So what are Microsoft announcing today?
 

Tablet?

Xbox something?

New mouse?

Large purchase of mac pros for their tech dept.

My bet is on a Windoze 8 tablet. :winkwink:

Tablet would make sense after all their talk of tablet integration with the Xbox at e3

Windows 8 is going to open a lot of eyes. They will build 'business tablets' capable of handling much more than the ipad. Wouldn't be surprised to see one with a fully functional slide out keyboard and a whole lot more processing power than tablets already on the market. They are banking on the laptop/tablet hybrid with an OS that allows complete diversity across phones, consoles, tablets, PCs etc...

Personally I think the first one to integrate phone service into a full sized tablet will be able to recapture a significant share of the cellphone device market as well.

I bet a barnes & noble flavored tablet

Have you tried the win8 beta? I don't think metro works at all on a desktop. Do you?

I can see what they are trying to do, but it just makes no sense in terms of UI. Why put a tablet OS on a desktop?

Find out soon though.

The iPad is for general users who do a little bit of surfing and Facebook. My wife has a Kindle - similar - and does Facebook on it, reads her magazines, and plays solitaire on it. That's it.

I need a bit more and I need to be able to install my own software on it. I need a computer, not a browser. I need to install programs that the iPad doesn't have, so I can work form the road.

I have a Dell inspiron flip screen. I use it mostly on the road as a small laptop, but also as a tablet here at home.

http://static.trustedreviews.com/94|...nspironduo.jpg

This is perfect - It's much smaller than a laptop, and only slightly bigger than a iPad. I can run anything I want on it.

Unfortunately for Microsoft they have a history of poorly implementing very good ideas, which later get taken over by competitors and become very successful. They had tablets out long before the iPad but they sucked mostly due to the need for a 'stylus' and the horribly complex interface. I have a feeling the final versions of Windows8 will be much more polished than failures like Vista were.

We will see if they have learned their lesson and gone with a much more simple approach. If they have they stand to make bank on the concepts, if they haven't someone else will take them and run with it. The notion of a real cross-platform OS bridging the gap between iPad and laptop is ripe for reward right now. So is the 'cellphone/tablet' device. :2 cents:

like what?

Probably Windows 8.

A useable Office suite for one...
Word, Excel, Quickbooks, etc...
Flash support would also still be nice until it is completely obsolete.
An actual keyword or USB ports for one, photoshop, etc etc

If you travel with just an Ipad your productivity is nowhere near what it can be with a laptop. If you travel with just a laptop you lose the convenience of an Ipad. The road to success for Windows 8 is bridging that gap successfully.

Pages and Numbers work fine for me for that. What didn't you like about those apps?

What on the road work do you need Flash for?

You can get a keyboard.

I don't think a tablet will ever run photoshop in a way you could use it.


Alternatively, apple demonstrated that we are in a post PC era and there is a market for people to own a lightweight computing device for when they are away from their desktop. Sports Cars and Trucks. You sometimes need a sports car and you sometimes need a truck.

MS got confused by this, as they have been failing to sell tablets for the last 10 years and are now trying to cobble together a mobile and desktop OS and I imagine it's not gonna work out too well for them.

I'm really glad you like MS and it works for you and I hope today you get the tablet of your dreams.

I kinda think MS is a little too late to the party, and isn't bringing anything anyone really wants...

Still, interesting times...

If they announce a microsoft tablet with a stylus, im gonna kick steve balmer right in the nards. That would be such a desperate and pathetic move on their part. Steve Jobs said it best, "They (microsoft) have absolutely no taste. And i mean that in a big way."

Live blog here http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/18/m...ement-livelog/

Windows 8 looks so exciting , all those big coloured Metro blocks, obviously aimed at idiots who don't know how to choose a normal icon :1orglaugh

iPad clone lol

Wow Microsoft Surface. The tablet that boasts a 4 hour battery life and bloated Windows designed to fuck up your day. Can't wait to get one of these babies. Sheesh.

Some attempt at a cloned Apple product that will be killed off in 2-3 years after nobody buys one.

At least Samsung can make good knock-off products.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

"Unexpected error occured."

I'm actually loving the look and details on this thing.

Let's see, a tablet with a keyboard, trackpad and buttons that runs a full bloated Windows, needs fan cooling, is double the thickness of an iPad, has half the battery life, sounds alot like a Macbook air replacing the keyboard with a flimsy snap off thing that's most prevailing feature is to turn your screen the same colour as the keyboard case.

