Suggestions for a hardware change

[WitchProject19]

Alright, so I've been working with an Intuos Medium Pen and Touch (the old CTH680 version) for about two years now and I've started noticing how its affecting/limiting what I can do with my art considering I can't 'see' what I'm drawing on the tablet which makes it hard for me to really get the detail and shape I want. My question is whether anyone here has used the Surface Pro series tablet computers for art and what their general experience was with:

1. The responsiveness of the pen to pressure and general hand movements associated with drawing

2. How well art programs like Paint Tool Sai, Photoshop CS6, and Manga Studio 5 ran on it, and

3. Whether there are cheaper, more reliable options that have the touch screen pen support that the Surface computers have.

Now, I have seen articles that the new iPad Pros are touted to be the cheaper and better alternative to the new Surface Pro 4s, but I'm not sure whether any of them are based in fact or if they are sponsored to simply say 'it's better than X competitor'. So far I haven't found any spec comparisons between the two for the processors and what not but those may not arise until later. Cintiq is an option but they tend to be on the (much) pricier side, so if there are no other alternatives I may entertain the possibility of getting one.

Cost is a large portion of what I have to take into consideration along with storage space and general processing power considering how much I will be using it and storing my work on there along with every day use for college and work.

My setup right now is an HP 2000 laptop with 8GB of RAM and a ₄₀₀ GB hard drive with an external 500 GB for backup and extra storage on Windows 7 x64. Processor and Graphics card escape me at the moment but it's not the greatest in terms of hardware considering we got it for 300 bucks 3-4 years ago.

[Shane]

I know this is really delayed, but since no one is answering, I'll give some input.

I can tell you the Surface 2 was pretty responsive and I'm assuming it only got better at this point. If you want something that will run software like you want, you'll need to get a Pro. As far as the Windows tablets I've had experience with, it's probably one of your better choices.

The new iPads have a really nice response with the pens as well, but you'll need to load the images over to your computer so that you can edit them.

Have you considered possibly adding in a new GPU and upgrading the CPU? You could probably get that and come in under the price of one of those tablets.