A decent concept product, the Windows Vista Handbag has a small 320×240 full-color LCD on it’s outer flap, along with a seven-buttong control pad. With the screen, you can check your email, get WiFi and battery status, and complete other basic tasks without having to take your laptop out of its bag. If you hang out in the same dive bars I do, that could be a godsend.
This is just a prototype, Elekson doesn’t actually market the products it develops, but rather licenses its ideas to manufacturers, meaning if it takes off, you should be able to take your choice of bags.
Hot new accessory for Windows Vista: a handbag? [SciFi Tech]
I thought you guys already covered this “gadget”. Maybe I’m wrong.
Matt, how you can believe me when I work for Microsoft I’m not sure. But, I’m a pretty tough critic of my company. I used to run a company that ran on Linux technologies – my name is still on a Zend case study talking about how much greater PHP is (was) than ASP.NET.
I’ll tell you ten places we really suck at as a company.
But, Vista is anything but hype. I know the devs that have been working on it for the past 5 years. I know the product managers that have been identifying the right features to refine and which ones to cut.
I know the product is anything but bloated – quite the opposite.
In fact, if you’re open to it I’ll have someone come by and give you a real honest look at it and explain why it’s not a copycat in anyway.
But then again, hate is a strong word so not sure it’s worth it?
Matt, Matt, Matt… and I say that with the tone of a highschool teacher who just cought one of his students saying something stupid. The feature is called SideShow, not SlideShow (see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/sideshow.mspx). Now go to the board and write ten times “I must not call SideShow SlideShow” ;-)
And while you’re at it, you might want to correct the three or so ocurrences in your post..
@ Sascha: You’re right, of course. I’ve been on the road this week, and the borrowed computer I’m using’s spellchecker was pretty sure I meant “slideshow”, as it doesn’t recognize “sideshow”, and for that I feel regret. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll fix it as soon as I’m done at the chalkboard here.
@ Paul Murphy: Sorry to say, I have to disagree. I’ve got a loaner Dell running Vista and there’s no way that Windows Explorer should take up 89MB when idle. If that’s not bloat, I’m not sure what is. Aero is cool, if you’ve got a machine that can handle it. Without getting into a rant, I feel that before making its next OS “look” cool, MS should fix the underlying problems: browser integration, usability, and security holes that gape like Goatse.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Vista is more than a step in the right direction, it’s a leap. I hate XP more than Vista, for the record, for the same reasons. But mostly I think that instead of playing catch up, the Vista team needs to play innovate. It’s probably a more fun game, anyway.
But this is why I like SideShow: it’s innovative and overdue. If there were more things like this feature, I wouldn’t have need to point out the bloat, as the bloat would be justified. But as it stands, the amount of resources needed to just run Vista don’t balance with the functionality and real needs of a user.
This is a case of education, sorry to say and if you were a layperson walking through the airport I’d just keep walking… but you’re not. You need to look beyond the packaging (or UI in this case). You are talking about one of the the largest and most advanced pieces of software ever written and you’ve only commented on one aspect, when nearly 2 million customers were involved in shaping this product.
Nonetheless, I like your writing – regardless if I agree with you – and am glad you like SideShow. I’m not sure what type of Dell you have, but when you get graphics card with WDDM you’ll see significant performance and UI gains and I’d love to read about your experience.