It all started with the frenzied rumor that Apple is coming out with a new device that is said to be a tablet PC.

As many of you may remember, about 5 years ago tablet PC is touted as the next hot thing and most PC manufacturers came out with their version of tablet PCs. They did find take-up in niche market but the general consumer didn’t embrace them. Underpowered, unwieldy, inefficient use of stylus and tablet PC fizzled into oblivion.

In fact, if I’m not mistaken I still have that piece of Fujitsu tablet gathering dust somewhere in the shelves.

So why would anyone bet on them making a comeback this year?

For one, the idea of a computer device that can be operated by natural human movements is still very much in favour. Think of Tom Cruise’s hand controlled computer operation in the film Minority Report and you will get the idea.

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Tom Cruise in the sci-fi film Minority Report

But why now? I suspect, they would not want to be a laggard to a market that the oh-so-trendy Apple is planning to go into. Especially after being caught napping with the runaway success of iPod and iPhone, Microsoft especially do not want to be left behind and play catchup again.

It was rumored that Apple will lift the veil later this month though Apple, as usual, has been very secretive and give little away.

So what should they do? Potong jalan of course. Steve Balmer must have decided that the best way is to steal the thunder. On Saturday at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he showed off 3 models of tablet PC from HP, Pegatron and Archos that will be launched soon. To add impact to the presentation, a new term ‘slate PC’ was introduced. Unfortunately, not much details were released other than the PCs will be using (wait .. wait..) Windows 7! How very exciting… not.

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Personally, I don’t think the Microsoft approach is going to make much impact. It really is just an old horse in new makeup. Do you know that Microsoft has also another touch-screen-PC line called ‘Surface‘? You don’t? There you go…

My prediction is that Apple’s tablet PC will resemble more like a bigger, more powerful iPod Touch rather than a small one-piece Macbook. It will probably sport a new GUI that make heavy use of muti-touch-tactile-screen operations. Like iPhone and iPod, it will not be designed to be an all-singing multi purpose equipment but designed for limited specific uses only (but do it very well).

I may not opt for an iPhone and I have not converted to the Mac. But I do like my iPod Touch and if Apple’s track record is anything to go by – I will soon be queuing in line for Apple’s new tablet thingy (iSlate?).

Related articles :

• What is a tablet, anyway? (cnn.com)
• CES 2010: Gadget show begins ‘year of the tablet’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Microsoft CEO unveils new HP tablet (canada.com)

After launching a jab at Google via the Office Web announcement, Microsoft today delivered a left hook that it hoped will deliver the solid punch to rock its rival, Google the Cloud King.

Microsoft and Yahoo seal web deal screamed the headline today. Microsoft’s Bing search engine received a shot in the arm with this deal that allows Microsoft to take control of Yahoo’s search engine and search advertising technology.

Funny eh.. Yahoo! who once ruled the search engine world ago is now resigned to be the sales-rep. Yahoo! new CEO, Carol Bartz, thought that this is a great deal. Let someone else deal with the techie stuff headache, we’ll still get to keep 88% of the ad-revenue – plus the deal would “boost Yahoo!’s annual operating income by $500m and secure $200m in savings“. The income is from guaranteed revenues per search for the first 18 months of the 10-year deal + rights on premium adverts. Premium Adverts is trade talk for advert deals that are concluded face-to-face (usually with major accounts) as opposed to those placed online by mere mortals like us and these deals accounts to almost half of Yahoo!’s advert income.

Apparently, it does not matter that Yahoo! doesn’t get a single cent of cash upfront out of giving away its family jewel. Some CEOs sure think ‘out-of-the-box’. Maybe she’s been visiting PKFZ to pick up some tips. Using my Casio calculator, I can’t figure out how (US$500 million + US$200 million) x 10 is better than US$47 billion – that’s before taking into account the fact that the income is only coming in over ten years.

Ask this: What happens in 10 years, when the partnership ends and Microsoft’s Bing engine powers all of Yahoo’s search queries? Maybe the same way when Yahoo! send the out-of-date Geocities to its demise.

