Microsoft to Relaunch Windows Slates Again at CES

MacRumors said:

The company believes there is a huge market for business people who want to enjoy a slate for reading newspapers and magazines and then work on Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint while doing work,” explained a person familiar with the company’s tablet plans.

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An iPad with iWork?

I can't fathom a tablet device running W7. A modified, mobile version of it, MAYBE. And they'd really have to bring some amazing things to the table, along with unbeatable price points. Contrary to that, W7 tablets might meet the same success Zune has met.

If he starts going on about how "The operating system is called Windows 7" I'm going to loose faith in the company as a whole. Ballmer shouldn't be in charge anymore, he's missed the boat on so many things now.

Microsoft needs to realize that a hassle-ridden desktop operating system doesn't work well on a tablet, and there's not a significant market for it.

You could have Microsoft Office on a tabletized Windows Phone 7, just like you have iWork on the iPad. I don't want to run Windows 7 on a tablet; it's bad enough with a keyboard and mouse.

This is just hilarious.

I'm not saying that MS can't pull off a tablet eventually--who knows, maybe they'll even pull their collective head out of their collective posterior and get WP7 running on one instead of insisting on Windows 7 desktop cobbled around a touchscreen UI. It's just that all their very public bluster last year about the exact same thing amounted to exactly NOTHING in practice for the past 12 months, while Apple went on to own 95% of a market that, as Balmer pointed out last year, MS has been in for a decade. Not long after that report, and now the new Android tablets are almost certainly outselling Windows tablets as well, and they've been on the market for a matter of weeks.

So coming onstage and saying what appears to be exactly the same thing again is just sort of humorously pathetic.

Also, you really don't need to look any farther about how awkward a desktop UI metaphor is when applied to a touchscreen interface than the recent Windows Cloud commercials, in which the person puts her finger on the screen and moves it down, only to have the window of photos scroll up. Works fine with a mouse (though frankly most people use a scroll wheel now, which has a more direct metaphor), looks absolutely ridiculous and counterintuitive with a touchscreen.

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The all-new HP Slate 2 - now with 98 minutes battery life, for getting things done. Sounds awesome...

Microsoft -We Can Do That Too(sm)

abhimat.gautam said:

An iPad with iWork?

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iWork does not compare to Microsoft Office.

But, I'm not sure how usable Microsoft Office would be on a slate device. I had a slate tablet a few years ago from Motion Computing (although it was not touch-screen based). Productivity apps were not exactly productive in that form-factor.

At the same time, I don't find productivity apps on the iPad all that usable either.

I'd be more curious at the battery life, from my experience, Windows 7 is not friend of battery power unless you turn off Aero.

Perhaps they should try a cloud-based tablet? But don't take my advice because I wouldn't buy one.

Makosuke said:

This is just hilarious.

I'm not saying that MS can't pull off a tablet eventually--who knows, maybe they'll even pull their collective head out of their collective posterior and get WP7 running on one instead of insisting on Windows 7 desktop cobbled around a touchscreen UI. It's just that all their very public bluster last year about the exact same thing amounted to exactly NOTHING in practice for the past 12 months, while Apple went on to own 95% of a market that, as Balmer pointed out last year, MS has been in for a decade. Not long after that report, and now the new Android tablets are almost certainly outselling Windows tablets as well, and they've been on the market for a matter of weeks.

So coming onstage and saying what appears to be exactly the same thing again is just sort of humorously pathetic.

Also, you really don't need to look any farther about how awkward a desktop UI metaphor is when applied to a touchscreen interface than the recent Windows Cloud commercials, in which the person puts her finger on the screen and moves it down, only to have the window of photos scroll up. Works fine with a mouse (though frankly most people use a scroll wheel now, which has a more direct metaphor), looks absolutely ridiculous and counterintuitive with a touchscreen.

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iRockMan1 said:

Microsoft needs to realize that a hassle-ridden desktop operating system doesn't work well on a tablet, and there's not a significant market for it.

You could have Microsoft Office on a tabletized Windows Phone 7, just like you have iWork on the iPad. I don't want to run Windows 7 on a tablet; it's bad enough with a keyboard and mouse.

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May I point out that during the rumor phase of the iPad, most people on this very forum were adamant that it run a fully capable OS X with a touch UI?

OneNote and a stylus. I'd buy one.

iRockMan1 said:

Microsoft needs to realize that a hassle-ridden desktop operating system doesn't work well on a tablet, and there's not a significant market for it.

You could have Microsoft Office on a tabletized Windows Phone 7, just like you have iWork on the iPad. I don't want to run Windows 7 on a tablet; it's bad enough with a keyboard and mouse.

