Microsofts dual screen tablet PC | Hacker News Reader

Microsofts dual screen tablet PC

fastcompany.com

43 pointsjrwoodruff36 comments

But that's if it actually does surface. Do you believe MS, still hobbling along after its Windows Vista disgrace, can really pull off such an apparently revolutionary machine?

Maybe I'm too close to MS (my posting history here indicates that may be so), but these two sentences really struck me as arrogant and dismissive. What has the OS software division in MS, who delivered Vista in November 2006 got to do with a hardware team shipping a new product, probably in 2010? How does Vista's poor reception hobble them? It doesn't even seem to be hobbling the Windows 7 (AKA the Vista do-over) push. How exactly would that "hobbling" work, shortage of funds due to poor sales of Vista? I didn't hear of MS being that short or R&D funds.

Do MS have history of vaporous hardware announcements?

A pre-announcement must serve some purpose. With an OS or hardware launch, it is probably advance warning to get third parties on board to create compatible software. Does this seem to be the case? Either that or there's a leak due to the increasing number of people who know about the product as it gets nearer mass manufacturing and retail.

Do MS have history of vaporous hardware announcements?

No, they have a history of promising breakthrough innovation and then woefully underdelivering.

Microsoft Hardware doesn't exactly have a strong track record. Xbox 360 had a failure rate of 54%. And then there's Zune: http://www.google.com/trends?q=frozen+zune

Anecdotally, I recently bought one of Microsoft's new bluetooth mice, and it stopped functioning correctly after 3 weeks.

If the statement had been "They can't make a reliable X-box, so this hardware will be junk too", you can at least debate that as a coherent idea, but to say "They failed on Vista therefore you can't believe this" is just vague and non sequitur.

My experience has actually been the opposite: with the notable exception of the launch 360s, Microsoft hardware has been well designed, fairly priced and long lived.

I'm still using the Microsoft natural keyboard and optical mouse I purchased in ... 2001? The sidewinder joysticks were always excellent. My original XBox is going strong; the Duke being perhaps the best designed and built gaming controller to date. The 360 controllers are similarly excellent (though I miss the Duke's size). The wireless notebook mouse I bought 2 years ago is the best wireless mouse I've used, period.

I can't speak to the Zune, having never owned one.

I assumed that with that track record, the accusation that "the 360's reliability problems were known but allowed to slide in blind pursuit of launching first" made the most sense. It was deeply disappointing, but I do give the hardware group itself the benefit of the doubt.

Their peripherals are good, but their "consumer devices" have a spotty track record.

Peripherals aren't consumer devices?

Sure, if we ignore everything but the Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune and Zune HD their record looks far worse.

But is that a fair bucket to build?

>But is that a fair bucket to build?

Well, to some extent, it is. A mouse or keyboard is one thing, a console or tablet is another.

SquareTrade only reported a 16.4% failure rate, 60% of which was attributed to RRoD and 40% are other failures, which include overheating and consumer related damage including the use of cooling pads (ironic). This means Microsoft's failure rate for 360s on a hardware standpoint is ~10%, which is slightly above industry standards but certainly isn't deserving of the class actions. Personally I'm wondering what Microsoft has been holding back, the class actions happened way too fast after these "studies" came out meaning MS never got to make an announcement on their own findings. I have a feeling they have a silver bullet in case the class actions ever get to court or they would have already attempted to court sympathy with the public.

I'm wondering if Microsoft will have a leg to stand on arguing that consumer demand for environmentally friendly products negates their claim for defective electronics as high-density electronics are hard to solder efficiently using non-lead based solders. If they can get a judge to side with them that the consumer demand for 'green' products means a higher defect rate could get the entire class action kicked out, but then the 360 wasn't exactly advertised as environmentally friendly (like MacBooks are) so if this would fool a judge or not is a wonder.

The current 'jasper' model 360's have a RRoD rate of less than 4% which is actually significantly better than the industry standard of 5-8% for hardware failures in the first year.

You don't think the generous warranty service in the first two years and then an extension to 3 years for RROD and av plug issues was an attempt to court sympathy?

A company is giving its customers good service. Is this fact altered by their motivations for doing so?

I'm typing on a Microsoft keyboard right now, the nth of many. Good stuff - works with OSX w/o custom drivers, including the volume up/down/mute - a nice touch!

"There is one glimmer of proof that Courier is actually a real machine: Over at BeingManan, there's more leaked Microsoft information about a research product dubbed Codex. It's based on Microsoft's tablet-UI-rethink InkSeine technology"

There is nothing leaked about this work. The work has been done and published by Ken Hinckley for many years. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kenh/

That being said, I think that the InkSeine work is great. Hinckley uses it everyday and often uses his technology when presenting his work.

