Jim Alchin of Microsoft gave ten bay area bloggers a sneak peek at Longhorn and a free dinner. Great idea to bring people like this together. Read Thomas Hawk’s account here.
Some excerpts:
“Microsoft is one of the more progressive companies with regards to blogging”
“One of the most impressive aspects about Longhorn is the speed with which it catalogs, organizes and searches your PC”
“The eye candy aspects of Longhorn from a design standpoint were delightful.”
“Jim asked questions about some of the security and privacy issues with the inclusion of meta data in Longhorn.”
“Jim and Microsoft are very excited about Media Center. Where the tablet sales may be a little bit of a disappointment for Microsoft at present they are very optimistic about Media Center.”
“I was able to ask Jim about when we might see satellite or cable HDTV support in Media Center and he said he thought later this year.”
“One of the primary purposes for Jim getting together with us was to talk about how we felt about some of the things that you will see in Longhorn.”
Lots more too.
As to Thomas’ comment about Tablet sales, yeah, there’s almost a magnitude of difference between Tablet sales and Media Center systems. But don’t forget, anyone can create a Media Center system. You can’t do the same with a Tablet. The licensing with the Tablet OS is tightly held. For now, this isn’t a huge deal, but it has depressed Tablet experimentation and adoption. Microsoft has made some incremental adjustments to licensing and fees for the Tablet OS and I imagine it’ll continue, so we’ll have to see where it takes us.