With the Apple iPad barely a month away from arriving in stores, the rumor mill is starting to buzz—again—over Microsoft's purported tablet project: "Courier," a dual-screen, journal-style tablet that (if the whispers are true) may hit the streets before the year is out.
We first heard about Courier—or rumors of Courier, at any rate—back in September, with Gizmodo posting a series of purported photos and details about a hinged, dual-touchscreen journal. A leaked conceptional video demonstrated how you might use the device: one might, say, surf the Web on the left-hand screen, then select and "grab" a section of the page with a stylus and drag it over to the right-hand screen, where it would sit with your other online clippings. Interesting.
Engadget fills in some of the blanks today with a few new images, plus revised dimensions on size (less than an inch thick, and not "much bigger than a 5-by-7 photo when closed"), weight ("a little over a pound,") and horsepower (expect an Nvidia Tegra 2 mobile processor under the hood, and the same basic OS behind the Zune HD and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series).
Other Courier features might include a built-in camera (take that, iPad) and a headset jack, while the touch-enabled journal itself might end up being "Microsoft's e-book device" when (and if) the foldable tablet launches later this year ("Q3 / Q4"), Engadget claims.
What I find most interesting about the Courier chatter is that conceptually, it flies in the face of the stylus-less iPhone and iPad; in fact, from what we've seen, Courier (assuming it exists) appears to embrace the stylus, the idea being that you'd use the tablet as your digital Franklin Planner, complete with scribbled notes, sketches, doodles, you name it.
Again, though, remember that these are just rumors for now; Microsoft has yet to acknowledge that Courier even exists.
So, what do you think: Assuming (for the moment) that the Courier is the real deal, how do you think it stacks up to the iPad?
[Image credit: Engadget]
Source: Yahoo
