Slashdot Mirror
MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES — Again
jfruhlinger writes "About a year ago at this time, we were all hearing exciting news about Windows-based tablets that Microsoft would be unveiling at CES. They would transform the industry and strangle the iPad in its cradle! Well, now the hype machine is starting again, for the same products that never materialized last year. This time around, though, the market has changed so much so quickly that Microsoft's tablet bid isn't cutting edge; as Ryan Faas points out, it's desperate."
It's like George Bush said. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. . .you can't fool me again.
"IPAD KILLER! IPAD KILLER! IPAD KILLER!"
Because the iPad worked, everyone is screaming it, choking each other in their cradles, attempting to produce the next poor and horrible tablet.
If MS had used its 1 working shot, they should have done so instead of FAILING AGAIN!
http://www.techspot.com/news/36328-microsoft-unveils-dualscreen-tablet-concept.html
Look at it! It is pure functional genious, and it won't come out, and it dies in its infancy stage.
Microsoft's relevance is getting dimmer and dimmer by the day. 7-8 years ago, I ran Windows, I needed to know Windows Server and .NET dev tools for my job. I even enjoyed a WinMo Phone.
Today, and for the past 5-6 years, the needs for my skills have changed:
Linux
Mac
PHP
MySQL
I was asked a Windows Server authentication question today, and I couldn't even remember the answer it has been so long since I admin'd Windows of any kind.
Windows right now is good for:
Exchange
Outlook if you don't have a Mac and need integration
SQL Server .NET and other "enterprise" services to maintain what is there today.
Microsoft would make more money if the ported all of their services over to *nix platforms, and sold licenses as a software company. Exchange, SQL Server, AD services, .NET development environments for *nix platforms would make them a lot more money, and make enterprise orgs happier, because then they could run *nix platform solely, with MS offered services.
Makes me wonder what happened to the rumored HP WebOS tablet.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There are tablets out there right now that run W7. W7 is a horrible UI for a tablet as can be seen with the current stuff that is out. If they change their UI to make it more tablet friendly, then we will talk. Until then, hop on Google and check yourself, W7 is a fail on tablets with the current UI
The world is how you make it
Interesting how this "leak" occurred the same day analysts at Goldman Sachs castigated Microsoft for not having a tablet strategy. The market is starting to awaken to Ballmer's utter lack of vision and it won't be long before Microsoft starts to pay for it. Well, more than they've already paid by having a stagnant stock price for the past 10 years.
Sounds like an infomercial
Remember the win7 tablets you didn't see last year! they're back, and better than ever. More features than you never saw before! You won't see a better win7 notebook this year! You'll be lucky to get one of these working for you!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Microsoft still has the chance to beat Apple to market with a pc/tablet hybrid that acts like a regular windows desktop computer when plugged into a docking station and morphs into a touch-based tablet when undocked. If they can solve the UI-switching problem, rewrite their big office apps to play along, and get to market before Apple does something similar, then they'll have a good chance of capturing a lot of the market.
Make a GNU Linux distribution: MS Linux !!!
Cheers.
Yours In Miami,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
There's nothing inherently wrong about running Win7 on a tablet. As long as the gui shell is optimized for the form factor and method of input, then it has a fighting chance. However, people will invariably want to run standard Windows applications on the device, and that is where the user experience will be miserable.
Apple really pulled a strategic coup with the iPad. First they built up an impressive array of modern applications totally designed around a multi-touch interface (via the iPhone), then they built a tablet that was fully compatible with that massive suite of applications.
MS has a massive application base, but there is no acceptable manner of utilizing those applications with a touch-only interface (and oh, has that been tried and tried). Couple that with Microsoft's heavy-handed treatment of developers of late (C# only for Windows Phone 7), and the tablet version of Win7 will never build up that critical mass base of applications it must have to survive.
Better known as 318230.
Big difference.
Scaling a PC OS to a tablet always seems to result in failure.
Scaling a good touch-oriented phone OS up to a tablet, however, seems to work well.
See, as an example, the success of the iPad (basically a giant iPhone) and the various Android tablets (pre-Honeycomb, basically giant Android phones, such as the Huawei S7 and the Galaxy Tab series mentioned in TFA).
Oh yeah - I love my Huawei S7 (Android-based tablet, pre-Honeycomb, running 2.1 and with a 2.2 Froyo upgrade in the pipeline). Android took the entry barriers to the tablet market and hit them with a nuke.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Why haven't MS developed a touch-based shell for Windows 7? They could sell it as Windows 7 Tablet Edition. Yay, they'd get a new product to sell, too!
I've used Windows 7 as a touch OS, and I can tell you it's no pleasant experience. You know the virtual keyboard that iOS and Android pops up as you give a text box focus? Yeah. Windows 7 doesn't support that. It has a virtual keyboard, but you can only click to open it manually. Click to open it. Every time you want to type. Oh, and the dpi setting support to make things easier to point and click at? Well, Windows applications don't use to have good dpi setting support. Their GUI's will break, or simply ignore the setting, and keep using small fonts. And what about window management? Clicking at window borders to resize them, to give room for... Wait a minute -- why do you have to window manage at all? That was taken out of iOS and Android, for a reason.
