The more I think about Vista and its sales through this year, the more I believe that sales of Vista and notebooks (or Tablet PCs) are intimately together.
I’ve noticed that Microsoft has used notebooks and Tablets in their commercials, but for the most part the focus has been on things like the Alt-Tab Flip3D effect. I don’t quite get it. The effect would be nice if the OS had simiilar features or features that Vista-targetted apps could leverage, but neither is the case. Now if you could lay the screen down and share windows with someone on the other side of the notebook/Tablet by spinning the Windows around, then maybe that’s something new and interesting. But rotating through windows? In only one place? Eh.
Hopefully we’ll see greater graphics capabilities down the road both in the OS and in SDK access, like in “opening up” the features in the DWM.
However, there are some great notebook features I’d really like to see that I think are easily communicated, make great demos, and would really get the idea across that there’s something different and extremely useful about the next version of Windows. True, almost paper-like instant on is one such feature. Effortless, ad-hoc sharing of rich content is another. Rich apps in the browser is a third.
The current version of Vista lays the foundation for these and many other such features. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for them.