Discussions

Whats that hazy stuff in the sky?  Looks more like a biodome or the Roman Colosseum.

I'd like to see Larsen-Green interact and build rapport with the Windows community early on .. I think its important that we are not waiting 8-12 months for the next developer conference to hear from her.

I sure do hope Samsung comes out with a desktop dock.

@spivonious: Microsoft has marketing this to retailers for awhile now.

Bully?  You make it sound like Microsoft twisted B&N's arm to spin off their business and accept $300 million dollars.  Please...things have been real cozy between the two for several months now...probably since December when Andy Lees was moved into a undisclosed role at Microsoft.  In the end, great strategic move by both parties.

I believe Lenovo is set to release a Oaktrail based IdeaPad Slate with active digitzer for less than $600.  It runs cool, no fans and gets about 5 hours runtime.  So I think finally we will have something that is workable and within reach of consumers.  Prior to this, sure there were budget netvertibles.  However, I've seen appetizers served with skewers more substantial than the stylus included those past attempts.  So I'm really excited about this Lenovo offering. 

@Dr Herbie: Perhaps usable, but not optimized.  There are far too many OS screens/dialogs that have tightly packed miniature controls.  The default Windows display settings for 10" 1366x768 px display make tapping on something as basic as the Close button a challenge.  Frankly there is no need for a title bar, min/max buttons when working with screens of this size.  The on screen keyboard is horrid.  I have no doubt that Microsoft recognizes this and plan to address it in Windows 8 with a Metro influenced framework.

Pen is a much better story in Windows today.  Its just that you can't find a 10" Slate PC with an active digitizer for $600.  This is the premium a college student might be willing to pay over a $350 Windows netbook.  At CES Lenovo showed off the IdeaPad Slate and indicated this may hit the market later this year at a suprisingly good price point.  So there is hope, as long as they are not the only Windows PC OEM doing so and these are sold/marketed through mainstream consumer sales channels.

For the last year, typical usage of our all-in-one PC in the kitchen is split between simply viewing TV & acting as our bulletin board (YouMemo).  Media Center is pretty awesome.  As far as YouMemo, it falls short of its potential because there is no syncing to/from other PCs or our mobile phones.  I'd like to see Windows Live come up with a better answer to this. 

@PerfectPhase: yeah, i just updated the beta install...looking good.  Scott Gu has a nice breakdown of all the things released today.

@Bass: I don't have a problem if they want to support another codec, but dropping support for H264 looks to be idealogical when there is no cost.