Way back in the fall of 2001, BoomTown attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer.

It is an obsession he has never given up.

So it is ironic that all the hype has suddenly and firmly coalesced around the particulars of the tablet that Apple has developed–a device being spearheaded by CEO Steve Jobs and likely to arrive in the coming months.

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Displaying BoomTown’s advanced age and elephantine cache of meaningless tech memories, after news yesterday that the software giant was plunging into the retail market, I was surprised to find little mention that Microsoft’s last store effort had ended in failure in 2001.

That’s not to say it’s a particularly good or bad idea to hire a former Dreamworks and Wal-Mart exec named David Porter as vice president of retail stores to create Microsoft-branded stores–or as the company announced yesterday, “to create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience.”

Just as long as the Zunes go on the back shelf!

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Don’t miss this video below from WSJ.com last week about AT&T (T) stores using Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface table-sized touch computer to help customers, which is one of the first commercial applications of the device.
Surface actually got a demo at our D5 conference last May, but BoomTown has been partial to this very funny video spoof [...]

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Can’t be in a multibillion negotiation with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer?
Well, you can see him in action–and in fine form–in this video of the interview he did at D5 this year with Walt Mossberg.
Here, Ballmer talks about a variety of things, such as how to foster innovation at a big company, Windows Vista, immigration, [...]

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While the interview Walt and I did with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs took up a lot of the attention, don’t miss this very interesting interview Walt also did with Gates’s main man, Steve Ballmer. The hard-charging CEO does not disappoint here and also demos the new Surface table computer, too.
By way of [...]

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The interview Walt and I did with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs last week at D5 is now the No. 1 podcast on Apple’s iTunes, beating out National Public Radio’s “Car Talk,” “This American Life” and the Best of YouTube.

The link to the joint interview on iTunes is here, in video and [...]

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