Kvetching? Hoi vey.

This would be a big step forward for SideShow...which, let's face it, has been nothing more than a side-show for microsoft in terms of people using it. I would be interested in seeing how this would work with WinMo 5 and 6 systems.

I would love to be able to have my multiple Windows Mobile devices interact with Vista more - imagine being able to switch your widgets or video to "Pocket Mode" and move them around with you. That'd be kinda neat.

My one problem with this rumor is just how well current devices would be able to use SideShow. Would this essentially be like remote desktop for single SideShow applications?.

I would. but only if I'd died of shame :o

I can see the benefits of using a write-once technology like this for archival purposes but $5.99 for 1GB when I can buy at least 2 or 3 backup DVD'Rs for that price doesn't cut it with me.

If they can make these things $3.99 - I'll be sold. For those of us who don't just use mass storage drives for downloading movies and music this type of thing is useful for storing your important data in a compact form.

I do have to mirror some of the above comments though...surely the lock on existing SD cards is more than enough.

I will bring this up only because I do in fact read e-Books when I'm traveling - a PDA is much cheaper than the Kindle and even without an SD card could fit at least a few PDF books on it. You can zoom in and out - leave bookmarks - turn pages - all of that and it doesn't cost that much. I'll admit, it's nowhere near as much fun as reading a real paperback book but I disagree with Amazon - devices like this are not the future of reading or books for that matter.

When they can sell people e-ink Books composed of say..500 blank LCD leaves that load up the content on pages when you select the book - call me. Before then, I'll stick to my Barnes and Noble. Thank you.

Someone else on here knows what a Fourier transform is?...Wow. Color me impressed.

I guess engadget's core readership weren't lab mice afterall.

May I be the first to say thank you for the link to the website in a language that to me can only be described as either Russian..Turkish..or monkey.

For now, I'm going to say monkey.

Thanks for the video Engadget but how about some specs in your post to go with it?. I see Nokia N9-something and I immediately want to compare it to the Nokia N95.

I guess something that's missing from these threads is an answer to why it should be okay to download music without paying for it. Here's my own justification:

I feel that as a consumer, I have a right to listen to a record from start to finish before I purchase it. If I want to buy a movie or a boxed tv series, I have the option of watching it on TV first or seeing it at a cinema and forming my own opinion on the product.

A 30 second sample of a song chorus (re:iTunes) is not enough for me to decide whether a song is good enough to buy or not. Add this in to the fact that (in my opinion) less than 10% of all new music coming out these days is even scantly original and you will find a justified reason for the consumer having the right to download an album for free.

If I've downloaded an artists work and I like it - I'll go out and buy the CD. It's as simple as that. I think the Industry needs to wake up to the fact that they have to change the model for the way they do things - why not encourage people to support artists by offering BETTER music and more opportunities to hear it before you buy it?.

If a person has both sympathy and passion for a singer or band - they'll support their music. Tactics such as throwing DRM (Zune), locked Libraries (iPod) and other restrictive measures only fuel the problem.

Case in point: I listened to the new song by Santana and Chad Kroeger on YouTube a few weeks ago. I liked it so I thought I'd buy it on iTunes. What did I get for my money?. A poorly encoded track that was nothing near the 320kbps that I'm accustomed to from my own CD rips. Not only that but it was locked to iTunes. WTF?. I had to scour the net for tools to decrypt music that I PAID for just so I could use it with other media players - this type of lock down on content is and should be considered illegal.

I can't quite tell if I'm impressed with what I've seen of Android yet..

In appearance, it seems to be a cross between Windows Mobile, a generic Cell phone OS and (primarily) Mac OSX for the iPhone.

This isn't a bad thing but I was expecting a little bit more out of the platform. Some of the features that I liked after seeing that video were the Open GL capabilities (demonstrated by the globe) as well as (some) of the interface.

I think I remember seeing an Opera icon on the bottom of the screen but I may be wrong - in any case, I was hoping that this OS would deliver better browsing capabilities than it's competition - something that still appears lacking even in this preview. I'm not sure whether he was really using 3G but did you notice how slow the pictures on that Berkeley page loaded up?. Jeez. I've had GPRS work faster.

I'd like Google to leak out a few more videos of what this platform has to offer - given the wealth of free services that they offer online, I was hoping that they would have a few "mobile" versions of these available that wouldn't require you to use the browser to access them. They seem to have integrated Google Maps in quite well which is good.

From a graphical perspective - I've seen 5 year old PDA's deliver Quake and Tomb Raider rendering at just as impressive speed and quality so Android is going to need to step up the game a little bit - show me something I haven't already seen!.

The one thing that excited me after seeing that video is something I think I heard. Did he say you could develop on it using Delphi?. I haven't known many mobile operating systems to ever offer this but even if it's a small thing, it certainly is interesting.

I'm neither an Apple or Microsoft fanboy, but I will say this..

Surface is essentially an R&D Project from the looks of it and I wouldn't be surprised if the first time it's commercially available is 2009.

I've been lucky enough to use some of those devices engadget's featured over the years that all sorts of troll's claim will never see the light of day - anyone remember that $40,000 computer built into a mirror?. I've used one. One of the problems that companies like Microsoft trying to push the boundaries of a form factor run into is finding ways to keep up the investment (or profit) in an idea long enough for it to even get to the stage where it's viable as a general consumer product.

Just because MS makes billions doesn't mean that all of that is getting thrown into ideas like Surface so give the guys behind it a break and be patient. If it turns out to be everything it's aspiring to be, I'm sure that at least one or two of you will eventually have one in your office or living room.