This is a multi-part review. Make sure to check the whole thing out with the links below!

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Hardware
• Part 3: Type Cover and Surface Pen
• Part 4: Performance, Where Art Thou?
• Part 5: Maximum Flexibility
• Part 6: Conclusion

The Microsoft Surface Go was always going to be a hard sell for me. I'm an Apple fan with Apple sensibilities, and Windows has never ceased to be a thorn in my side. I use Windows 10 every day for work, so about 40 hours of my week is spent in front of this operating system. I'm very familiar with it, and my livelihood depends on me being adept at using it. I'm just not a fan of Windows.

That said, I do like what Microsoft has been doing with the Surface line over the past few years, and I always kind of wanted to dip my toe in the water. When Microsoft announced a $399 Surface tablet that directly targeting my favorite computer in the world, the iPad, I took notice.

Can this do the things I use an iPad for? Since it runs a "big boy" operating system, will I feel more empowered with it than I am with the iPad that IO use every day to do all of my work for BirchTree? How are the Windows 10 apps and do they feel like a new leaf compared to the mountain of legacy software that most people seem to still use?

I had to find all of this out.

So while I have pretty strong opinions on Windows itself, I'm going to try to review the Surface Go on its own terms. This is supposed to be a device that's good at doing simple tasks quickly. It's meant to watch videos, edit Word documents, draw things, listen to music, browse the web, and handle email. I'm not going to judge it on anything else like video games or complex audio/video/image editing (although I will at least tell you how it does at those things).

Please check in over the coming week as the full review comes out. In the next section we're going to talk about hardware.