Without much surprise, Microsoft announced a laptop earlier today. This laptop has all the wrongs it could have. For instance, it does not have an ethernet port. Yes, you read it right, a laptop with no ethernet port.

It has a touch screen. A laptop with a touch screen. Anyone who tried the combination of a touch screen and a laptop keyboard and trackpad knows that the two don't go together. This hurts the arms very fast and as a consequence you don't touch your screen.

Oh and by the way, it ships with a stripped down version of Windows, how can they call it Windows is beyond me, which can't run WIN32 applications. Again, as everyone knows, WIN32 apps are the bread and butter of the Windows ecosystem, an openness which has made it possible for two decades for anyone out there to publish an application on their website and make it available for download and install on an arbitrary computer. This is gone with this version of Windows. Again, can we still call it Windows if it does not provide the features of Windows? If your existing applicaions don't work, you'd rather jump ship and forget about Microsoft altogether.

As for Office, I don't think 90% of users out there need the features of WIN32 Office. And, to add insult to injury, I would be extremely suprised that Microsoft get Office to work as a Centennial application given all the limitations of the concept, when you know what running VBA macros, XLLs and so on implies. Microsoft is clearly lying wrt to how much their coming Centennial Office version is compatible with the WIN32 Office. And is, by doing so, once again creating more problems for users out there who used to rely on a stable platform.

I think, with this, Microsoft just checks all the wrongs of Apple and software/hardware in general, so you can already see where it's headed...


[Edit] : oh and by the way, according to the well-informed Ars Technica, the internal pieces are soldered to the mother board.