Comments on: Microsoft wireless tablet rumored: Boost for e-books on the way?

By: Roger Sperberg

Roger Sperberg — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:57:49 +0000

Last March, Bill Gates spoke about the "ultra mobile device" market, saying it was the hottest area of mobile PC development. The handheld he was waving around then appears to have been an Intel Ruby, and he spoke about approaching one-pound in weight and getting "well under $1,000, hopefully even in the $800 range." The photos I've seen of Origami show a device that would definitely make for a nice e-book reader, especially if it's running a full OS and has all the features I want in a carryaround — music, surfing, games, email, occasional word-processing or number-crunching. One way the Nokia 770 cut its price was to forego a disk drive, as well as a keyboard. I put a 1GB memory card for the things I need to carry around, which goes all the way up to a 90-minute movie. Maybe Microsoft is following the same model. I don't see how they could get to a $600 price otherwise. It will be interesting to see how full a machine they make, and how closely the speculation about capabilities matches what they deliver. And also how long it takes to deliver. Last year, Nokia showed its Nokia 770 at Linux World on May 25, and it was pretty much five months before you could get one.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:31:42 +0000

Hey, Pond, that would be fine with me. The more options, the better. Whether the industry will oblige, however, is another issue.

By: pond

pond — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:24:13 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this, and it seems to me that all we need is an lcd monitor with batteries and integrated trackpad, and wireless usb.

We don’t need microsoft to establish a new platform, we don’t need XScale cpus or anything like them.

And the monitor would be both lighter and cheaper if we put up with a cord to plug it into the wall. More ‘curl-up-with-in-beddable’ if you will.