Microsoft to price Surface for Windows RT tablet

Microsoft’s Surface tablets were generally well-received by media when they were unveiled back in June despite the fact that Redmond didn’t fully disclose everything about the Windows 8 portables. One of those key sticking points is price, a topic that Microsoft has said will be addressed close to availability.

We were initially told that Surface tablets will be priced competitively with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class PC but the latest news from Engadget suggests Microsoft is preparing to significantly undercut the competition.

An unnamed “inside source” that attended Microsoft’s recent TechReady 15 conference told the publication that Microsoft is preparing to launch the ARM-based Surface for Windows RT with 32GB of storage at just $199, putting it in the same boat as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the recently released Google Nexus 7 tablet.

One would have to imagine that Microsoft would be taking a loss on the cost of hardware at this price. Even if they broke even on the hardware costs, they’d likely sell a ton of tablets at this price which would get more people into the ecosystem. That could be part of the strategy, however, as they would hope to make up any losses through the sale of apps and other media for the tablet.

I’d personally be surprised if Microsoft went with this price. A 10-inch tablet with 32GB of storage, a cover that doubles as a keyboard and Office applications pre-loaded would make it extremely difficult for OEMs to compete.

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Dell, Lenovo and Samsung will launch Windows RT devices

Dell, Lenovo and Samsung have joined Asus (and Microsoft) in the list of companies that are confirmed to have Windows RT systems in the pipeline. News of the confirmed manufacturers comes directly from Microsoft although as The Verge points out, HP’s name is glaringly missing among the other PC builders.

Following the introduction of Microsoft’s Surface tablets in June, HP told Bloomberg they will initially only be building Intel-based business notebooks, citing input from their customers. They feel that the established x86 platform provides the best customer experience at this time and in the immediate future.

Microsoft points out that it won’t just be ARM-friendly tablets coming from these manufacturers. Some will be producing full-sized notebooks complete with keyboard and track pads, according to Redmond.

We also are now hearing some of the early battery estimates that we can expect to see with Windows RT devices. Systems with 10.1-inch to 11.6-inch displays and 25 to 42 Whr batteries have been good for between eight to 13 hours of runtime. Tests were conducted running full-screen HD video while the system was synched to a single e-mail account. Microsoft also notes that in a “connected standby” mode, systems were able to achieve between 320 and 409 hours of battery life.

As for performance, we are hearing that Windows RT systems are capable of 60fps during operating system animations and that touchpad gestures are now supported natively in the firmware. The OS has now hit the RTM build so it’s only a matter of time before we’ll start to see some early systems show up.

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Microsoft Admits Surface Play Carries Risk

Shortly after clearing up rumours that the Surface tablet won’t, in fact, cost $1000, Microsoft has been hit with another serious challenge: an uncovered admission that in the company’s view the Surface tablet is ultimately a risky play.

Buried in an annual report submitted to the SEC on Thursday, Microsoft candidly admits that the Surface tablet could chill relations with OEMs and weaken support for Windows within the PC industry.

“Even if many users view these devices as complementary to a personal computer, the prevalence of these devices may make it more difficult to attract applications developers to our platforms,” Microsoft reported in its annual 10-k report. “In addition, our Surface devices will compete with products made by our OEM partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.

For Microsoft, the Surface tablet represents an incredible dilemma. The company, as it admits elsewhere in the report, faces incredible pressure from tablet and smartphone manufacturers that control both the hardware as well as the software (read: Apple), but attempting to emulate that structure would endanger the Windows/P.C ecosystem of established but separate hardware and software manufacturers.

To compound Microsoft’s troubles, the company realizes that the P.C world is shrinking while the tablet and smartphone world grows.

“We derive substantial revenue from licenses of Windows operating systems on personal computers. The proliferation of alternative devices and form factors, in particular mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, creates challenges from competing software platforms,” Microsoft acknowledges in its report. “These devices compete on multiple bases including price and the perceived utility of the device and its platform. Users may increasingly turn to these devices to perform functions that would have been performed by personal computers in the past.”

