Sven Johannsen

90% of them iOS and Android devotees who want it to fail

As Jason said I disagree that it is all that bad. I regularly use my DUO and HP slate in touch mode, 9 and 10" screen respectively. Slate supports a pen, Duo doesn't. Yes full blown Windows apps, that were written expecting a 23" monitor, keyboard and mouse are virtually unusable....but a good deal of things I do are emminantly doable. IE is not bad, getting into media is not bad, even Outlook is OK. Angry birds, solitaire, etc. work just fine. MS has a touch pack of little apps that highlight the ability of touch to work, some games, a 3D Earth supporting multitouch and others. The issue in my view is that it isn't the OS that is the problem here, it is the apps, and the expectation of the app developers, along with the hardware manufactures unwillingnes to sink any R&D into a Windows tablet, beyond throwing a GUI on startup, on top of Netbook hardware. Netbooks suck. Shouldn't be surprised that a netbook with a touch screen isn't thrilling.

The biggest issue is UI sizing. the little things you need to click with a mouse are sometimes hard to hit with a finger. Again I think this is largely a hardware issue. The close X on my Windows Tablet is really no smaller than many UI features on my cell phones. The icons on my iPhone aren't any bigger than the ones on my Windows task bar. Office ribbon icons are as big as any soft key on Focus. Why should I have a harder time hitting them? Well, if the touch screen isn't the right resolution for the task..... I have actually learned to be pretty accurate with my finger. I can be damn accurate using the N-Trig stylus on my Slate. [Aside - if you see a stylus they did it wrong. BS. Note that stylii for capacitive touch screens are quite popular, even though it is like writting with a large felt marker. With my Slate I can select music with my finger, type a letter with my keyboard, and sign that document with a pen.]

The Samsung Tablet passed out is an i5 with 4G of RAM, if I'm not mistaken. It ran Windows apps. Notably Visual Studio, as well as the new W8 gui and apps. The catch is going to be if that class machine is going to cost $2000 and last 2 hours, or if they understand it needs to be sub $1000 and last 8. I don't think it needs to undercut the cheapest iPad and Android Tablets, but it needs to be reasonable for what it does, which is more than run overgrown phone software.

Suffice it to say, I'm a tablet fan. Love my iPad, but there are things it doesn't do well. I don't expect it to. Thing is I don't think there is anything I can do with the iPad that I couldn't do with the right software (which admittedly doesn't exist yet) on a Windows based Tablet.

Apple folks - tell me you wouldn't like the option of running OSX on your iPad, even if you had to use a magic dock, magic keyboard, and magic mouse. You know OSX isn't (or wouldn't be) finger friendly either. There would be a touch screen Mac if it was.

So, one platform that can support the iPadish like app experience AND, given the right hardware, that and legacy Windows too. What's wrong with that. Cool, I say.

P.S. short cost discussion. I just got a new iPad, 64Gig model. Cost around $800. That's what my 64Gig HP Slate cost, but it came with an active stylus and dock. So it has 3 USB ports, HDMI out and an SD slot, for that $800. iPad has 3G, HP doesn't. Meh. Gotta try to look at comparable devices when you look at cost.

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