There are a dozen more reasons it'll make your skin crawl. It's an as poor OS for tablets, as Windows Mobile 6.5 is for mobile devices. It's as if Microsoft didn't learn! Why hasn't Ballmer learnt? Why is he so stubborn. It's his job to understand these things, and lead his company in the right direction! Windows 7 Tablet Edition should have been developed *along with Windows 7* itself! Because even back then, after Windows Vista, did visionaries in the tech industry see this as becoming huge in the future. But no -- MS seem to be willing to repeat their Windows Mobile mistake again. Trying to shoe-horn an OS design in a form factor and a human/computer interface it was never intended for.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
With more and more Android Tablets being scheduled for release next year (At lower and lower price points thanks to lower *nix hardware needs) I feel we will see SOMETHING from MS this year.
Mind you, they will likely have xp or a stripped version of win 7 since the hardware will have to be cut down to compete with the bare min specifications the opponents will have.
^_^ I envision tablet PC's filling a gap between laptops and phones/book readers. Dirt cheap, multiple purpose, used the way netbooks were meant to be used.
Not sure high end tablets will take off though... I think if the hardware is good laptops with reversible screens are a better idea.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
Don't they know that 2011 is the year of Linux in the Desktop?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's increasingly looking like Android is fast cornering the vast majority of the tablet market (and by tablet, I mean regular tablet, e-book readers and anything that doesn't have a keyboard and mouse, or an intel CPU).
Frankly, I prefer an old, well-known, slowly dying monopoly like Microsoft than the fast, aggressive, secretive, personal-data-hungry and quite frankly worrying Google monopoly.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me over and over and I'll just blame someone.
Like so many of Microsoft's products it'll probably be "Pretty good", but rooted in the monolithic CYA culture at Microsoft which can't escape the extreme luck, by which Microsoft's products were selected to be industry standard by business, just because, there will still be some significant element of "They Just Don't Get It" that will hold it back and it will be quietly consigned to a dark corner with other "Killer" things from Microsoft over the years.
Perhaps they should try something different, perhaps a card trading game or pogs or collectible little plastic figurines...
I might sound like a snide, sarcastic git, but their track record isn't very impressive, even when they decide to lose $$,$$$,$$$,$$$. for a few years, pushing it.
Like it or not, Microsoft has become Brand X.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Check out http://smartphone-review.net for the latest on Win7 Tablets and CES news!
Comes with First Post, Goatse and Kdawson apps included. Order now and get a free -1, troll t-shirt.
Powered by gnu/tablet/HURD.
At lower and lower price points thanks to lower *nix hardware needs
I'm seeing €150 androids in papers already, how is ms going to compete with that ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
What's your take? Can Microsoft make real news in a Windows 7 tablet presentation? Is Windows 7 likely to be a dominant force in the tablet market during 2011? Let us know in the comments.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
MS tribe keeps communicating with vapor signals.
The Courier was never viable, nor even a real product - it was an attempt to use the classic FUD cloud to head off the iPad. But if the vapor is too thin, anyone can see through it and that was true in this case.
Imagine the batter life and weight of a Windows 7 tablet with two screens. Imagine the hassel of a mechanism that would fold easily while also letting you hold it open cradled in a hand or two.
Courier was never more than a concept video, and not even a well-thought out example of that. It looks amazing in the same way riding a dragon through the sky seems awesome and amazing, because it's not going to happen in reality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The real problem will be expectations RE: 3rd party applications. "Android" succeeds, in part, on very non-PC-like hardware because it promises nothing about support for historical linux applications(plus, the only historical applications tend to either be server stuff, that you wouldn't run on a tablet except as a stunt, or geek stuff that geeks are welcome to try to get working if they want to).
Windows, on the other hand, has a huge amount of well known legacy applications, and when a product is sold as "Windows" people expect that it, and the disk they just got at best buy, will work on it. Trouble is, the vast majority of those 3rd party applications will suck without a proper mouse and keyboard. Not much MS can do about that.
There isn't anything much wrong with the NT kernel(I'm sure hardcore geeks and purists could pick some nits; but the same could be said of linux.), nor does MS have no ability to design a new touchable shell; but making 3rd party stuff not just tear you out of that shell and poke you in the eye with how much they suck would be somewhere between heroic and impossible.
This, I suspect, is why Apple, with their iPhone, Google(de facto, they don't actually stop you) with Android, and MS with Windows Phone 7, enacted a "no legacy" policy.
Remember that piece of Fucked Up Disinformation from decades ago? Of course you don't, don't want to, that is. Because you Linux fanbois can't ever apply anything un-hypocritically to yourselves.
being like a quirky uncle to being a creepy uncle.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Steve Ballmer just doesn't have a clue as to what will sell to the average consumer. He was the guy that didn't think the I-phone would sell, and now with a decent competing product can't market it at all. Around the time the I-pad was coming out MS was showing off it's own prototype tablet software called "Courier" that even the most diehard Apple fan agreed was better than anything Apple had come up with. It never saw the light of day as Ballmer fired the mastermind behind the project after "disagreements" over it's potential for profits. It's time to ditch the businessman and bring in someone that can create a good consumer product, since those tend to have a much higher profit margin than the cuthroat corporate world.