Fail!

you clearly haven't read anything about Windows 8 development

They're releasing an ARM tablet and an x86 tablet - Surface and Surface Pro.
Surface with 31W battery (bigger than iPad 3) and Surface Pro with 41W battery

Windows 8 as a whole has been gutted and uses less ram in desktop mode than Windows 7. The Window RT tablet (will only have metro tiles and apps) will have no fans. The Surface Pro has a Core i5 and is as thick as a MacBook AIR

nice try

Nah, I haven't read anything about Windows 8 development because I'm a buffoon and know nothing about computers.

What I do know is this, Windows 8 in it's beta form is broken and badly flawed. It's much more resource intensive than I am sure Microsoft have designed it to be. It will chew through battery life as a result.

These Surface notebooks with detachable keyboards are not going to be any match for Android or iOS tablets simply because they miss the point of what a tablet should be.

The only thing I can see these machines doing is to cannibalize the ultrabook market and perhaps gain a few users who seem to think that running full blown Windows on a Tablet is a thing worth doing.

This product is more expensive than any other tablet to boot with half the battery life. I don't get it, neither will most people and as a result iPads and to a lesser extent Android tablets will continue to fly off the shelves while boxes of Surface machines gather dust.

Sigh....

I'm running it on dual screens.

Had it configured for a few weeks with triple screens, using a third smaller 15" touchscreen to run the metro menu exclusively on, but the drivers weren't stable so I've put it aside for now.

It was neat being able to click a larger icon to start an app on one of the other two screens.

What I foresee is the automatic, seamless syncing of windows 8 tablets with windows 8 PC's so that you can use a tablet as a second (or third) screen that you can do exactly as I did (using it exclusively as a menu interface) in addition to being able to transfer documents and files. If the PC screens are touch enabled as well that would be neat to swipe a file back over to the tablet.

I think they should've just called it "The Zune Pad."

I really like the idea of Windows on a tablet, and Windows 8 looks promising for that.

But, it looks like a total fucking trainwreck for Windows on the PC.

This thing looks pretty gimmicky.. Guess we'll have to see. There *are* a lot of people who haven't bought into the whole tablet concept because of a lack of a keyboard. Makes sense MS would try to fill that gap rather than just compete with Apple and Samsung directly.

it's a beta OS, a preview, it's not supposed to work right. It has de-bug code still running. When it RTMs that's when it's optimized (up to that point). For me going from Consumer to Release preview was like night and day. I have 4GB ram and over 100 tabs opened in IE10 and Chrome right now along with Zune desktop, mail, tweet deck and Photoshop and it's much better optimized than the consumer preview. Around 77% used RAM

Also, you can't compare Windows RT to Windows 8 (Surface to Surface PRO)

I hate the pastel colors, the first thing I did was set metro start to dark gray since I have to choose from a myriad of shitty colors, and remove as many of these stupid pastel colored tiles as I can. I also don't like the small app icon on a tile that's almost blending with the background, it throws me off when i'm looking for something specific. And full screen on 27" monitors is just lame.

On the plus side, there are some cool metro apps and the in-app experience is very very nice, but not doing it for me on desktop. They've also improved the hot corners in the release preview, but i still trigger them by mistake. The desktop has gotten a nice refresh

I noticed that I rarely see metro start, a lot less than I thought I would so it's not all bad.

Overall it's just a transitional OS until Windows 9 comes along.

I'd still buy a Surface PRO tab, it has exactly what I want - I can get access to flash, multi tasking, can run desktop apps like photoshop in a tablet format and I can finger it or type on a keyboard

I think there are more people than you think that want to run windows apps that they have used for years and years on a tablet.

Windows 8 rocket

The trouble I see with this Surface thing is that it's a tablet/computer built by committee which usually means it wont play in any role particularly well.

In the case of the Pro unit, it will have big issues with applications that push the processing limits of the computer and users who don't know better will bitch and moan about it not being up to their tasks. Anything processor intensive will kill battery life, which will upset more people.

In the case of the RT unit might be nice and snazzy but without a rich application store users will constantly be forced to compare their experience to that of content spoilt iPad users and to a lesser extent Android users.

Being everything to everybody rarely ever works. People who find the pro unit underpowered or the keyboard crap will gravitate back to ultrabooks. People who find the RT unit lacking in content will end up going to Android or iPad.

I think Microsoft have entirely missed the point of tablets and this product will fail ultimately.

I can't wait to get one

Asus Transformer Prime

That is all :thumbsup

How is this going to change the OEM market?

So the OEMs have to buy win8, and now make something with magnets.

Or they could build an android device. Seems a simple decision when you think about the bottom line...

why is microsoft even releasing hardware? Have they run out of ideas to steal on the software end?