Ballmer hands in HP Slate at CES instead of his own homework
Steve Ballmer showed off the new HP Slate device at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last night running Windows 7 touch interface. He also forgot to mention that his dog ate all his homework for the last year.
The HP Slate device runs in a number of different modes from movie mode, e-book mode and, of course, PC mode. This allows the device to be used for multimedia, reading or everyday computing tasks.
There are no specs out yet for the HP Slate as they will be announced after the conference. Gizmodo described it as netbooky, so it’s hard to tell yet if it will be slow and laggy like the Archos 5 Tablet. This is a matter of balancing price and performance which is a challenge that Tablet makers and owners will face over the next year.
Rumors circulated yesterday that Ballmer would be showing off the Courier tablet that it has been working on over the last year. It’s disappointing that Microsoft didn’t have anything at all to show this year at CES.
Granted, Microsoft’s Windows 7 is the operating system that is getting ready to set off the touch tablet revolution in 2010. However its other pursuits aren’t looking nearly so game-changing.
Microsoft’s windows mobile operating system is lagging at least a year behind other smartphone operating systems in terms of functionality. Both Android and the Pre lapped Windows Mobile in terms of their interfaces this year while Microsoft fumbled its next version. The company didn’t fare all that well in other markets, with Microsoft Office mired in lawsuits for much of the year and the Microsoft stores trailing far behind its ubiquitous Apple cousins.
If Ballmer can’t fix these other struggling business units, it calls into question whether Microsoft is nimble enough to have a future in these emerging areas. At least he could borrow HP’s homework so he didn’t show up to one of the biggest tech events of the year empty handed.
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