Microsoft Courier - iPad, schmiPad

[Mad_Man_Moon]

http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-f...-secret-tablet

There are a couple of dual-screen netbooks in development and/or out there already, and there is also the ereader that I posted about in here with an eInk and a tablet screen (Entourage Edge).

The Microsoft Courier looks like a sleeker, more powerful, and downright sexier piece of kit than all of that.
Plus, if these images are to be believed, way more desirable than that there iPad.

Added to this, HP also have a slate coming out ... which looks particularly exciting, too.

Gizmodo Article:

It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we've all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft's astonishing take on the tablet.

To watch the video, you'll first need to install the flash player.
' Courier is a real device, and we've heard that it's in the "late prototype" stage of development. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. 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.

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft's brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who's spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

Microsoft has a history of collaborating with other firms, especially in the E&D division: Zune and Xbox have both gone through similar design processes. (And plans for the Microsoft Store leaked through a third-party agency were confirmed as genuine prototype layouts and concepts.) This video is branded Pioneer Studios, a Microsoft division within E&D that specializes in this kind of work, working with another agency that's a long-time Microsoft collaborator on confidential projects.

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple's tiger style. It's complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a "pocket" to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft's tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we've seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Over the next couple days we'll be diving much, much deeper into Courier, so stay tuned.

[bottleHeD]

Looks better than the "iPad" already... I also hope it's not the final name, because "Microsoft Courier" reminds me of the crappy font.

[Mad_Man_Moon]

Yeah, maybe something like MSBook, or something equally crap.
The videos on the site are awesome, though!

[Charlesknight]

Looks like vaporware.

[bottleHeD]

Then it's the perfect device to play a game of Duke Nukem Forever, eh?

[Mad_Man_Moon]

Awesome!.........

[zero cool]

This would actually be very useful for me in my night classes.

[deg]

This is actually the first I heard of it. If the aspects are true, I think I'd rather get a Courier.

Things I don't like about the iPad are that it has no camera or can take video. Really that's a standard feature on computers now.

Online it can't display flash graphics. And many websites use just that.

It seems built to offer entertainment as a primary goal.

The screen style and overall format makes me think that it could crack if you are not careful. Their are no flip case aspects to it.

With Courier they have the camera set.

The two screens can really work great, especially if each can do a different task.

The use of a pen can really help. Plus the drawing aspects are great. Possibly making web comics on the go?

It's built with business aspects in it as a primary goal.

The flip case aspect of it protects both screens.

Overall, only by displaying working copies of both can a buyer really tell which will be better.

I think both are best to wait on and not buy their first version. Eventually they will make a better version and work out all the little details that were problems in the first version. Also the later versions will be cheaper.

[Mad_Man_Moon]

Good point, Deg.

It's (in some ways) a shame that iPad came out so far in advance of the courier, because it allows Microsoft to innovate to a particular level, but hold some shit back. I for one hope that they don't, and (optimistically) I don't think that they will, but it does give them an option to hold back on features, to add them on later models for a premium.

Anyhow, Gizmodo just put this story up:

Microsoft Courier's Devolution

These fresh images and details of Microsoft's Courier paint a slightly different device than the one uncovered a few months ago—tinier, perhaps less genre-busting, and a more direct iPad fighter.

This take is built on the same mobile OS core as Windows Phone 7 and Zune HD, powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 hardware. It's supposedly thinner than an inch, under a pound, and about the size of a 5x7 photo when closed.
As you can see, the device seems even smaller, the interface, though still pen-based, seems less whizzy based on these stills than the wildly complex and sophisticated (or maybe just complex) interface shown earlier:

<<VIDEO REMOVED BY THE AMAZING M_M_M>>

Is Courier progressing or regressing? It's hard to tell—we're not sure where in Courier's development these concepts are from vs. our initial reportage. But if they are newer, a few things stand out.
• Courier's grown to be more realstic and less different, which is not uncommon for mind-bogglingly radical-seeming products. (Our mind was blown by the original interface, anyway, for better or worse.)
• Shifting from using Windows 7 as its core as Mary Jo Foley first reported to Windows CE6 and mobile guts puts it more squarely against the iPad, using a similar philosophical approach of scaling up to a tablet, vs. scaling down as Microsoft's always done before. (Which makes sense, given that this is supposedly J. Allard's project—he'd want to use E&D's own goods to power his tablet.) Also, mobile guts are cheaper than low-power laptop guts.
• This could be one of the several prototype tablets J. Allard's got—which would explain why there's versions that seem more like full Windows 7 vs. Windows Phone 7.
• Engadget pegs the launch date later this year, though we've heard separately that Courier won't show up anytime in 2010.
• We're still pretty excited.
[Engadget]

I'd really love it if they installed this with PixelQi screens, with a rocker for the level on each screen (or brushtouch buttons)

[bottleHeD]

Maybe they'll go with different sizes for people with different needs and price ranges.