Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

WallsRSolid writes "Microsoft just finished a week-long series of lectures and demos at my university, and the product that really stole the show was the Tablet PC. I was in a room with probably 150 hardcore linux users, and it seemed to me that the demonstration just floored them (the entire lecture hall CHEERED a Microsoft product). I believe that Microsoft's own online hype literature is insufficient in describing just how powerful their Tablet concept is. A July preview, Acer's propaganda, a press release about their initial success, and a behind-the-scenes account (good article) of the enabling technology. Oh, and the input stylus is electromagnetic, not pressure-sensing, ANY document (not just MS) can be annotated, and the journal software is AMAZING in its power and flexibility."

Comments

I smell a rat.

[surfacearea]

I was in a room with probably 150 hardcore linux users, and it seemed to me that the demonstration just floored them (the entire lecture hall CHEERED a Microsoft product). I believe that Microsoft's own online hype literature is insufficient in describing just how powerful their Tablet concept is. ...

Oh, and the input stylus is electromagnetic, not pressure-sensing, ANY document (not just MS) can be annotated, and the journal software is AMAZING in its power and flexibility.

You can't call Microsoft's stuff hype, and then make a post like this. This is hype. I don't think I need to say anything more.

Re:Wondering what's a Tablet PC?

[tshak]

Could we please stop mod'n brainless zealots up?

Re:Wondering what's a Tablet PC?

[Zeinfeld]

Bill Gates rolls out the "Tablet PC" concept every few years at his CES presentations, and it's always been a minor reinvention of the Apple Newton presented as if Microsoft had thought of it on their own. Reflowable

You just don't get it. The Newton was a piece of crud that failed because the technology was crap. Doonesbury and Scott Adams were not being unfair in their cartoons, 'Weave me a cone you cupid bat' is much closer to the intended text than most newton users ever got.

Bill keeps comming back to the tablet PC idea because he wants one. That is the reason why Microsoft does most of the things it does, his Billship has thought something is kewl and should exist at an affordable price.

Examples in the hardware area include the 'natural' keyboard and the force feedback joystick. These both existed before Gates pushed Microsoft into making them but they were expensive nich market products.

Most engineering is incremental development rather than a paradigm shift. Applying the same logic as is applied by the slashweenies, one could claim that Tim B-L only improved Ted Nelson's ideas in Xanadu. But this ignores the fact that Xanadu was unusuable and never even got to market in any form. Tim made major contributions that were critical to making the thing work.

Apple failed in a way many Microsoft competitors fail, they pumped too much of their research dollars into science fiction projects and too little into incremental development of their platform. From sacking Jobs through to rehiring him Apple was asleep at the switch on MacOS, even though protected memory and decent multitasking were clearly needed desperately.

Finaly, nobody seems to fault Lotus for buying in Notes from Iris who had originaly bought the technology from DEC.