It took me about 3 hours to get it completely up and running. This includes ~15 minutes of unboxing the Surface, ~15-30 minutes of setup, ~1 hour of updates, and ~ 1 hour of charging it back to 50%. After that, I was able to spend the rest of the evening reading articles to my heart's content.

Main uses:
- Scribbling on Sketchpad or Sketchbook
- Writing notes with OneNote
- Reading online articles and surfing the web
- Using online language tutoring programs (you can have the tutoring software in one part of the tablet, and OneNote in the other part, which is great~)
- Remote desktop applications
- Listening to music through iHeartRadio

I do not game with my tablets, so any more power than what this device gives would be wasted on me.

Main things I love about it:
- The pen. I have been searching for an active digitizer tablet that was light, shaped similarly to a sheet of paper, and within my price range. This device offers all of that, and much more.
- IE metro. Compared to all of my other devices, this browser is devilishly fast!
- Discreet, yet powerful speakers. They don't have the same quality as a high class system, but they don't sound tinny. That makes me exceedingly happy, because I love using my tablets to play music while I'm chilling at home.
- Windows 8.1 on a tablet. I believe the Surface team when they say that the Surface is supposed to be a stage for Windows 8. Many of the gestures make sense once you figure them out. Luckily it was fun to figure them out~
- ~ 8 to 10 hours of battery life. With mixed loads of surfing the web and annotating documents, I lost about 10-15% of battery per hour. That's similar to the battery drain on my iPad. I do a lot of annotating and notetaking with my iPad.

Main concerns:
- Slow recharge time. It charges ~20-30% per hour. I have not measured how fast it charges when it is turned off, but I assume that it would be faster. This is fine for people who charge their devices at night. Edit: I tried charging it turned off, and it charged ~35% per hour. It's not perfect, but it helps in a jiffy.
- Loose charger. It is not magnetic, and can be very wiggly. I like the fact that I can use my cell phone charger on it, but I would preferred that the charger sat more flush with the device.
- Possible heating issues. While it has yet to get as hot as my iPad 4 does, the area where the processor is does get toasty. The tablet did get severely hot during the first round of updates. I got around this by using my Thermaltake portable fan to cool it while it was updating.
- Battery life. Like with all tablets, battery life drains faster with higher brightness levels and intensive processor usage. I have used the lowest brightness setting because it is the easiest on my eyes, and what I am doing with it is not intensive. I also do not use Google Chrome or Firefox. I have no need for my bookmarks to be linked on my tablets. That's mostly due to my iPad training.

After working with the Surface, I do believe that I could have chosen a 64 GB edition with 2 GB of RAM and would have not missed anything. I usually only have two applications up at one time on my tablets, maybe three. I always advocate that people should get what they need.If you don't know if one model is enough, try it out or buy the improved version (in this case, the 128 GB edition). There were no demonstration units near me during the time I preordered it, so I decided to be safe. Also, I didn't have to have the keyboard. It's a great keyboard, a wonderful cover, but I can easily use the onscreen keyboard. In addition, the USB port allows for me to plug the Surface into my USB hub, which has a full-sized keyboard and mouse on it. I don't type with my tablet when I'm on the go, I write on it!

Overall, I love my surface! I will be certain to update along the way if I run into any issues or what-not.

Notes (updated 11/20/2015):
- Windows 8.1 Core has some basic power settings, but it doesn't give you the full range of options. I found this out while trying to chase down my screen brightness weirdness. When the system was logged in and sitting for a bit, it would brighten. I had turned off auto-brightness at this point, so I knew it wasn't that. In the 'Advanced' part of the power management menu, I noticed an option for dimming the screen. It can be set from 0 % to 100 %, but it can't be turned off. I set it to 0 %, and the brightness weirdness disappeared.

- Typing in Google Docs on IE was laggy. I feared that my keyboard was messed up, but I realized that I had to type slower for Google Docs to register my keystrokes. In addition, there were sizing discrepancies between the Surface and my desktop. The Google Doc pages on the Surface seemed to have around half an inch taken away from the bottom. I have no idea why there was a difference, but I greatly enjoyed being able to use two devices to tackle the report (the document on Google Docs was a group report).

- Cheap plastic screen protectors can make the pen unusable. I used a spare, resizable screen protector that I had laying around. I thought that I was going to ruin the pen when I was writing on it. I'm looking for a better screen protector because I am hard on my devices...

- The Surface fits inside Solo's Urban Ultra Slimfolio. This was meant for 13 inch laptops. It is a tighter fit than I was expecting, but the case holds the Surface, my notebook, a pen, my Kindle, a Bluetooth mouse, and the Surface's charger easily.

- I have had issues with the Surface not charging even though the white indicator light is lit. However, I have never had this issue when I use the charger I bough in Japan (12 W charger with the appropriate charging cable). I think that if the connector is not properly aligned, it will light the indicator, but it will not charge. My suggestion is to find an appropriately rated charging cable (2.4 A at 5 V) and switch the two cords.

11/20/2015 Update:

I have used the Surface for note taking and coursework for about a semester now. The Surface has been working amazingly as my 'iPad replacement!' Heck, I can even do simple Arduino and Python codes on it, which is great because I like to mock up pieces of code at a time. I can quickly sort and edit papers through DrawBoard, which is great because I like using the pen to edit and annotate documents. There are even times when I don't use my main computer for days on end because I don't need it for day-to-day tasks. Overall, this has been the perfect product for me.

(a) The battery simply WILL NOT charge when you're using the device.I think it recharges at something like 20% per hour, and if you're at low battery when you plug, it will die on you.You can't plug it in at 10% and expect it to stay on. It will die, and you will be sad.

(b) The charger itself makes me want to throw things!Its very wiggly, falls out easily and just feels flimsy. I'm constantly worried I'm going to move it the wrong way and break it.I'm baffled why they haven't come up with a better charging solution.I can see the appeal of using the universal charging unit, but it just doesn't work where its placed on the tablet and with the shape of the charger provided.

I realize these are quite small deficiencies in the grand scheme of things, but they are basically *constant* annoyances because battery/charging is just so fundamental. I feel like Microsoft really missed the mark on something really basic. They've got the bells and whistles right, but you can't use the bells and whistles with a dead tablet.I actually want to give it three stars because I do think these are ridiculous flaws, but I honestly do enjoy this thing 99% of the time (when its charged...)

The most surprising part of this tablet/laptop thing is it's ability to play games. Sometimes I have long breaks between classes, and just want to play a game. This will play Minecraft, Hearthstone, Borderlands 2, and many other games. Granted, it will not play with graphics all the way up and I'm sure a lot of new games will not play on it. However, I was super happy to be able to play the Final Fantasy 9 remake on steam while I was at a restaurant waiting for my last class.

If you are looking for something to work like a mini laptop and take to classes, this might be for you. Definitely do research though first. The touch screen and note taking ability really helped me in my classes.