Legacy applications? Can I install them through the App Store, or Package Manager?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
You'd have to think at some stage that MS would be considering the possibility of having a tablet running the Windows Phone 7 OS... iOS/Android/etc have demonstrated that upscaling a smartphone OS to the tablet form factor is very effective. And later releases of WP7 were going to be supporting smaller screen devices... so why couldn't it go the other way and handle larger screens?
I think Microsoft may just surprise us all this January at CES. It's either that or "I can't believe they are even stupider than I thought" will be everyone's reaction.
Microsoft has so few chances to get anything right in the tablet space, and it knows it. There's no point in them demoing anything at CES unless it would change the way people see Windows on tablets.
So, I actually have my hopes up that they did actual efficiency and usability work on Windows 7, rather than bringing all the crud over wholesale and layering on a choppy, non-extensible, and severely limited UI. I actually have my hopes up that they'll actually have an edition that runs *well* on Oak Trails.
Unfortunately, my rational mind says there will be a bunch of slow, crappy tablets with crappy layered on UI and 2 hours of battery life. But still yet I hope.
I'm convinced Microsoft hasn't done it for the simple reason that they aren't capable of doing it.
I do think they are quite capable of doing it. I just think they are far more capable of sabotaging any and every threat to Windows and Office even if it's an internal cannibalization/evolution effort. This is the company that has protected that business model from Apple, IBM, Netscape, US Goverment... all comers.
They are king of that mountain, but they're also chained to it. They will milk those cash cows till they're running dry... and then, and only then will they change significantly. Problem is, will it be too late?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Boy, what a helpful fan of that site you are, to let us all know!
---
I never saw the point of putting a desktop os on a tablet...
There's a reason the ipad has its own interface, and not a crude port of finder and the regular osx environment, and there's a reason tablets typically run android and not a gnome/kde based linux distro.
What works on a desktop with a mouse and keyboard does not work on a tablet with a touchscreen! windows mobile was bad enough (and yes i know the current version has finally learnt from this), expecting you to have a stylus - who the hell carries a stylus around with their phone?
Windows tablets will just end up bigger, slower, more expensive, with inferior battery life and a cumbersome interface compared to ipad/android.
Windows may be a familiar name, but to many people it has bad connotations... Most people think it's an inherent part of a computer and grudgingly accept it, but it also has a reputation for crashing and being problematic... People don't realise that there is anything better in the computer space, but they do on phones and tablets.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
128MB? Will it run in that amount?
That's what my $99 ARM-based netbook has on it. If not - go away.
This story was listed three times in my RSS feed.
Ease up, Ballmer!
Its not the OS - its the Apps. Putting a touch-optimised shell on Windows 7 would probably be quite easy, but that wouldn't necessarily fix MS Office and all the other apps.
MS has it mostly its own way with Windows on the desktop, largely because of the Office monopoly and the huge volume of other Windows software available. Trouble is, none of that software is particularly mobile-touchscreen-friendly, thanks to user interface, screen real-estate and bloat issues.
Android and Apple, on the other hand, already have app stores bulging with custom-written apps aimed at the sort of things people want to do on their fondleslabs.
Even if Microsoft includes "mobile" versions of Office, they'll be cut-down versons with limitations and (probably) incompatibilities, losing much of their advantage c.f. (say) Apple's iWork.
I guess MS will be able to promote them as "genuine" Office, but they need to get in quick before Apple get their finger out and fix the mess that is file syncing* between mobile iWork and the desktop.
* Note to Jobs: ffs add DropBox support to mobile iWork and it will become useful - it has its flaws but people can use it unlike the current arrangement.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It's Faas that's desperate--for something to write about.
MS has not made any claims; non-existent claims can hardly be desperate.
In any case, there's little MS can do, since they don't make the hardware. It's HP and the rest of MS' OEMs that are dropping the ball.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
How long must the chain of mispellings continue? I meant to say:
Better for BAKERS.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I bought a windows 7 netbooktablet. Really nice concept, and I was excited to try win7. But I do more than display wallpaper with my systems, and having all applications spend most of their time in "not responding" status wasn't tolerable. I sure wish ubuntu would use the touchscreen(or I had time to write and integrate my own drivers). Seems such a waste, but at least I can use it now.
..and it's made by an company out of australia. the Tega v2 tablet/slate is a really nice device running win7. as much as the articles in Information Week would like you to believe there are no win7 slate/tablet devices out there, all you have to do is Google/Bing/Bingle to find them. i've been selling these Tega tablets for just over a month. I have office 2010 on it and it runs great. 2GB ram 32GB SSD drive. not the largest one, or the smallest one. don't believe the hype that these devices don't exist. they do! HP has released a table/slate that runs win7, but i haven't seen it yet myself. it's not the one that was hyped in the past that was to run win7 then got switched to the WebOS/Palm. Kevin