Next Gen Windows Slate Device Revealed at TechEd 2011 NZ
At TechEd 2011 New Zealand Jeff Johnson and Patrick Hevesi showed off some new Windows “Slate” style device in the WCL101 Come and see the latest and greatest in Windows Devices session. — Below is a number of photos of the devices …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's slate story has been a string of near-misses: the slate PC Microsoft and H.P. planned to reveal ahead of Apple in January 2010, followed by reports that H.P.'s 'other' slate shipped running Android instead of Windows. Against that backdrop, a live demo of new Windows slate-style hardware matters mostly as evidence the program still exists.
The timing is the tell. Two months before this TechEd New Zealand session, Microsoft published its first public preview of Windows 8, which repositioned the OS around touch-first slates. Showing devices now, before that OS ships, frames them as forward-looking hardware for an operating system buyers cannot yet deploy.
First-order effects
- Jeff Johnson and Patrick Hevesi put working Windows slate hardware in front of an enterprise IT audience at TechEd 2011 NZ, giving Microsoft's Windows Devices effort visible momentum after the cancelled-or-pivoted H.P. slate left the category without a flagship Windows device.
Second-order effects
- OEMs watching the demo face a sequencing problem: hardware shown today runs against an OS still in preview, so vendors like H.P. — whose slate ambitions already drifted to Android once — must decide whether to hold Windows slate roadmaps for Windows 8 or keep shipping alternatives in the interim.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Windows tablets remain a pre-announcement category until the next OS lands, leaving the installed base of Windows 7-era tablet experiments — like Gateway's leaked EC18T from 2009 — as stopgaps rather than a platform.
The trend: Windows slate hardware is being demoed ahead of the software that defines it, making the Windows 8 release cycle, not any single device, the real gate for Microsoft's tablet push.