Click to expand...

Microsoft is a classic "three strikes" company. That is they need to launch a product three times to "get it right" and when it is "right" that means profitable and not the best in the market as far as performance. This tablet is following the fiasco of DOS, Windows and Mobile. To give a quick history

DOS 1.0, sucked but closed the IBM deal
DOS 2.0, fixed so major third party apps worked most of the time
DOS 3.0+, mostly everyone's apps worked and drivers / TSR's were not black magic

Windows 1.0, a "me to" response to the Mac
Windows 2.0, again for major third party apps to work
Window 3.0+, works with most third party apps and "window internals" guys were earning more than most attorneys

Mobile 1.0, a total joke trying to make anything work to "me too" Palm
Mobile 2.0 to Mobile 6.0, a roaring Keystone Cops style of software development as resources were pulled off and on being the redheaded stepchild to Windows
Mobile 7.0, a radical UI responding to the spanking iPhone gave it

Tablet 1.0, a total "me too" so the stockholders would not sell after the iPad launch
Tablet 2.0, again an attempt to make major third party app work
Tablet 3.0, we shall see brothers!

blahblah100 said:

May I point out that during the rumor phase of the iPad, most people on this very forum were adamant that it run a fully capable OS X with a touch UI?

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This is ms we are talking about though

blahblah100 said:

iWork does not compare to Microsoft Office.

But, I'm not sure how usable Microsoft Office would be on a slate device. I had a slate tablet a few years ago from Motion Computing (although it was not touch-screen based). Productivity apps were not exactly productive in that form-factor.

At the same time, I don't find productivity apps on the iPad all that usable either.

I'd be more curious at the battery life, from my experience, Windows 7 is not friend of battery power unless you turn off Aero.

Click to expand...

Finally somebody with a brain. You get sick of all these people going 'hurf durf micro$oft' that you just start looking for a valid post. Took half a page to find it.

Frankly iWork is a joke compared to Office. Mobile Office on my WP7 compares with iWork on the iPad. Phone, tablet. Personally, following how evidently hard they've been working on WP7 can't wait to see what they do for the tablet form factor. I can only hope it won't be just regular Windows 7 running in tablet mode because that is made for stylus input, not fingers, and certainly not multi-touch. But even if it's running Windows, it will be in all ways more useful than the iPad. Many times have I been surfing the internet to find a video that won't load or a site that features non-loading menus. Why? Because Steve doesn't like flash. I used to be all apologetic about it. "Pff, it will ruin battery life, it will be slow, it will be non-secure." So what about Frash? It was never slow, it didn't ruin the battery life, and it sure as hell didn't introduce viruses or the like to iPads. But it worked. That's what they need to do on the iPad before anyone could even think about considering it as useful, even as a mere content consumption device. I love my iPad but its uselessness is just overwhelming when it comes to actual productivity, and its flashlessness has me doing a ton of extra steps to get the content working. Instead of having no flash, why not have toggle-able flash? Why not give users the choice? It used to be all Apple was about, so why did they stop? Did they get mad with power? They can't call themselves masters of UI and UE when they can't deliver on something so necessary and mainstream.

"Almost all videos on the web are available to the iPad through HTML5 or other formats," says Jobs. So what about the ones that aren't? And what about menus? What happens if I want to go to Domino's site and order pizza? Why should I have to go to my room and get my laptop and do it from there? The entire point was that the iPad was supposed to be an excellent window to the web and one that requires minimal effort to get working properly. In my opinion, it's a rather subpar window when the browser doesn't have the tools to view it properly.

This tablet they will introduce will run and support Flash, and will run full Office, Firefox, and the millions of applications out there that run on Windows 7 will run on it. So you tell me which is the better window.

viizi said:

This is ms we are talking about though

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Note to the Mods: I would like to be able to "Like" posts. This is an example.

CFreymarc said:

Microsoft is a classic "three strikes" company. That is they need to launch a product three times to "get it right" and when it is "right" that means profitable and not the best in the market as far as performance. This tablet is following the fiasco of DOS, Windows and Mobile. To give a quick history

Click to expand...

How about?

windows 95
Windows 98
WindoWs ME


I know this is Mac rumors and all but they editors should know that HP did release the slate this year...

