So, I spent about an hour with Pro and came away impressed. More impressed than I was initially with Surface RT.

In a word, smooth. In two words, silky smooth. In the limited time I used it, I experienced no lag or stuttering on graphics-intensive sites and videos. And when I ran Microsoft Office in desktop mode (which was installed on the Pro I used) everything was snappy. Really snappy.

The Intel Ivy Bridge chip paired with a PC-class solid-state drive (and 4GB of memory) makes all the difference.