Microsoft needs to make inroads into the tablet market, specifically the enterprise tablet market. A successful integration of the Windows ecosystem into the tablet market could solidify future growth for Microsoft, but this needs to be done delicately to not off balance Microsoft’s relationships with OEMs.

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Microsoft's Purported Windows RT Firefox Ban: A Quick Explainer

Microsoft is giving Internet Explorer an unfair technical advantage in Windows RT (Windows 8 for ARM-based devices) that is the "first step toward a new platform lock-in," according to the Mozilla Foundation. The group behind the open source Firefox browser is complaining that Internet Explorer will be the only browser on Windows RT allowed to run in the traditional desktop environment.

That means IE will be able to integrate with Windows RT in ways that competing browsers can't, giving Microsoft's IE a leg up in terms of speed, stability and security, Mozilla’s general counsel, Harvey Anderson, said in a blog post.

Mozilla also suggests that Microsoft may be flirting with antitrust violations by freezing out other browsers from Windows RT, echoing issues that sparked the software giant's antitrust battle with the U.S. government more than a decade ago.

What is Windows RT?

Windows RT is the version of Windows 8 designed primarily for ARM-based single-panel touch tablets, but is also expected to arrive on lightweight laptops. Windows RT will have two user interfaces: a touch-friendly Metro-style interface and a traditional Windows 7-like desktop. This is similar to Windows 8 for x86 chips. The difference, however, is how Windows 8 and Windows RT handle applications.

How Does Windows 8 Handle Apps?

Windows 8 will have three application types: Metro, classic desktop, and Metro-style enabled desktop browsers (MEDB). Mozilla is already working on creating an MEDB version of Firefox for Windows 8 that allows users to install the browser once and run it on both the Metro and desktop interfaces. However, Windows 8 will only allow your system's default MEDB to run in the Metro interface. In other words, you can't run Firefox in Metro if IE is your default browser.

What About Windows RT?

Windows RT will focus on offering Metro-style apps optimized for touch devices and connected to cloud services such as SkyDrive. But there will also be a traditional desktop to run programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (all four are bundled with Windows RT), Windows Explorer and the desktop version of IE. Legacy Windows desktop apps will not run on Windows RT.

The problem is that Windows RT does not have an equivalent MEDB class of apps, according to Mozilla's Asa Dotzler. MEDB apps on Windows 8 can access powerful application programming interfaces (APIs) that browsers need "to deliver modern capabilities and performance," Dotzler wrote in a blog post. Third-party browsers on Windows RT will not be getting the same access to those APIs as IE will have, according to Mozilla. "Without that access," Dotzler says, "no other browser has a prayer of being competitive with IE."

What is Microsoft Saying?

Microsoft has not responded to PCWorld's request for comment.

Who Cares About Windows 8 for Tablets Anyway?

It's not clear if ARM-based Windows devices are going to be an important factor when Windows 8 starts rolling out this year. Previous reports claimed that five or fewer ARM-based Windows RT devices would be available at launch. And market research firm NPD DisplaySearch predicts that Windows RT tablets will grow slowly during the first five years, going from 1.5 percent of all tablets sold worldwide to 7.5 percent by 2017.

So whether Mozilla will miss out by not being on equal footing with Internet Explorer on Windows RT is up for debate. Nevertheless, Microsoft's actions, if accurate, could give the company an unfair advantage if Windows RT becomes a popular option for consumers and device makers. And Microsoft's actions could bring up antitrust problems for the company in the U.S. and Europe, according to Mozilla.

The irony, of course, is that Microsoft's original antitrust problems in the late 1990s and early 2000s were sparked by how the company bundled Internet Explorer with Windows. But until Microsoft has had a chance to explain don't count on history repeating itself just yet.