On the other hand, Microsoft is obviously delirious that its effort to take control of Yahoo! since late 2007 has finally borne fruit. And it appears to cost Microsoft a lot less than US$47.5 billion that was offered in Jan 2008.

“Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Mr Ballmer. “Microsoft and Yahoo know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search,”

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What does this mean?

• In one stroke, Microsoft will now get to control 30% of the US advert market. (We wonder how will this translated into iron-clad features of the to-be released Windows 7) and Microsoft finally gets to be a genuine contender in the search-ads world
• Yahoo! is now no more a search engine company, but is an advertising and media company (like AOL)

The King of Cloud, meanwhile, still controls over 2/3 of the ad-sales market. Looking down at the Babel Tower being built by the pretenders. As at the time of writing, we haven’t received any reports of shudders from the throne yet.

Yeah… it seems that the catfight is going to get more interesting by the day. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they are putting their cash-cow app “Microsoft Office” on line. By 2010, a new lite version of Microsoft Office called “Office Web” will be available online for free.

Will the Cloud King shudders with fear? After all, the Desktop King recently encroached the Cloud Kingdom with their own search engine called ‘Bing’ and now they have put their most potent arsenal in the Cloud. (Office brought in US$4.5 billion of revenue for first quarter of 2009 out of the total US$13.6 billion earned by Microsoft)

Office Web will be part of the Office 2010 general release, which is slated for the first half of next year. And if your organisation is a ‘volume license customers’ – you can run it through your own webserver. Mere mortals like us though will have to access Office Web through Microsoft’s Windows Live portal.

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Live service. Thank you very much…

How will you accept this new development? Personally, I’ve tried Google Apps. And with our standard of Internet connectivity in this country, it is a very frustrating experience. So I don’t give much thought about it and I suspect the same nonchalant attitude will be reserved towards Microsoft’s new project.

Really, if I want free office applications to do my work, I could just take out this month’s CHIP cd and install the free OpenOffice.org 3.1. They’ve improved a lot recently and I don’t have to be a slave to the Net to do my work. PS. just in case, we should also avoid the birth of Terminator’s Skynet Superman II: Director’s cut release .

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The latest buzz this week in the IT world has to be the news from Mountain View that after dallying with the Chrome browser, Google wants to go into OS development next.

The hegemony of Microsoft is continually being challenged by the Google boys. Google is undoubtedly the King of the Cloud – now that they have dominated the search engine world. Get this… for the year 2008, Google generates US$21,128,514,000 just from advertising income alone. (That is a cool RM74 billion).

The King is not happy with his current kingdom, which king ever has

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, and wants to extend his kingdom down to desktop-earth. His logic said that since the internet cloud is accessed through the plain old browser, the next step would be to conquer the browser world. Voila! Google Chrome was born.

Unfortunately, the Cloud King discovered that the browser by the incumbent Desktop King, ‘IE’ ,is hard to beat. Most of the world netizens are tied to the operating system provided by the Desktop King. 87.8% to be exact. And the Desktop King has sneakily made his browser intertwined with the OS. No amount of legal challenges and court orders have managed to separate them.

What is the Cloud King to do?

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What else, let’s build our own OS

, say the King. We’ll say that the OS will be simpler and fresher. Surely the faithful netizens would love a new thing that’s clean and elegant as Google interface – compared with the complex overbearing system they have to bear with now. The Fruity King Pretender? We’ll deal with him later. Let him rest first. Corvette Summer buy

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And that’s how we are faced with Google Chrome OS – supposed in one year time. Of course, they put it in a nicer context:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

That will be interesting to watch eh. I just hope that it does not become gajah dengan gajah bergaduh, kancil ditengah mati tersepit.

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What do other people think?

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commented that:

Microsoft may look vulnerable, but it’s a behemoth with loyal (if not enthusiastic) users, billions in cash and a willingness to eventually catch up to faster competitors.

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Ms Foley, who writes under category ‘All About Microsoft’ in Zdnet cautioned whether Will Google’s Chrome OS look rusty by late 2010?.

All the world is a playground – and when your salary comes to RM78 billions – the Cloud King can afford to play a lot!