Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, CEO Steve Ballmer and Windows 7 Preview

Comments

1. Amazing! Multi-touch. I wonder who thought of that first? Probably the people who have it in a working product now? Such innovation.

   And of course, can we all remember what was promised for Vista that never happened? WinFS? The list goes on for quite a while for promises and vapor that never appeared. I wonder how many of these promises actually make it into Window 7?

   Posted by Eric Welch at May 27th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
   

2. Ballmer lost all credibility as a player in real business. He gave up to easy with the pursuit of Yahoo. He should just sit there with his hands folded and try to regain his own confidence.

   Posted by todd capozzoli at May 28th, 2008 at 8:29 am
   

3. Geez – didn’t take long to turn this into MAC is better conversation. Apple did NOT invent Multi-Touch!!! They may have been the first to fully implement it into a marketable consumer device but they did not invent it.

   Multi-touch technology dates back to 1982, when the University of Toronto developed the first finger pressure multi-touch display. The same year, Bell Labs and Murray Hill published what is believed to be the first paper discussing touch-screen based interfaces. In 1984 Bell Labs engineered a touch screen that could manipulate images. The same year Microsoft began research in the area. A significant breakthrough occurred in 1991, when Pierre Wellner published a paper on his multi-touch “Digital Desk”, which supported multi-finger and pinching motions (these would later be critical to the development of modern products such as the iPhone). In 1998, Fingerworks, a Newark-based company run by University of Delaware academics John Elias and Wayne Westerman, produced a line of multi-touch products including the iGesture Pad.

   Posted by Ty Man at May 28th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
   

4. I should point out that I’m not a PC/WIndows bigot either. I’m just sick of anyone anti-Microsoft to automatically start bashing them without knowing ALL the facts.

   Posted by Ty Man at May 28th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
   

5. Did Microsoft buy Perceptive Pixel or just license their technology? Check the perceptive pixel site for a demo of how multitouch really works.

   Posted by Lynn Carpenter at May 29th, 2008 at 7:56 am
   

6. Personally I simply cannot understand why Microsoft are still going produce a 32 bit version.

   Posted by Alan Davis at June 1st, 2008 at 3:28 am
   

7. Seriously? Did this entire presentation focus on multi-touch™? How on earth is this impressive, innovative or new?

   If you obsess over making massive displays with multi-touch they look good for a few moments but if used for any length of time users get the famous ‘gorilla arm’. Is this not obvious?

   Apple for example has had multi-touch in their notebook trackpads for years and months ago fully realised the potential of this and bulit-in more gestures than, from what I’ve seen, Windows 7 can work with. And this, all in their current OS, without the fanfare of a new one, promoting features than only a tiny percentage of customers will ever use.

   For at least the next five years what will people buy when faced with this choice? The $5000 ‘table computer screen mash-up thing’ or the under $1000 mouse/keyboard/trackpad PC?

   Posted by Phelim Brady at November 4th, 2008 at 11:59 am
   

8. “Personally I simply cannot understand why Microsoft are still going produce a 32 bit version.”

   I don’t think they have much choice, there are still so many non-64 bit CPUs out there. As Windows 7 runs better on older hardware than Vista, even old PCs will be upgraded (or at least, that’s the plan!).

   Posted by Ian Cun at March 23rd, 2009 at 8:18 am