4 Things Microsoft Windows 7 Tablets Will Need to Succeed

Microsoft plans to reveal

a new line of Windows 7 tablets during January’s Consumer Electronic Show,

according to unnamed sources speaking to The New York Times.

According to those sources, a Windows tablet by Samsung will

reportedly be “similar in size and shape to the Apple iPad,” although “not as

thin.” It will also feature a “slick” slide-out keyboard, and run Windows 7 in

landscape mode with “a layered interface that will appear when the keyboard is

hidden.” The

Dec. 13 article also suggests that Dell and other manufacturers will produce

tablets.

Microsoft’s goal, of course, is to swipe some mind- and

market-share from both the Apple iPad and the growing ranks of Android-based

tablets. Company CEO Steve Ballmer will apparently debut the devices during his

keynote at CES, in essence repeating his performance at this year’s conference,

when he unveiled tablets from Hewlett-Packard and a pair of smaller

manufacturers.

Hewlett-Packard subsequently acquired Palm, leading to

rampant speculation that it would replace Windows as a tablet operating system

with the Palm WebOS. While HP will

reportedly use WebOS for a selection of

consumer-oriented tablets in 2011, it also produced a more enterprise-focused

Windows 7 device: The HP Slate 500, which features a 8.9-inch touch-screen,

inward- and outward-facing cameras for video conferencing, and a 1.86GHz Intel

Atom Z540 processor.

For more, read the eWeek article: Microsoft Windows 7 Tablets Need 4 Things to Succeed.