It better be real, I have about 20 friends going gaa-gaa for this thing, they're practically brainstorming features 24/7... and these people are NOT geeks.

So far friends have suggested:

1. Integration for Blackboard and other Electronic Course Systems (e.g. Moodle) for the courier, like Facebook works with WM7S. The calendar, announcements, resources, lecture slides etc being displayed natively in the system's interface.

2. Recorded leactures, with the slides taking up one pane, the other pain divided half as notes and half as a video of the lecturer speaking.

3. An Office that allows tasks such as Pie-Charts to be drawn roughly by hand (e.g. a circle divided into four segments) followed by the system offering to covert it into a real pie chart and for the data to be modified (i.e. input the %age of each segment and it will reformat "automagically")

Because I showed the leaks to a couple of friends in Uni they now all want a piece... it's ridiculous.

Microsoft would do wisely to release this product, even if it's a complete disappointment it would still probably sell well.

Oh yeah one other thing, if they can recreate that paint application shown off at TechFest the other day, I'm buying this thing in a heartbeat.

This is pretty cool. The other form factor that I would like to see would be something that could fit into on of those leather portfolios instead of the normal pad of paper. Ideally, it would have a screen big enough to show an 8 1/2"x11" document without scaling.

Hey Northern Geek - I think the second video shows a variant of that Paint type application - it shows her mixing the colours then drawing it on the second page.... :)

Steve,

Fabretti and I are poised for reviewing Courier if it ever escapes from the Lab..  

Somehow I get the feeling Courier is the tablet that BillG really wanted

Cupertino start your photocopiers please..

These are way more advanced than the teaser that first broke cover late last year, so hopefully someone is actually developing this, and not just developing the movies.

I couldn't believe it when I saw that Apple has made no effort to integrate handwriting into their slate - as a 24 hour a day OneNote user the idea of not being able to interact with a pen  was a huge miss. Even XBox/Natal will work with a pen

I'm at the front of the line for Courier:-)

Go Redmond

I have been leaning toward a netbook to use when traveling so I can leave the 4lb laptop behind.  I'm trying to find the right combination of small, mobile communciation (I skype a lot), day-timer, e-mail, preferably bluetooth so I don't need a leash.  If this comes out with some basics such as webcam, wifi, bluetooth and of course complete syncing with my laptop's Outlook.  I would get one without hesitation.  I am holding off buying something until this Fall because so many interesting things are coming out this year.  Yeah, I know, that's all the time.  But these are different - these are functional, and I really like the folding feature.  Very compact and great for the long plane flights.  I will be watching battery life, netbooks are now getting over 10 hours.