In an indication that Hewlett-Packard (HP) is not excessively intimidated by Microsoft's Surface tablet, HP PC business head Todd Bradley said in a recently-published interview with IDG Enterprise that Surface can hardly be termed as competition for his company.

Talking about the Microsoft-branded Surface tablet, Bradley said that HP could "hardly call Surface competition," and added that the device has quite a few major flaws, including "very limited distribution" and a rather high price-tag.

Further adding that the Surface tablet "tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it," Bradley said: "Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe."

The negative comments made by Bradley, about Microsoft's late-October-released Surface tablet, appear to be rather strange, particularly in the wake of the fact that HP is one of Microsoft's key partners in the Windows arena, and also because the company itself has no consumer tablets available in the market at present.

However, Bradley's statements about the flaws in Surface tablet are somewhat substantiated by CNET senior editor Eric Franklin who said in his recent Surface review that the tablet's performance "can be sluggish." But, at the same time, Franklin also gave a "very good" rating to the tablet, and said that the device fells "strong" as well as "well-built."