder if the switch registered the orientation switch, so you begin to turn it back the other way just as the screen flips to the new orientation. […] And then there were the times I found myself tapping the Surface like a madman, because I couldn’t tell whether it was just responding slowly or whether it hadn’t even noticed me. This happened often. It wasn’t pleasant.
Brent Ozar, che ha restituito il Surface pochi giorni dopo l’acquisto, aveva raccontato vicissitudini simili sul sul blog, testimoniando la lentezza con dei video che mostravano l’oggetto in affanno.