Connect with Ian Paul (@ianpaul) on Twitter and Google+, and with Today@PCWorld on Twitter for the latest tech news and analysis.

By Ian Paul, PCWorld

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Gesture Control System Uses Sound Alone

Sound waving: SoundWave uses the Doppler effect and the microphone and speakers in your computer to sense and interpret gestures.

Microsoft Research

When you learned about the Doppler Effect in high school physics class—the wave frequency shift that occurs when the source of the wave is moving, easily illustrated by a passing ambulance—you probably didn't envision it helping control your computer one day.

But that's exactly what a group of researchers are doing at Microsoft Research, the software giant's Redmond, Washington-based lab. Gesture control is becoming increasingly common and is even built into some TVs. While other motion-sensing technologies such as Microsoft's own Kinect device use cameras to sense and interpret movement and gestures, SoundWave does this using only sound—thanks to the Doppler Effect, some clever software, and the built-in speakers and microphone on a laptop.

Desney Tan, a Microsoft Research principal researcher and member of the SoundWave team, says the technology can already be used to sense a number of simple gestures, and with smart phones and laptops starting to include multiple speakers and microphones, the technology could become even more sensitive. SoundWave—a collaboration between Microsoft Research and the University of Washington—will be presented this week in a paper at the 2012 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing in Austin, Texas.

The idea for SoundWave emerged last summer, when Desney and others were working on a project that involved the use of ultrasonic transducers to create haptic effects, and one researcher noticed a sound wave changing in a surprising way as he moved his body around. The transducers were emitting an ultrasonic sound wave that was bouncing off researchers' bodies, and their movements changed the tone of the sound that was picked up, and the sound wave they viewed on the back end.

The researchers quickly determined that this could be useful for gesture sensing. And since many devices already have microphones and speakers embedded, they experimented to see if they could use those existing sensors to detect movements. Tan says standard computer speakers and microphones can operate in the ultrasonic band—beyond what humans can hear—which means all SoundWave has to do to make its technology work on your laptop or smart phone is load it up with SoundWave software.

Chris Harrison, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University who studies sensing for user interfaces, calls SoundWave's ability to operate with existing hardware and a software update "a huge win."

"I think it has some interesting potential," he says.

The speakers on a computer equipped with SoundWave software emit a constant ultrasonic tone of between 20 and 22 kilohertz. If nothing in the immediate environment is moving, the tone the computer's microphone hears should also be constant. But if something is moving toward the computer, that tone will shift to a higher frequency. If it's moving away, the tone will shift to a lower frequency.

This happens in predictable patterns, Tan says, so the frequencies can be analyzed to determine how big the moving object is, how fast it's moving, and the direction it's going. Based on all that, SoundWave can infer gestures.

The software's accuracy hovers in the 90 percent range, Tan says, and there isn't a noticeable delay between when a user makes a gesture and the computer's response. And SoundWave can operate while you're using the speakers for other things, too.

So far, the SoundWave team has come up with a range of movements that its software can understand, including swiping your hand up or down, moving it toward or away from your body, flexing your limbs, or moving your entire body closer to or farther away from the computer. With these gestures, researchers are able to scroll through pages on a computer screen and control simple Web navigation. Sensing when a user approaches a computer or walks away from it could be used to automatically wake it up or put it to sleep, Tan says.

Harrison thinks that having a limited number of gestures is fine, especially since users will have to memorize them. The SoundWave team has also used its technology to control a game of Tetris, which, aside from being fun, provided a good test of the system's accuracy and speed.

Tan envisions SoundWave working alongside other gesture-sensing technologies, saying that while it doesn't face the lighting issues that vision-based technologies do, it's not as good at sensing small gestures like a pinch of the fingers. "Ideally there are lots of sensors around the world, and the user doesn't know or care what the sensors are, they're just interacting with their tasks," he says.

Credit  : http://www.technologyreview.com/

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