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.