TheByte

jack

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.
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.

via incl Video: Courier: First Details of Microsoft's Secret Tablet - Microsoft courier tablet - Gizmodo



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If this works as good as the video demonstrates, its definitly an instant buy.
Microsoft seems to have a run currently, the Zune HD seems to be very successful. so one can only hope that the courier is their next big step.

RikfromBelgium

ok, gonna need more money

seriously,the idea of some tablet PC with multi touch for in the livingroom sounds great. Laptop in the study, tablet while watching tv and you can put it away like a newspaper.

Laptop=the new desktop

Beemer B773ER

Great to see this sort of innovation getting closer to reality.

I'm still waiting on the arrival of the 'digital page'....a concept where you can have pages in a magazine or newspaper actually being digital so that advertisements or news stories can actually show video or play music or have a photo slideshow on the actual page.
Imagine a classroom where as the teacher draws a diagram on his sheet or computer, that same diagram also appears on every students digital notebook.
A big portion of the print-based advertising market would be completely reinvented by such an innovation (I've read some company's are working on it).

Another idea which I thought of completely myself (but inspired by the Heads Up Display application in vehicles these days) is to have a HUD or even a holographic show up above the center console, and as you enter the Drive Thru of some food outlet, or enter the parking lot of a grocery store or hardware store (or any store for that matter)...the holographic (or even still using the TV/Navi screens in today's vehicles) to display a digital menu for the drive-thru right at your fingertips, or display 'Today's Specials' when you enter the grocery store parking lot, even offer specialised coupons/sales incentives based on your past purchases (taking the Amazon.com 'tracking' feature a bit further). There would just need to be some sort of sensors placed at the entrace to the drive-thru, and of course a corresponding sensore/receiver inside the vehicle for this sort of thing to work...but I honestly think it's a feasible idea.
You want to go out to dinner, but try a new restaurant... as you enter the town or specific part of the city, you can search what restaurants are in the area, and have an almost 3D holographic advertisement of the restaurant so you can get a better feel for the atmosphere and menu and so on.

Might have to wait just a tad while for the above ideas, but in my mind there are a multitude of applications for these ideas.

What do you guys think?

jack

actually beemer, most of the stuff is currently in progress
e-paper/black-panel display(kindle,sony reader,bmw 7-5GT) and oled(e.g.:Zune HD, Sony X1) is the technology you are talking about - its for both possible to make them transparent(currently the max. is a 60% transparency) and flexible.
the technology is there, its also in use (to a certain degree) but the failure-rates during production are still too high to make the displays larger and availiable to the mass market.
true 3D holo stuff is probably still some decades off, but you could easily mimic 3D layouts on regular displays (without glasses).

this is probably a students wet dream, but i doubt that this is ever going to happen since you should learn the stuff by writing it down on your own

jack

its getting better
Leaked Courier Video Shows How We'll Actually Use It - Microsoft courier tablet - Gizmodo