The ASUS Eeepad EP101TC with NVIDIA's Tegra
God that jargon can truly get to anyone. The term “Embedded” seems to scare a lot of people - conjuring up confusing ideas like industrial machinery, robotics, the T-800's arm in the Terminator, and Data's emotion chip in Star Trek. And what we'd like to know is, what's it doing inside an ASUS EeePad? Oh we're talking about the ARM-based NVIDIA Tegra 10-inch model. Long answer short, it's like Windows Phone 7, only it's a platform more suitable for devices like Pad computers. We can think of it Microsoft taking out the essential guts of its Windows 7 operating system, re-packaging it for ARM based computers, and transforming it into a viable competitor against the likes of the iPhone OS, the Google Android and the MeeGo.
Microsoft promises it to be a rich, connected experience and a reliable platform. The online demonstration shows devices using this operating system to be seamlessly connected to other devices, including Windows 7 computers. Documents, emails, and videos can be synchronized between the two computers. There's also Silverlight and Flash support out of the box and more importantly, programs can be attractively skinned with Microsoft's Expression Blend (this is for devs out there eyeing this platform), and multi touch support is now a native, not an optional feature.
So for devs and consumers - is it worth a shot at? The operating system, while seemingly crippled if we compare it to a full size operating system that we're used to with everything non-Mac and relate to the PC, it looks dang promising. We'll never know how it'll fair against the fast moving Android, not until we've seen these devices starting to rain down on us. Assuming this is on a non-x86 processor, we suppose this means we can't running our favorite x86 apps on this one until someone makes an emulator or virtual machine for it.
There's a Public Community Technology Preview (Public CTP) trial download available if your'e curious about this little bugger. Check out the source link below for the full vids and the link to the trial. You'll need a Windows Live ID by the way.