January 8th, 2010, 3:07AM in Technology by Marc LequimeView Comments
Steve Ballmer Shows Off the HP Tablet, CES 2009
Well, it’s not the Courier, unlike we highly anticipated. Shame that, but it’s still a nice concept. Microsoft did have a 2-screen tablet to show, but it ran Windows 7 that hadn’t been modded to suit two screens – so it kinda sucked software-wise.
Anyway, the Microsoft/HP Tablet announced was a cute little thing – and I can tell Steve Ballmer was pleased to announce his little answer at the Apple Tablet. In fact, this little thing is pretty much everything the Apple Tablet is supposed to be. It has multitouch. A thick black gloss border (hell, HP are going mad with Macbook Pro style displays).
Something Microsoft just aren’t learning here is you can’t grab your OS and force it into every form factor. The OS on these things must be suited to them, specialized to them. You can’t just cram an OS designed for mouse-and-keyboard input and expect it to work fine on a touchscreen. And that’s something I’m sure Steve Jobs would mention, as rumors fly around of the tablet’s completely new OS.
Granted, these things are cute. As Steve Ballmer puts it, “they’re more powerful than a phone and almost as powerful as a PC. These things are perfect for reading, browsing the web and taking entertainment, on the go,” he states, “it will likely be available this year.”
So yeah. It’s nice, it’s likely not too expensive, it runs Windows 7 (and hopefully gets a modded version to suit tablets), and it’s going to be available before the ‘Apple Tablet’. Granted, it’s not a courier, but it’s nice whatever it is.
Source:
[...] 7 and nothing else is not going to be as good as a tablet with a customized operating system). Take the HP slate for example. Yeah, it’s not the Microsoft Courier of our dreams, but it’s a product that is set to [...]