I bought it partly to be a note taking machine in meetings. I have no experience with taking notes on any type of tablet or laptop and it still hasn't clicked for me, but that's not a problem with the Surface.
The type cover is surprisingly good. I've owned laptops with worse keyboards. It's a little loose balanced on your lap (although it's workable) but fine on a desk. I need to get a Bluetooth mouse though because the touchpad is terrible (and of course very few desktop apps are comfortable when using touch/pen).
I find drawing on the screen is a little weird because it doesn't have the friction of pen and paper, but it's comfortable to hold and write. I've tried styluses on iOS and the Wacom pen is just miles better.
I've tried 4 programs and apps. OneNote (Modern app) is pretty good for handwritten notes. It does pretty much everything the desktop version does. Evernote (Modern app) is like the iPad version, i.e. very stripped down and it doesn't support pen input. Of course you can use the full desktop app, which does support ink notes. Windows Journal is a bit of a legacy; so far I prefer OneNote for handwritten entries and mind maps but Journal is the only packaged program that does handwriting recognition. There's a desktop app for handwritten math formula entry but I haven't used it. Finally, because I take notes in mind map format, I've installed the desktop XMind, where the UI does not scale on a high-DPI screen, but if you know the keyboard shortcuts it's usable.
So honestly, right now, it's not the magic note taking machine I'd hoped for. I'm finding myself using XMind the most. You don't need a Surface for that - I could have got a MacBook Air 11 instead, or simply stuck with wide format paper. I'm starting to use OneNote a bit more though. YMMV.
If that was all I used it for it would be a disappointment, but in just over a week this thing (that I'm typing on now) has completely replaced my 15" laptop, tablet and taken over a lot of the duties I'd normally do on my phone.
The type cover is surprisingly good. I've owned laptops with worse keyboards. It's a little loose balanced on your lap (although it's workable) but fine on a desk. I need to get a Bluetooth mouse though because the touchpad is terrible (and of course very few desktop apps are comfortable when using touch/pen).
I find drawing on the screen is a little weird because it doesn't have the friction of pen and paper, but it's comfortable to hold and write. I've tried styluses on iOS and the Wacom pen is just miles better.
I've tried 4 programs and apps. OneNote (Modern app) is pretty good for handwritten notes. It does pretty much everything the desktop version does. Evernote (Modern app) is like the iPad version, i.e. very stripped down and it doesn't support pen input. Of course you can use the full desktop app, which does support ink notes. Windows Journal is a bit of a legacy; so far I prefer OneNote for handwritten entries and mind maps but Journal is the only packaged program that does handwriting recognition. There's a desktop app for handwritten math formula entry but I haven't used it. Finally, because I take notes in mind map format, I've installed the desktop XMind, where the UI does not scale on a high-DPI screen, but if you know the keyboard shortcuts it's usable.
So honestly, right now, it's not the magic note taking machine I'd hoped for. I'm finding myself using XMind the most. You don't need a Surface for that - I could have got a MacBook Air 11 instead, or simply stuck with wide format paper. I'm starting to use OneNote a bit more though. YMMV.
If that was all I used it for it would be a disappointment, but in just over a week this thing (that I'm typing on now) has completely replaced my 15" laptop, tablet and taken over a lot of the duties I'd normally do on my phone.