Microsoft Courier dual-screen device won’t see light of day

The prototype or mockup video of the concept “Courier” impressed a lot of people when it was first leaked many months ago. Leaked is the wrong term. It was intentionally put out there. The video was way to polished to be for internal use only. It was created to get a sense of the buzz around the device. Smart idea actually. It got a lot of people talking.

Anyway, the Courier was to be a folding dual-screen tablet running a dead simple operating system, focused on content creation stuff like note-taking, journaling, planning and information gathering. It was a pen-usable tablet.

We hear from Gizmodo today that the courier project is now dead. Why would that be if so many people were interested? The Courier looked to be the anti-iPad. This was the tablet many were holding out for.  It was for the student, the idea-person and the responsible spouse or employee in all of us.

My easy answer to the reason for deadness, battery life. I have no doubt in my mind that battery life is why product isn’t feasible now.  Having 2 screens, you of course have a lot of power consumption right there, plus the touch input on both, and the video and information processing. This thing wouldn’t be able to be made at a reasonable price or weight either. And a device maker would be discouraged even more with $300 netbooks everywhere.  Is this product impossible? No it’s very possible. A lighter operating system based on the WinCE kernel could be tied specifically to the Courier and run quite well. We’ll never know if that was the plan I guess.

Sadly (for Microsoft) the idea is out there for the taking by another company now. So if they want to return to the project later, it’s possible they are beaten by someone else.  This is good for those of us who just want the tablet or reader that meets our needs.  A smaller niche company can be more flexible with the solution, using a modded platform that might work perfectly, one that Microsoft would never think to touch.

For those of us who thought the Courier was their shining light, let’s see if the Notion Ink comes through to save the day, or maybe the HP Slate will surprise us.  The last few months we’ve had too many heartbreaks.  We deserve to have our day.

Update: The HP Windows 7 Slate was cancelled too, probably for good reason, (bulky Win7 OS). Now that HP has recently purchased Palm, they also own the Palm WebOS and will likely be using that for their slate tablet projects.