I hope you enjoy the Surface. It's certainly a good alternative and having choices is certainly good.
I do hope you don't get one of the Surface Pro's which don't need to be put in the freezer, to stop the screens from constantly flickering. You see, there is no mobile device, which can't suffer some issue. Mobile devices, which an iPad is, get moved around, banged around, stuffed in backpacks, dropped, etc.
Personally, I'd rather suffer a little light bleed than have a device which flickers constantly.
Your choice of course.
Cheers!