Microsoft’s Split-Screen Software … Useful or Useless?

Microsoft’s India Research center has developed software that splits a screen in two, with each side having its own OS, keyboard, mouse, etc. With dual-core and even quad-core processors, there’s enough horsepower in new PCs to make this a viable option. The obvious target audience for this is developing countries, where hardware is at a premium.

“At the most basic level, we are allowing two users to work completely independently on the same machine, sharing both the processor and monitor,” said Udai Singh Pawar, assistant researcher and project leader. Source: Discovery News

All right, I can see myself being distracted by the other part of the screen … besides privacy issues. Plus you’d have to be pretty close to each other in order to see the screen effectively, so “personal space” would be a problem. On the other hand, as targeted, for developing countries, this might be useful. Since the OLPC project has clarified that there are no plans for Windows, is this Microsoft’s answer?

Dell, Intel to Delay Internal Vista Deployment until SP1

My upgrade to Vista is pretty much complete, though I am still tweaking (finding and fixing issues like slow networking copying, etc.) and installing software. It’s interesting that I am upgrading a Dell laptop, and Dell and Intel have both told ZDNet UK that they would be delaying widespread deployment until SP1. In fact, with Intel, they indicate that part of the decision is that most of their employees use laptops, and “Centrino Pro is a far more capable platform [than the previous version of Centrino] based on the performance delivered by the Centrino core.” I haven’t been having any issues with my XPS M1710, but …

Mueller said that Service Pack 1 (SP1) of Vista would be “tied to the [Centrino Pro] platform” within Intel’s internal IT plan, but he suggested that Intel had delayed its Vista rollout in any case, in order to “make sure that all our internal applications operate with Office 2007 and Vista”.

Dell has also not yet rolled out Vista internally although its director of client marketing for EMEA, Eric Greffier, said it is “very close” to doing so. “We are pretty much in the same position as Intel within Dell,” he said on Thursday. Source: ZDNet UK

Well, as I’ve previously said, I don’t see any compelling reason to move to Vista if you are already using XP. Of course, this discussion for Dell and Intel centers around deployment of new HW, but it’s still interesting, nonetheless.