[iharris]

Unless Microsoft will produce their own hardware for a Win8 tablet, I think we are going to see a whole slew of tablet models with varying (and sometimes dubious) build quality. Like it or not, the iPad is pretty well put-together - I think that the tablet manufacturers are really going to have to scramble to compete on the hardware front.

I actually think that Win8 has some potential as a tablet OS, although my experience with the developer preview on a PC was a little underwhelming.

[AUmrysh]

The standardization of iOS devices is what makes them so easy to use and develop for. Microsoft has done a good job of making Windows behave in a standard manner on diverse hardware configurations on desktops and laptops, so we can hope that WM8 will be equally standardized across different hardware. That would at least give them an advantage over android, and if they don't drop hardware support at certain versions they might be able to take over slowly when the cost of WM8 tablets drop below the cost of an iPad.