Microsoft's Courier seems destined to offer strong competition against the iPad. Image from Engadget.
I’ve already talked at length about the iPad, but Microsoft’s not just sitting still either. They’ve had a tablet strategy for years (I played with one awhile back running Windows XP and was reasonably impressed, even if I didn’t personally have a use for it), but they’ve also got a development path for a tablet device, codenamed Courier.
Like the iPad, Courier uses a mobile OS as its base – in this case, it’s the same OS that powers Zune HD and the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 Series phones. The device will have dual touchscreens, which could have some cool use cases, and the device, when closed, will be less than an inch think and not much bigger than a 5×7 photo, Engadget reports.
The launch date is very vague as “Q3/Q4,” the article notes, which meshes with when the Win7 phones hit, so likely it’s probably going to be out late enough for the OS to get a final polish. Given some have questioned whether Microsoft has stopped innovating lately (a question that, really, has come up often for years), I think some continue to sell a company of Microsoft’s stature short. Based on their recent track record, they seem to be shaking out a few cobwebs in some of their divisions.
SOURCE: Engadget