I'm thinking the same thing. This is an awfully convenient "leak". High quality images, video, details. This "leak" is just clever marketing at work.

The Codex work was presented at CHI 09 this year:

http://www.google.com/search?q=codex+a+dual+screen+tablet+co...

I don't have any idea how that could be construed as a leak. It's not even clever marketing - it's just a conference presentation.

Sorry, I was referring to the courier tablet device, not the Codex work.

No worries - I was mostly being critical of the original article anyway.

Did you see some hack two guys in the audience were working on? They basically bound 2 iPhones together to do some similar things using the built-in accelerometers.

While most Microsoft products are pretty lame, there's one exception in my book: ONENOTE. I've used about all the notebook variants on the market and Onenote is the best by far in terms of flexibility and collaboration. I've been using Onenote on dropbox and it's a great way to sync all my thoughts across all my machines.

This little digital notebook could essentially function as a hip version of ONENOTE where you could archive all your digital goodies, and hopefully sync them to the cloud via an always on 3G/4G connection.

The future is looking bright for us hackers!

I'm holding out for the second revision, "Courier New".

"Real artists ship."--Steve Jobs.

Looking at the conceptual video one would think they were seeing a new Apple product. Who would think that Microsoft could produce something that impressive? I don't want to sound pessimistic but I don't know if I can trust Microsoft to design something that good. ;)

But I guess I'll wait and see. If Microsoft can pull it off then more power to them. Apple is either going to see this movie and laugh, then design the device themselves and release it before Microsoft does, or they are going to get pretty scared.

Yes, I hear you. I'm not sure Steve Jobs actually said that quote verbatim, but here's where I first learned of it:

http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/

What's interesting about this dual-screen "prototype" is that we're in the midst of huge speculation about the Apple Tablet. And yet Apple isn't talking, isn't doing demos, and isn't mocking up prototypes for public consumption.

They do this for marketing purposes of course (free advertising), but they also do it for competitive reasons (don't show your cards in poker) and for brand-management reasons (don't show your cards AFTER a hand in poker either).

My team at work has tons of great ideas. We ship only a small percentage. Our annual reviews don't have a line that says "Good ideas that weren't delivered." :)

yet Apple isn't talking, isn't doing demos, and isn't mocking up prototypes for public consumption.

Yeah, it usually isn't a good idea to make big brags showing experimental mockups before you have anything in reality. Apple seems to like to show the finished product.

This demo video is going to disappoint a lot of people if the real device is released and it isn't quite as spectacular as people originally thought it would be based on the video.

"Yeah, it usually isn't a good idea to make big brags showing experimental mockups before you have anything in reality. Apple seems to like to show the finished product."

Unless, of course, you never intended to release the product anyway...

http://www.google.com/search?q=olpc+xo-2

http://www.thoughtoffice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05...

Direct link to an image of an open OLPC XO 2. Now we know where Microsoft stole the design from. ;)

Wow. I wonder what their price point will be. The dual screen layout makes a lot of sense in this formfactor - book mode, laptop mode and tablet mode - pretty slick.

Notable that while the article shows a real working prototype of a shippable product, the title is still about Microsoft's vaporware product.

And, as usual, the real product is nowhere near as amazing as the fantasy one ;-)

It shows a video of mock-up screens on a rendered 3D cad model.

I don't think it's even a CAD model, unless we are willing to extend that D to meanings it was never supposed to take. I think this model never quite ventured out of the comfy environment of 3D Studio, an environment where you don't care about clearances, materials or thermal dissipation.

Having a pen-dominated UI is also a huge usability mistake. The pen is a great optional peripheral. But UIs that require pens have been rejected time and again.

Probably because they weren't done well enough to be of use (i.e. too small of a screen, terrible ui, wrong use pattern.) The use case of a book style tablet pc like this would be more akin to a moleskin on steroids. It would have a camera, internet, notes, etc.... Not too many people would use this as their primary device and if they did it would be a different use case than that of a power user.

As someone who owns a tablet PC I disagree. I have two convertible tablets, one pen only and one with touch and pen.

I almost never use the pen unless I am in note taking mode or doodling in OneNote. There is a certain level of conscious effort required to take out a pen, which limits its overall use. The laptop with touch I find myself tapping the screen to hit links and buttons on a semi-regular basis.

Essentially the pen is super comfortable for a very small niche, but is too big for me to want to carry it all the time. (Its the size of a paper notebook...) I am not the type to carry a moleskin around though, for what thats worth.

Is not a mistake is design is correct, it seems that we need Apple to rethink what exist to make people realise that other worlds exist. It happened with the touch in Iphone(a phone without keyboard is a huge mistake...), and it will happen with the Apple tablet.

Take into account that actual UI are designed for mouses, but there is not such a need. Humans find way more natural to use pens and fingers than keyboards.

Inspector gadget much?

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