Friday, March 12, 2010

MS Courier

Microsoft is hoping that the upcoming "Courier" tablet device will do to the iPad what the Zune did to the iPod... or even better!


OK, so it'll fold. But two small screens? Sounds to me like it'll double the problems of a small screen rather than solve them by, you know, a larger screen. And it's still not pocket-sized, except for coat pockets.
Apparently it's still pretty far from production.

2 comments:

Timo Lehtinen said...

Sometimes I'd really like Microsoft to get something right and succeed. So far, their track record is rather poor: Flight Simulator, Xbox and Bing. Those are about the only products where you can compliment them at all.

What about Courier then? Unfortunately, it looks like it's gonna be yet another turkey. At first the folding idea may seem kinda cute - it mimics a paper book.

But when you think about it a little more, it is baseless. It only makes using the device more cumbersome. It's as if they forgot that, unlike paper, a computer screen can actually render different images on the same physical surface. You don't need more than one surface. It would have been better even to just make the device that much bigger, ditching the fold.

I'm afraid Apple will completely crush Microsoft in this match. Of course, if Microsoft corrects their mistake, and kills the fold on Courier 2.0, then things may become more interesting.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, I almost wrote the book thing. There's a *reason* a book folds.
(But then I thought they may have done it for compactness.)

I haven't used Bing, is it good?