Slashdot Mirror
Early Details On Courier, Microsoft's Take On a Tablet
rbanffy points out an article on Gizmodo about Courier, a tablet (or more accurately, a booklet) in development at Microsoft. "The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre." A concept video shows off the ability to use the two different screens for separate purposes, like browsing the web or a photo album on the left and using the right as a notepad or workspace.
To me this thing is in a completely different category from eBook readers.
What you're really paying for on eBook readers and the real benefit is an e-ink display, which this most certainly does not have unless Microsoft has made some technological breakthroughs they're not sharing. If you get an eBook reader that uses regular LCDs you're right back in the realm of trying to read a book that's printed on top of a lightbulb that's switched on, with the accompanying battery requirements of powering said lightbulb.
Remember that? Wasn't it supposed to do this shit 3 years ago? Here we go again.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Even better question: Will they ever bother selling it?
Microsoft has a nasty habit of fending off emerging threats by promising vaporware products that do the same job, only somehow better. In many of these cases, it's main job isn't to do $functionality, but distract attention and hype away from competitors (like, say, Apple's rumored tablet thingy), then the proposed product gets quietly buried once the hoopla is over.
It's a great way to suck the oxygen out of an emerging concept that threatens any sort of status quo... after all, Microsoft's profit margins got socked in the gut pretty hard by the whole netbook emergence.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
In this case. it's pretty likely.
Anyone who's been around long enough will see this footage has all the signs of a typical Microsoft marketing puff piece.
Check out this video. See any similarities? Can you tell us what happened to the innovative product being marketed? Do you remember Origami? Natal? Surface?
Microsoft operating systems are too bloated and slow to make an interface like this work, it's just another attempt to convince shareholders that their research money isn't being wasted.
Ignore it. Nothing of value will come of it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."