Between the Lines ZDNet. Larry Dignan. Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNets sister site Tech. Brief Text Editor 4 5 Windows Tablet' title='Brief Text Editor 4 5 Windows Tablet' />Republic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at e. Week and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1. Wall. Street. Week. Interctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. Hes a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware. Zack Whittaker. Zack Whittaker is the security editor for ZDNet. You can send tips securely via Signal and Whats. App to 6. 46 7. 55 8. PGP fingerprint for email is 4. D0. E 9. 2F2 E3. 6A EC5. DAAE 5. D9. 7 CB8. C 1. 5FA EB6. C EEA5. Stephanie Condon. Stephanie Condon is a staff writer for CBS Interactive based in Portland, Oregon, covering business technology for ZDNet. She previously covered politics for CBSNews. Tech Industry The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet. Microsofts decision to cancel its innovative Courier tablet computer a year and. Microsoft Office Tip Save As PDF Built In Did you know that since Office 2007 came out the ability to save a Word Or Excel or PowerPoint file as a PDF has been. How to Use an Android Tablet. Android tablets are digital slates running the Android operating system. They can be used for multiple purposes like checking emails. Fm1xwy2FJE_Gf169RQesRZ24=/936x527/2017/02/22/8364b0ac-b799-4b45-97fb-aee332f4be5a/samsung-pre-brief-tablets-8793-044.jpg' alt='Brief Text Editor 4 5 Windows Tablet' title='Brief Text Editor 4 5 Windows Tablet' />Optimize your storage and back up your files because the Windows Fall Update is just around the corner. At the IFA Keynote in Berlin Terry Meyerson, VP of the Windows. Discussing LGBT rights in conservative religious communities can be particularly challenging, both for people who are newly out and for those of us who simply wish. InformationWeek. com News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peertopeer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. CNET. Stephanie graduated with a B. A. in communication from Stanford University. The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet. Josh LongCNET. Steve Ballmer had a dilemma. He had two groups at Microsoft pursuing competing visions for tablet computers. One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem It was running a modified version of Windows. That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsofts Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product let alone one from inside Microsofts walls that threatened the foundation of Microsofts flagship operating system. But Sinofskys tablet friendly version of Windows was more than two years away. For Ballmer, it wasnt an easy call. Allard and Sinofsky were key executives at Microsoft, both tabbed as the next generation brain trust. A list of Xaras web and graphic design titles, including a brief intro to the products with links to the free trial downloads, more info and the Xara store. The HP Compaq TC1100 is only 10 years old, but in mobile computing years, its laughably archaic. Running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, this device. User Interface OS2005OS2008. Up to Maemo 4 AKA OS2008, the default screen is the Home screen the central point from which all applications and settings are. Adobe After Effects Glow Effect Download there. Flagship ZDNet weblog, covering a broad range of technology news. So Ballmer sought advice from the one tech visionary hes trusted more than any other over the decades Bill Gates. Ballmer arranged for Microsofts chairman and co founder to meet for a few hours with Allard his boss, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach and two other Courier team members. Concept photo of Microsofts Courier tablet. Gizmodo. At one point during that meeting in early 2. Gates waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e mail. Allard, Microsofts executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasnt trying to build another e mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting. But the device wasnt intended to be a computer replacement it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldnt want or need a feature rich e mail application such as Microsofts Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allards team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents. This is where Bill had an allergic reaction, said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach. Its not hard to understand Gates response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e mail server software and its Outlook e mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsofts development process, Gates concerns didnt bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well. Within a few weeks, Courier was cancelled because the product didnt clearly align with the companys Windows and Office franchises, according to sources. A few months after that, both Allard and Bach announced plans to leave Microsoft, though both executives have said their decisions to move on were unrelated to the Courier cancellation. The story of Microsofts Courier has only been told in pieces. And nothing has been disclosed publicly about the infighting that led to the innovative devices death. This article was pieced together through interviews with 1. Microsoft executives, as well as contractors and partners who worked on the project. None of the Microsoft employees, both current and former, would talk for attribution because they worried about potential repercussions. Microsofts top spokesman, Frank Shaw, offered only a brief comment for this story and otherwise declined to make Microsofts senior executives available. At any given time, were looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them, Shaw said in a statement when word leaked in April 2. Courier had been cancelled. Its in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time. While the internal fight over Courier occurred about 1. Rather than creating a touch computing device that might well have launched within a few months of Apples i. Pad, which debuted in April 2. Microsoft management chose a strategy thats forcing it to come from behind. The company cancelled Courier within a few weeks of the i. Pads launch. Now it plans to rely on Windows 8, the operating system that will likely debut at the end of next year, to run tablets. Couriers death also offers a detailed look into Microsofts Darwinian approach to product development and the balancing act between protecting its old product franchises and creating new ones. The company, with 9. But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the companys Windows and Office empires. Not a whimCourier was much more than a clever vision. The team, which had more than 1. Microsoft employees contributing to it, had created several prototypes that gave a clear sense about the type of experience users would get. There were still tough hardware and software issues to resolve when Microsoft pulled the plug. But an employee who worked on Courier said the project was far enough along that the remaining work could have been completed in months if the company had added more people to the team. Microsofts Shaw disputes that. There was extensive work done on the business, the technology and the experience, said a member of the Courier team. It was very complete, not a whim. Ballmer and Microsofts senior leadership decided to bet solely on Sinofskys Windows vision for the companys tablet strategy. Though it crushed some innovative work from dedicated employees, that decision had plenty of logic to it. Corporate customers may be more inclined to use a Windows tablet than, say, Apples i. Pad, because those devices will likely include well known management and security tools that should make them easy to plug into secure corporate networks. A new survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that more than 4. United States want a tablet that runs Windows. That number jumps to 5. The reason familiarity with Windows, which still runs nearly 9. PCs sold. They think a common operating system will make this experience seamless across devices, said Boston Consulting senior partner and managing director John Rose. The products will be introduced, and theyll be better than the i. Pad or they wont be. Ballmer went out of his way to underscore Microsofts Windows strategy at the companys financial analysts meeting last month, which it held concurrently with a conference where Microsoft wooed more than 5,0. Windows 8 platform for tablets. The first thing, which I hope is obvious, about our point of view is Windows is at the center, Ballmer told analysts. Certainly I can read plenty of places where people will question whether thats a good idea or not. I think its an exceptionally good idea. But using Windows as the operating system for tablets also implies that Microsoft will update the devices operating systems on the Windows time frame, typically every three years. Compare that to Apple, which seems likely to continue to update the i.