Maybe There’s Hope For Microsoft Yet

(Keyword there is “maybe”..)

Those of you who watch the Tech headlines have heard — Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has announced he will retire. This here is the best article (of the first crop of related articles) I read on the subject:

* Five reasons why Ballmer needed to go

“At long, long last Steve Ballmer is leaving Microsoft. Here’s why.

Steve Ballmer is going to retire from Microsoft sometime within the next 12 months. Well, that’s the official story. I think Microsoft’s board finally gave him a choice: Jump or be pushed.” Read more..

Personally, I kind of doubt there will be a Microsoft in 10 years… except, maybe, as a toy company (Xbox).

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Today’s quote: “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” ~ Lao Tzu

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Fools Rush In… (aka "Let’s Go Slate-boarding!")

Those who know me personally, know that a little thing like last week’s predictions setback (25% accuracy) is not going to stop me from continuing to post my Playoff Picks…

And Now For The Tech:
It has been published that sales of PC’s was better than expected this holiday season – Intel and Acer doing particularly well.

Yes. I said Acer. The big sellers were a relative newcomer to the PC market, the category of small, portable, “netbooks” (see, It’s Time We Talked About Netbooks) of which the Acer models seemed to be preferred. It seems everybody wants a netbook.

And Then Came Apple.. And CES

More predictions: But netbooks and Christmas sales are ancient history already, and everybody’s looking ahead. And the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is where we get to see what the manufacturers will be bringing us soon.

It seems our future is something called a “slate”.

Photo source: Gizmodo.com

* Apple’s next “big thing” is supposed to be something named “iSlate”.
* Microsoft is hyping Windows 7’s “touchscreen” features.
* iPhone sales were ginormous, and everyone figured it was the ‘touchscreen’ that explained it.
* “gestures” and “multitouch” are seen as replacing the mouse and eventually the keyboard…

In spite of the fact that this all is vaguely reminiscent of the “voice recognition” and text-to-speech of Windows XP (that was supposed to give us “hands free computing“), you add up those bullet points, and you are not surprised when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer uses his CES Keynote Address to show us a tablet PC.. and refer to it as a “slate”. (As well he could, it was an HP prototype named “the Slate”.)

Reaction?
“The HP Slate was underwhelming, to say the least. Hailed by Ballmer as “something that’s almost as portable as a phone and that’s as powerful as a PC running Windows 7“, the demonstration showed a flat panel computing device that seemed more equivalent to a color Kindle than to a Windows 7 wonder-tablet.”

Yes.. the utter prior failure of tablet PC’s in the marketplace was simply due to the fact that touchscreen and gestures weren’t here yet. Windows 7 changes that, so… touch tablets. Oops. Excuse me. Touch slates.

For those of you who read this far, this article: HP Slate Lowers the Bar for Apple’s Tablet PC.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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