Hammer,
Give the Surface Pro 3 a quick inspection. It's Windows 8.1 with a free upgrade to Windows 10. As a former iPad3 owner, I tired of the continuous IOS updates eating my fixed memory and continuously deleting apps, books, movies or games to make room for the ever growing IOS updates. SP3 has fixed memory and a Micro SD slot, along with a USB 3.0 slot. So, your memory options are allowed to expand without ever having to delete things you do not want to delete. When I travel, I take a BDRW player, HDMI cable, an SSD and power pack. The BDRW & HDMI cable comes in handy for those hotel rooms without Bluray or DVD player. Also, gives you the capability to present presentations for your work, if you require that capability too.
It's a fairly robust graphics machine, for it's size, weight and price point. Admittedly, you cannot run max graphics, but I often play CMANO, CM Black Sea, CM Red Thunder, Flash Point Red Storm and Order of Battle Pacific, with mostly high settings. Some have complained of heat generated, but nothing any different than other tablets running a graphically challenged program. SP3 also has a decent BT mouse available for purchase, but I prefer some of the newer, smaller
Logitech BT mice instead, as they have many of the common switches and buttons not found on the MS Wedge or the folding flat BT mouse. They're also cheaper.
With the upcoming release of the SP4, the SP3 will come down in price but the i7 processors really earn their money's worth, in my opinion.
There's also a nice SP2 keyboard/battery combination (sold separately, of course) that doesn't totally fit the SP3 screen, but the added battery life and keyboard is a life saver on those long, over ocean flights, along with some nice noise cancelling headsets to block the crying kids behind you.
I recently upgraded to WIN10 and did see some performance increases with some of the games and much nicer than WIN8.1, in my opinion.
Anyway, there are cheaper tablets or some without the above listed features, but I doubt you'll find one with a 10" HD display, micro SD slot and a i7 processor, short of a laptop. It also very light weight, ranking in weight with the Apple Air tablet.
Subject to your questions....
Matt