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-321957-64295-3841267-3955550-4332585.html

CFreymarc said:

Microsoft is a classic "three strikes" company. That is they need to launch a product three times to "get it right" and when it is "right" that means profitable and not the best in the market as far as performance. This tablet is following the fiasco of DOS, Windows and Mobile. To give a quick history

DOS 1.0, sucked but closed the IBM deal
DOS 2.0, fixed so major third party apps worked most of the time
DOS 3.0+, mostly everyone's apps worked and drivers / TSR's were not black magic

Windows 1.0, a "me to" response to the Mac
Windows 2.0, again for major third party apps to work
Window 3.0+, works with most third party apps and "window internals" guys were earning more than most attorneys

Mobile 1.0, a total joke trying to make anything work to "me too" Palm
Mobile 2.0 to Mobile 6.0, a roaring Keystone Cops style of software development as resources were pulled off and on being the redheaded stepchild to Windows
Mobile 7.0, a radical UI responding to the spanking iPhone gave it

Tablet 1.0, a total "me too" so the stockholders would not sell after the iPad launch
Tablet 2.0, again an attempt to make major third party app work
Tablet 3.0, we shall see brothers!

Click to expand...

So when is the second version of the Pippen coming out, or the Cube? Would you consider the iPhone (original) the second version of the Newton? By the way, when is the Powerbook G5 coming out? When will Apple TV (gen 1) owners...

Hopefully Microsoft gets it right the fourth time around, I wouldn't want broken glass or crappy antenna's. I'll probably get the white one! They better not try and misrepresent the signal strength on the device either, although I'm sure Ballmer will be "shocked" if they do.

I also hope the software doesn't have a Guest user account bug that deletes my data when the Guest logs out. I certainly hope Windows Live Photo Gallery doesn't delete all my photos when I upgrade to the latest version.


Good thing Apple is perfect!

KingYaba said:

Perhaps they should try a cloud-based tablet?

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They're already way too late.

Why do you think Citrix and VMWare (Wyse PocketCloud) Remote Desktop apps are so popular in the App store? Amazon EC2 will rent you a PC in the cloud, and you can connect to it from over a dozen RDP apps on your iPhone tablet. My iPad is a cloud-based Windows 7 PC already.

You can also connect to an Xserve running OS X Server running a Mac VM in the cloud using one of over a dozen VNC apps for iOS. My iPhone can be a cloud-based Mac. :-( except that Xserve hosting is going the way of the dodo...)

blahblah100 said:

May I point out that during the rumor phase of the iPad, most people on this very forum were adamant that it run a fully capable OS X with a touch UI?

Click to expand...

Not me. These operating systems just don't work on a tablet and there's no significant market for it.

Right for Apple to blow them out of the water a couple days later.

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Are they gonna relaunch the Zune again too??

mKTank said:

"Almost all videos on the web are available to the iPad through HTML5 or other formats," says Jobs. So what about the ones that aren't? And what about menus? What happens if I want to go to Domino's site and order pizza? Why should I have to go to my room and get my laptop and do it from there?

Click to expand...

Domino's website, including their menu works perfectly fine on the iPad; they have a non-flash version. The only thing that relies on Flash is their corny pizza image preview that shows the toppings on top of a pizza as you customize your order.

mKTank said:

This tablet they will introduce will run and support Flash, and will run full Office, Firefox, and the millions of applications out there that run on Windows 7 will run on it. So you tell me which is the better window.

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Cool. You and the 12 other people who buy a Windows 7 tablet have fun with your millions of applications designed for use with a mouse and keyboard and your slow operating system that was also designed for mouse and keyboard. I'll stick to my iPad and actually have a good experience.

blahblah100 said:

iWork does not compare to Microsoft Office.

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You're right - but as you alude to, it doesn't have to. A paired-down Office would suit 90%+ of Office users just fine on the desktop - let alone on a portable device. That sort of simplification is hugely beneficial on a tablet.

So, iWork has the edge in all but brand awareness.

iRockMan1 said:

Domino's website, including their menu works perfectly fine on the iPad; they have a non-flash version. The only thing that relies on Flash is their corny pizza image preview that shows the toppings on top of a pizza as you customize your order.

Cool. You and the 12 other people who buy a Windows 7 tablet have fun with your millions of applications designed for use with a mouse and keyboard and your slow operating system that was also designed for mouse and keyboard. I'll stick to my iPad and actually have a good experience.

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How about the Canadian Pizza Hut site?

Go ahead, try it. Try logging in.

I wonder if they will use Android? Apple will not sell them the OS, I don't think they will like doing business with Google, but they will need to get the OS from someone.

blahblah100 said:

May I point out that during the rumor phase of the iPad, most people on this very forum were adamant that it run a fully capable OS X with a touch UI?

Click to expand...

I was one of those people and I was wrong.