Back in September of 2009, when the rumors of Apple’s tablet, now the iPad, were running rapid and fierce throughout the interwebs, Engadget reported on a leaked prototype tablet computer called “Courier”, that was released by Microsoft. No one knew much about it at the time and the video and pictures that were released only showed that it was a dual-screen, multitouch gesture supported tablet that worked very seamlessly with a stylus pen and it had a camera on the back. The basic conceptual design of this tablet showed it had dual 7 inch screens that fold into a book for easier portability.
Now skip 5 months ahead, and without a shred of news about this device since it was leaked back in September, and with the Apple iPad being officially unveiled for well over a month and with the recent announcement of it’s launch happening on April 3, was it not the right time to give out more details about this prototype device?
Yet again, Engadget got the latest scoop on the Microsoft Courier, this time with more concrete details about the device, including the interface and the OS it will run on. Apparently the Courier will function more as a “digital journal” as well as being an e-book reader and a multimedia device, with the main purpose of this device being extremely portable. It’s just under an inch thick and will weigh a little over a pound, and when closed/folded will measure no more than a 5×7 photo. The Courier is also built on the new Nvidia Tegra 2 GPU and will run on the same OS as the Zune HD combined with the Pink Mobile OS and Windows Mobile 7, which basically leads many to believe it will run Windows CE 6 ( it was originally thought the Courier would run off of Windows 7, however, problems with importing the Courier interface with Windows 7 would spell trouble). And to many people’s surprise, this prototype/concept tablet has been given a launch date of/around “Q3/Q4″ with no word on pricing or availability, but without any official announcement from Microsoft about any of these details, we can only speculate at this point. However, there is no doubt in my mind, this is no prototype anymore and it would explain what J. Allard has been doing behind closed doors for the past two years.
Click on the Engadget link in the middle for more news and check out the 2 demonstration videos below.
I believe Gizmodo originally broke the story, did they not?
@ Navarre:
It was actually Engadget who received the details first, then gizmodo reported on it, then so on and so forth (picture was taken by gizmodo though).
This device will give nightmare to one category of People :: Doctors !!
OMG – the courier looks amazing; the iPad has a serious contender on its hands. However the two products offer completely different functions, the iPad is a multimedia/entertainment tool, whilst the Courier is a ‘work friendly’ glorified notebook with multimedia capabilities. I think the progression of natural user interface technology should persuade software companies to encourage us to develop more relevant natural skills and enable new technologies.