Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing is the latest PC industry honcho to share his thoughts on Microsoft’s upcoming Surface tablet family. Even though Microsoft has yet to reveal what exactly lies beneath the Surface, Yuanqing is convinced that regardless of whatever it is that’s inside, the Chinese PC vendor, a Windows RT launch partner, will have no problem bettering it.

Microsoft has revealed the names of its Windows RT OEM partners and there are a few big names missing from the list. While we already know the reasons behind HP and Acer’s absence, the absence of Japanese company Toshiba, which was recently rumored to be among Microsoft’s Windows RT launch partners, is bit of a mystery.

There is no dearth of those who would like to see nothing more than a mea culpa from Microsoft apologizing for wrongly trying to shove the Metro design language down their throats with Windows 8. But we’re sure these critics wouldn’t mind an unceremonious dumping of Metro one bit either. And guess what? Microsoft has just granted their wish by quietly doing away with Metro. But unfortunately, the company is merely getting rid of the name and not the typography-based design language itself.

In recent times, we’ve become quite used to a steady stream of Windows 8 news, but the same can not be said to be true of Windows RT. Details of this ARM-friendly version of Windows have been few and far between. But then that’s what the rumor mill is for, isn’t it? According to an unconfirmed report by the Taiwan-based China Times, Microsoft is tightly controlling the development of Windows RT devices, so much so that at the moment it’s only allowing a handful of OEMs near this stripped-down, ARM-compatible version of Windows.