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Promised Microsoft Tablet 'No Thicker Than Sheet of Glass'
Barence writes Microsoft will deliver a touchscreen PC that is 'no thicker than a sheet of glass' within the next three years, according to the company's principal researcher. The device will be the next generation of Microsoft's Surface project, which currently houses a touchscreen PC in a deep cabinet that uses cameras to detect hand gestures and objects placed on the screen. According to Microsoft's Bill Buxton, 'Surface will become no thicker than a sheet of glass. It's not going to have any cameras or projectors because the cameras will be embedded in the device itself.' Microsoft is developing a new screen technology to make this possible. 'The best way to think about it is like a big LCD where there's a fourth pixel in every triad. So there's red, green, and blue pixels giving you light, and a fourth pixel which is a sensor that will capture stuff,' Buxton claims in an interview with The Globe and Mail."
I'll believe it when I see it. Otherwise it's just vaporware that will clog blogs with nonsensical hype.
A sheet of glass like in a picture frame (2mm) or like in an Aquarium (Several cm's). Maybe, being Microsoft, it starts out as thick as the picture frame glass, but it rapidly expands to be as thick as Aquarium glass. Then it breaks.
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The pool fencing around my patio is 10mm thick. The floor of the Auckland tower has glass 25mm thick. So how thick is thick? A pretty pointless claim if you ask me. And three years? In Internet terms it may as well be 30 years. A stupid press release all round.
Nobody buy an iPad!
Let's all wait for this promised invention from Microsoft, which will be much better than anything we can get today, and is coming Real Soon Now!
a fourth pixel which is a sensor that will capture stuff
Didn't someone here on Slashdot have a patent titled, "A Method and Process of Doing Things with Stuff" . . . ?
It looks like Microsoft might have an intellectual property problem here . . .
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Parts of this concept seem awfully familiar...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/06/04/26/1536212/Apples-All-Seeing-Screen
This is great. I can't wait to get one. I will carry it in my backpack while I fly around in my jet pack which will be powered by cold fusion.
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The original article is discussing Surface's touch panel and display, which are currently a weird hodge-podge of tech, being shrunk down into a single panel which is as thin as a sheet of glass. Nothing the engineer says suggests that the whole device will be that size. Furthermore the "three year" comments are about Surface's possible consumer launch, and nothing to do with the new panel at all. PC Pro's blog dump is completely dire, read the second link.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
or is MS so much at their wits' end that they don't even know which feature to hype for their "we'll do that in 3 years, honest, you can stop buying iPads now" PR campaigns ?
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Apparently, since you can get glass over 60cm thick, at least as thick as the person who used that description. I suppose they'll be telling us that the screen is as long as a piece of string next.
If they use a x86 to compete with the ARM tablets it will have shorter battery life and run hot. If they use ARM (or something else giving good mA/mips), then people won't understand why it can't run their Windows software. If it looks and feels like Windows (and actually code wise, is Windows) but can't run Windows software, people won't like it. The platform is Windows software. It's the closed source curse, you are stuck on the hardware and API things are compiled for. Of course their is byte code, but then they will be competing again other tablets of similar spec, but with their apps byte coded while the others (Apple/Linux) are native. If that happens, bet MS's own apps are native for each platform, but they advice developers to use .NET to cover all MS platforms. But even then, are most consumers going to understand the difference between .NET apps and native apps? This to me has all the marks of a money blackhole while they try and complete in the tablet space.
I know of other MS products that resemble a (fragile) sheet of glass. Windows, anyone?
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Not commenting on this potential vaporware, but embedded cameras in LCD screens might single handedly make video conferencing pleasant. Presently, the distance between the camera and screen mean video chatting is essentially an exercise in watching another person watch their computer while having a conversation with you.
Apart from latency / bandwidth issues, I think that is the largest thing that has prevented video chat from taking off. It's not at all like talking face to face with a real human being.
No, only the pedantic types with an axe to grind, time on their hands, and karma to whore will actually ask how thick the sheet will be. The rest of us will assume "somewhere in the general vicinity of normal window or auto glass", since that's what the phrase "as thick as a sheet of glass" usually means.
I am a pedantic type with an axe to grind, and even I knew that they obviously meant the first thing that would occur to most people’s minds when they thought of a pane of glass.
The part that I considered an atrocious abuse of language was the part where he claimed that there will be four pixels per triad. He could have just said that instead of using triads of pixels (3 pixels per group... red, green, and blue) they will have tetrads: 4 pixels per group; red, green, blue, and an extra 4th pixel that is a simple light sensor.
But no... his triads go to FOUR.
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