For a long time, many people have been looking for a perfect tablet, which is better than iPad, but not an iPad. After Microsoft showed off Surface tablet, it seems that one such tablet is coming to the market.

Expanding its business from software to hardware department, the Redmond giant showed two of its Surface branded tablets - one running on ARM version of Windows 8 dubbed Windows RT and another on desktop version of Windows 8. Surface tablet will be the first commercial PC (tablet PC), which Microsoft manufactured on its own from design to sales.

Manufactures have tried different approaches to taken down Apple iPad, including Android tablets, cheaper Kindle Fire tablet and completely new Playbook tablet, but none of them was successful in dethroning iPad as the tablet king. However, Microsoft Surface tablets follow two different approaches.

Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced its touch optimized Windows 8 operating system. The shared operating system will help app developers a lot, as they would be able to extend desktop apps and games to Windows 8 tablets just with the simple concept of re-engineering, which will eventually save a lot of time required to build apps from scratch. For now, iPad is winning with over 225,000 iPad-specific apps available on iTunes Store.

And yes, Microsoft tablet can never give the same battery performance as Apple iPad, but the operating system appears to be more powerful as GUI Windows is in market since last two decades, while iOS is only 5 years old.

At the time of debut, Steve Ballmer showed some features that make Surface tablet a true iPad killer. One of the most significant features is flip covers with built-in keyboard. Touch Cover, at 3mm thickness, offers capacitive keys for faster typing, while the Type Cover (5mm thick) is available for traditional typing. Of course, third party keyboards are available for iPad, but lining them against Microsoft's Cover keyboard will be a foolish comparison. Most of the analysts believe that built-in keyboard is a great point of success for Surface tablets.

For those in search of a tablet PC with ultimate horsepower, the Windows 8 Pro Surface tablet is the answer. Windows 8 Pro surface tablets runs on Intel Core i5 processor based on Ivy Bridge architecture with 128GB of storage and support for external memory card. Windows RT Surface tablets, on the other hand, runs on Nvidia Tegra chips. Both the tablets come with multi-functional USB ports, which is also a letdown for iPad.

There is no official release date or pricing, but these tablet are expected to hit market around September/October. Note that Microsoft may be a late entrant in the tablet market but it's not completely new to hardware market - it is maker of the hottest selling gaming console - Xbox 360. Of course, tablets are another ball game, but if Microsoft manages to replicate the marketing success of Xbox, it will have a winner in its hands - Surface.