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It's all about the carry

The thing I am concerned about is the constraints that the traditional computing side of Windows 8 will enforce on its hardware. Microsoft touts its upcoming OS as a jack of both trades: you can touch and swipe through books, news, and videos while carrying your tablet around the house or the park, then sit down at your desk and plug the tablet into a USB keyboard, external disk, or perhaps a dock or hub so you can really start cooking through some Excel or other demanding work.

But hardware-dependent traditional computing features like USB ports will enforce a significant design constraint on any device that claims to be a post-2010 tablet, whereby “tablet” I mean “a 21st century digital-newspaper-like gadget that can be carried comfortably with one hand, maybe two”. Windows 8 tablets will have to be thicker to accommodate the extra hardware, which will in turn affect weight. The original iPad—with nary a USB port or even an SD card slot—was often criticized for being too heavy at 1.5 pounds (1.6 for the 3G model). I argue the iPad 2 still hasn’t shaved enough at 1.33 pounds, especially when compared to seven-inch tablets or single-task devices like the Kindle.

Source: chartier