I can tell you that even my Nexus 7 is rather abysmal at handling Google Docs documents. The Bluetooth keyboard connection is flaky at best, gets much worse when Wi-Fi is turned on (which makes working on a cloud document rather inconvenient), the typing often lags far behind the keyboard, it's hard to do anything beyond the basics (e.g. I actually need footnotes to cite things in the work I'm doing), etc. etc.

I haven't used a Surface but from Mike K.'s description it certainly seems like it could better handle some of those tasks. Maybe Lollipop will help, but I won't be able to tell until the OTA loads.

That might be true in the future, but speaking from the present, this is how it is.

For perspective, I have written Android apps using AIDE on a Nexus 7 and Nexus 5. I also manipulate docs and spreadsheets using google's systems (which are adequate for making quick edits, but not something i would sit down and write with for an extended amount of time).

I think that the AIDE IDE is a great piece of work! Admittedly, I have only created fairly trivial apps using the template projects, but it is amazing to be able to compile Java code and create a bundled Android application on my Android phone.

It seems to bother my son a great deal that I have always used Android phones and never an iPhone. It is the availability of things like AIDE that make an Android phone also functional as a "real computer."

MS Office for iOS has been out for a while, those apps are excellent and fully touch enabled. you can download them for free, use the for reading and presenting files. edit mode is available through a office365 subscription.

mind you, MS Office for WinModern does not exist - no touch UI there. but it does for iOS. absolutely amazing.