You see, Microsoft and their partners have had some interesting products in tablet form, and even modest evolution centered around Windows 7 should produce something compelling. So why is this thing so underwhelming to me? I actually like HPs other Tablet designs, and have almost bought that one in particular.

I refuse to nitpick an unreleased product, as it may be something cool yet, but if I was going to introduce a “new” device in the tablet mold, I would not introduce something thicker than laptops my biggest competitors have had released for over a year.

I try really hard not to look through Apple colored glasses, but this just reeks of trying to rain on a parade that hasn’t been announced, demoed, or released. Calling it a “slate” when for years these devices ran as “Tablet PCs” also says the same thing: they worry about a niche company (Apple has pretty small market share on all it’s products, with great profit margins offsetting this so-called problem) and try to counter something that doesn’t exist with something mediocre.

I hope I am very wrong about this, and all the touchy feely good stuff Microsoft put in Windows 7 works very well with light, thinner-than-it-looks hardware, whose battery will last more than 2 hours. I’m just not feeling it on this one. The good news is, Lenovo may be getting it right very soon. Too bad they use Linux/Android, not Windows.

So day 1 of CES, interesting but not compelling. Hoping for something to blow me away, and just not seeing it yet. Except for maybe the Panasonic 152″ TV. Wow.

Which leads me to today’s bombshell news: News Corp is probably going to yank their search results from Google and sell them to Bing. This is just such a bad idea, on so many levels.

First, as mentioned in the TechCrunch article, the web is free, and information gets free quick. Somebody reads an article, blogs about it. Google then indexes said information from the blog. People still arrive at the article, just not directly. Anybody else see News Corp suing the internet, turning the people who might actually switch to Bing completely off, and back to Google. I see no win here.

Second, Microsoft has had an amazing amount of anti-trust issues on multiple continents, with their Europe difficulties still ongoing. This will do very little to take that bulls-eye off their back. No win here either.

Third, the idea that a website has to pay to link to an item of news is completely against what the internet is. That is the free dissemination of information to all that seek it. Google has brought this idea forward, as has Yahoo and now Bing by allowing people to find information they are looking for. How can there not be a backlash of scorchingly negative publicity on this deal if certain parts of the internet are only indexed by certain search engines?

It is hard to remain unbiased on an issue that affects the free and open nature of the internet like this. If News Corp thinks Google is stealing the news, then they need to edit their robots.txt file to stop it. Otherwise stop whining, embrace what the web stands for, and become the uber-news organization that will be the first one to understand this. Can one of these dinosaur executives running the various media companies (news, music, tv, movies, books) finally join us in the 21st century, and give us the media experience we are asking for?

In my home I have 2 Macs that have at their various stages of life run Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard. One has a boot camp partition that has run Windows XP, and now Windows Vista Business. I built a home theater PC (HTPC) that ran XP, but now runs Windows 7 RC1. I recently bought a laptop for my parents, which came with Vista Pro.

I have never had a Mac OS make me angry enough to say bad words. I have had Mac Apps (I am looking at you Adobe) cause me to break the curse barrier, but not the OS itself. XP and Windows 7 I place on that level as well. XP has given me interesting times, but I am able to laugh them off and keep working.

Vista, on the other hand, has driven PCs from the home.  The HTPC has been downgraded (then upgraded!) to XP then 7. I bought the second Mac laptop for my wife to do her stuff on, because I could not bear to continue administrating the PC I had been keeping on life support. The only reason Vista stays on the boot camp partition is because:

• I am lazy.
• It plays games, nothing else.

So what prompts this anger? I spent 15 minutes updating my 2 macs, and 2 hours updating the 2 Vistas today. I have the UAC (user account control, ie. Thing that annoys you every time you click on something) disabled on my Mac, so I don’t get as mad with it. On the new laptop, however, I have not disabled it, as I feel my parents need that extra layer of safety, albeit annoying safety.

The UAC is the biggest source, but not the only one. I went into the Windows update screen, kicked off an update, which promptly failed on installation. The reason? Windows was working in the background doing the same update. Why did it let me start in the first place, slowing both processes down, when a simple check would have told me to not bother, as Windows is doing the job for me. Little things. Deleting the Adobe-installed reader icon from the desktop prompting the grey screen UAC interruption. OF COURSE I WANT TO DELETE THIS ICON, I CLICKED ON IT AND MOVED IT TO THE TRASH BIN. Little things.

Again, this all seems small and petty, and it might be, but this avalanche of little annoyances has kept me on outdated OSes (XP) and soon-to-be-expiring Release Clients and not on a proper OS. The good news is that Windows 7 is quite shiny, and the little petty annoyances are mostly gone. I hate that I am going to have to spend money on 2 licences, but my sanity, and my potty mouth, need Windows 7. Or Mac OS.

I have been using Windows 7 since the first release candidate, and have decided it is my new favorite Microsoft OS. It is pleasant to use, the media center is fantastic enough to displace the mish-mash of programs that used to occupy that place in my living room, and the dock is seriously improved.

It also doesn’t annoy me the way Vista still does. There are many more things that make this the best Windows release yet, but Microsoft has to go all Tupperware on us and have us demonstrate our insane geekiness to friends and total strangers. By hosting a party to celebrate the launch of an operating system?

Can you imagine what kind of party this will end up being? For every actual cool one, I see 100 really sad ones, dragging the brand down, not highlighting what is great in this release. I understand that this launch is an event of great importance to Microsoft. I agree with that. They should have picked 4 or 5 huge cities, bankrolled some serious entertainment talent, put up some booths with their “Mac Genius” equivalents doing free upgrades, and advertise like crazy the good things in this OS.

Instead they are asking us nerds to host parties, the same nerds that never get invited to any. Brilliant.