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Hold your horses cowbow, Im sure we will get more information eventually.

See MSR's Codex for the likely origin of this device:
http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/alpineinker/archive/2...

Unless E&D plan to make this a constrained device (e.g., ARM/WinCE, device-specific applications), it will likely run Windows 7 to utilize the built-in inking and multitouch APIs, and take advantage of the existing TabletPC (and general Windows) ecosystem. They'll probably use Wacom or N-Trig's capacitive multitouch digitizers, as newer Windows 7 optimized tablets (recently updated versions of the Fujitsu Lifebook T4310, T4410, T5010, and Lenovo X200) are now using.

The main question I have is whether this will be a Microsoft-produced device or a spec/reference platform for ODMs (or maybe both). I could see it working as the latter if MS controlled the baseline platform spec as they're planning to do with Windows Mobile 7 devices. Otherwise, it would probably be best as an MS device.

Who shives a git! Sure it looks sleak and neat, but Microsoft's track record the last 8 years is horrible. They talk talk talk and what comes out at the other end is garbage (Vista, etc)...

I wish Microsoft would just focus, keep things private and then come out with a product that I can actually touch, and play with.

Case in point netbooks. I just got my first one, and it had no OS. I could have installed Windows 7 or XP, but I decided to be adventurous. So I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix. WOW! Seriously impressive! Exactly what I expected from a netbook OS.

Therein lies the problem. Instead of actually making things today work well, they keep blowing smoke. So until I see this new gadget in the hands of a store clerk I ignore it!

Don't worry... Apple will eventually come out with something that has a quarter of the features, and it'll catch on because it'll be easy enough for an ape to use, will have an i in front of the name, and will come in 32 different colors.

Edited 2009-09-23 19:02 UTC

Watched the video several times now, and I keep flip-flopping between thinking that I'm starting to get the gestures, and thinking they're dumb.

Some of the gestures do make good sense to me. That "push my finger left over the screen to enter a journal" you mention is just flipping a page over - perfectly intuitive to me. The "spreading your fingers over a picture" thing however still confuses me a bit - I think the reasoning there is that it's actually spreading fingers over a stack of pictures, basically throwing them apart.

Gestures for handling data - throwing it around - seem fairly sensible and intuitive to me. The combination of touch and stylus also seemed pretty good.

I'm really not sure about the gestures involved in swapping applications. I couldn't quite understand how they worked or the reasoning behind them.

If Microsoft comes out with a product that works as illustrated in this video I'll be sorely tempted to buy one. Show me it running a regular Windows app though and the illusion will be shattered. ;-)

You went to the wrong page then. Those are clearly photographs, not drawings as a cartoon would be. There are several of them.

My point still stands. What we have are some photos of an object - nice looking but could be made of wood for all we know - and a cartoon showing what such an object might do. Its all smoke. Give me an hour in photoshop and a couple of hours in Final Cut Studio and I could show exactly the same sort of images and animations demonstrating a really cool Teleporter.

I would also like to mention the demos for longhorn(vista) when that was supposed to come out. The demo was great, the reality was only about 20% realized. So Microsoft can show demos all they want, the proof is in the pudding and MS has yet to ever deliver on their cool tech demos. Everyone of them gets all the life sucked out of them when they make it to a product, due MS screw up or over reliance on focus groups.

Vista is but a mere shadow of what MS promised, that's the real reason people rejected it so harshly. It didn't do anything really new or innovative compared to what was promised, or what competitors (namely one) were delivering at that point. So when I get this thing in my hands and it works as advertised, then I'll give them their props. otherwise its just a cool looking mockup at this point.

The one reason it will NEVER happen is that it would require throwing Windows of any version away... and Microsoft has programed companies and users that they "must" have MS Windows.

That said it's sweet hardware. The main change I would make would be to have a flexible OLED screen that was true "legal" size or "tabloid" size. Then this would double as a portable document viewing.

This is where something like Haiku or Ubuntu should be heading... Crazy new software & hardware that doesn't "look" like a desktop or phone or netbook. Netbooks were almost that new thing until Microsoft corrupted them. I think technology wise this would work now, but what about applications. Again, the whole concept of an "application" that you would load and select and pay money for on something like this is silly. For this to really work people have to be able to work by data type and not by "application". The screen is a workbench for raw "work" that is a really cool idea in the demo that needs to carry forward. Everything not "work" on the screen/device needs to go away and create new ways of thinking about devices.

Which page is that?
The only "photographs" I saw were 3D computer renderings of a final product design, rather than pictures of the device itself.

Which page is that?
The only "photographs" I saw were 3D computer renderings of a final product design, rather than pictures of the device itself. "

Maybe I was fooled then. they looked like photos to me.

Yeah, photos of a magic pen standing up by itself (even as it leans way to the side!) Or perhaps it's being held by an invisible hand. *facepalm*

I wasn't awake yet...lol

I agree with that. It really DOES look like an advanced proof of concept. It just doesn't feel at all like a real product. Just some ideas some guys in experience/design department are tossing around. People pick this up and hype this up.

Don't just look at the video, following the link.