Gizmodo has gotten their hands on a video demo of super secret project inside Microsoft called Courier. Courier looks to be an evolution of the tablet PC only designed more like an actual notebook. It’s composed of two touch screens hinged together (at least they look hinged together, the demo never shows the device in any kind of closed state). Though the two screens seem operate independently of each other, but the demo does show items being dragged from one to the other. The demo also shows that Courier supports both multi-touch and the use of stylus. All in all it looks very slick.
I’ve been a long time fan of the concept of a super PDA. I had a iPaq pocket pc back in the day, I have both an iPhone and a netbook now. I always thought there was a market for something that was as functional as a laptop, but would fit in your pocket (or maybe small hand bag). Ideally what I had always envisioned was something that was as small as a PDA and as fast as a laptop, that could be used on its own while on the go and used with a dock with a monitor and keyboard when at a desk. One computer that does everything everywhere. Or at the very least one computer that could take the place of my laptop and PDA/smart phone.
When the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) platform was unveiled a couple years ago, I thought maybe my dreams had come true. But UMPC’s never took off, I’m guessing because they were too expensive and overpowered for a PDA but underpowered for most everything else. The iPhone/iTouch is easily the best phone/PDA I’ve used, but it’s not going to replace my netbook. There are still a lot of things I need a bigger screen and a little more processing power to do. Netbooks got the price right but, but not the form factor, they are still too big, I still have to have a laptop bag. With that said, my main complaint with netbooks is that the screen resolution is too low, 1024 x 600 is just a little too low to be practical.
Which poses the problem, how do you make a small, reasonably fast computer with a usable screen resolution. I think Microsoft maybe on to something with Courier. It’s not the the dock-able super PDA I was hoping for, but it’s still looks pretty cool. A tablet that can be folded up means it’s much easier to carry when not in use. And when it is in use, you have the real estate of two 7-inch-ish screens to work with. And with the nifty UI possibilities shown in the demo and I could see this being a killer device. The Courier could fill that awkward gap between PDA/smart phone and laptop, or for a lot of people, replace them all together. Assuming MS can keep these things cheap (like netbook cheap), they might have a winner on their hands.