Mike Elgan

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates predicted nine years ago that by 2006, the Tablet PC would be “the most popular form of PC sold in America.” If you swap out the word “most” and replace it with “least,” then Gates was exactly right. Gates wasn’t talking about some closed, feature-limited, Flash-challenged, multi-touch Apple fan-boy toy. He […]

Hype surrounding Apple’s long-awaited touch tablet centers on the living room. But are iPads ready for the boardroom? The cubicle? The data center? Whether enterprises are ready for iPads or not, here they come. Let’s dispense right up front with any notion that iPads will be successfully blocked from enterprise use. It’s going to happen. […]

Every once in a while, Microsoft comes up with a super popular product, one that people love to use. No, really! Windows 95 and Windows 7 are good examples. Xbox is awesome. Word had a good run. And a lot of people love Outlook. There are others. The issue of lovable Microsoft products is separate […]

In the early 1990s, WordPerfectdominated the word processor scene, and Microsoft Word was a scrappy underdog. It’s hard to believe now, but it’s true. As Word rose in popularity, many WordPerfect users resisted. They had spent so much time learning the WordPerfect-specific keystrokes, called function keys. So what did Microsoft do? They enabled a mode […]

Lecturing professors nowadays face a room full of students paying full attention — to their laptops. One science professor achieved minor YouTube fame recently when a video surfaced showing him freezing a student’s laptop in liquid nitrogen, then smashing it on the floor. The professor commanded: “Don’t bring laptops and work on them in class!” […]

If you want to change the world with your gadget, or Web service, you’ve got to have a killer idea. You’ve got to have the vision thing. You have to build hype. But most of all, you’ve got to ship the dang thing. So many companies in this industry have got it all except the […]

ALSO SEE: Why Google Buzz Isn’t Buzzworthy If this column were a Microsoft TV commercial, I’d say that Google Buzz was my idea. Way back in April, I wrote a column in this space called Inside Google’s ‘Facebook Killer’. In that column, I proposed that Google should acquire Twitter, and build it into Google Profiles. […]

There’s no such thing as information overload. There is only filter failure. This idea, uttered by new media guru Clay Shirkya couple years ago, is both profoundly true — and encouraging. In fact, everyone is already filtering almost everything. You’re already not reading 99.9% of the available newspapers, web sites, books, blogs and newsletters. You’re […]

There’s something wrong with Google Buzz. And it’s the same thing that’s wrong with Google itself. Google is all brains and no heart. All logic and no intuition. Google Buzz should be wonderful. It makes perfect sense. So why does it annoy? Google Buzz is a connected set of social features that spans multiple services. […]

I know, I know. You’ve checked out the Apple iPad, and you’re not impressed. You think it’s a limited, pointless, overpriced unpocketable iPod for gullible trend whores drunk on Cupertino Kool-Aid. You despise its closed, proprietary platform, lack of built-in keyboard, missing camera, unremovable battery, no Flash support and monthly fee for AT&T 3G access. […]