What to do with ten million Surface RT Tablets?

I’m a big fan of Windows RT – I have 2 devices, a Vivo Tab and a Surface.

I’m not sure if that makes me a fanboy, a tragic, someone who recognizes something that’s not a bad effort or some weird mélange of the above.

My defining experience of Windows RT was flying from Melbourne to Copenhagen in Economy class – running my Windows RT device off the USB port in the seat and still, after more than a day in transit, being able to still watch videos and use Microsoft word to type stuff. As someone who finds the tedium of long distance flight (and lets face it, if you’re Australian, it’s almost always long distance) akin to some form of mildly irritating torture, this was a pretty big plus.

Soon we’ll see a Surface 2 RT (or RT 2 or R2D2 or whatever they call it). We’ll probably see a bump in the pixel density and that a change in pixel density will be the main obvious difference between it and the earlier model. And with the new model on the horizon, the already less than popular original model becomes even less alluring to the general public.

What happens to all those Surface I tablets sitting in a warehouse somewhere, perfectly functional, but unloved by a heartless public who just doesn’t grok that it’s device with a long battery life that runs Microsoft Office?

It would be nice if those rumored 10 million tablets ended up with a nice home, but unless the price got into the “too good to miss” range, I can’t see the majority of them leaving their warehouse. Everyone remembers what happened with the HP Touchpads when they went on sale for the right price – nerds stampeding retail outlets to get them.

And, tragic as I am, I do believe that if enough people actually had a Surface, if they just gave it a shot, they’d become as fond of it as I’ve become.