Since @ChrisWalshie is waiting for it, I figured I would give everyone some more thoughts on the Asus Eee Slate that I picked up last night. Given that I’ve only been using it for 24 hours or so, my general impression is that I like it.

You have to understand what you’re getting, though. In this post I’m going to outline some of the things that I like followed by some of the things that I don’t. Hopefully this will help you determine if a Windows 7-based slate like the Asus Eee Slate is right for you.

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So I stopped by my friendly neighborhood Microsoft Store this evening and picked up the Asus Eee Slate, a tablet pc running Windows 7. I’ve been spending the evening messing around with it and have come to a few quick, preliminary conclusions:

• Windows 7 isn’t as bad as everyone thinks for using on a tablet, though there are some areas where it’s just not as easy to use as it should be
• There’s some interesting work being done on tablet-y UIs for Windows 7, but they are a bit difficult to find on the net.  I’ll likely be posting about them as I come across them.
• The Eee Slate is a really nice PC in terms of specs, but it’s a little heavy and unweildy due to its larger size.  Definitely not for one-handed operation.

I’ll post more as I use it some more.

I know it’s been a little bit of time since I’ve updated everyone, so I’d like to provide just a quick status update on the development of Media Center Manager. I had originally hoped to have the initial version of MCM out in the Marketplace by the end of February. Of course, since it’s now 2/3 of the way through March and it’s still not there, that obviously didn’t happen.

A combination of a bit of scope creep (more features are being added than I planned for the first release), real life and other projects have combined to make MCM’s first version behind schedule. I won’t give an updated release date because, to be honest, I’m not sure at this point. I will say, however, that I am still working on the project plan to have it out as soon as possible.

As a bit of background on the scope creep aspect, I will say this: I had not planned to fully add Remote Potato support into the first version but I’ve decided that it’s necessary to really get the best experience out of the app. This has, of course, added additional development time to the project. Additionally, there has been more back-end web development work necessary to support some of the meta-data used in the app than I had originally planned.

I haven’t had time to grab new screenshots or video lately… I’ve been busy coding instead. But, I’ll try to get some here in the next couple of weeks so you all can see the latest changes (and see the progress that’s been made).

I want to give a shout-out to the folks at Flickyflocky and give them my thanks for putting on a great Windows Phone 7 design contest!  Thanks to the support of friends, family and others in the tech community I was able to win the contest and secure the prize — a registration to MIX11 in Las Vegas! So I’ll be headed to MIX11 to soak up all the knowledge presented there regarding web and phone development with the Microsoft platforms! If there’s anything you’d like me to try to find out or to specifically pay attention to, please let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best.

I decided to wait a little while before I posted my thoughts on Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series.  I wanted to give myself a little time to digest all the coverage.  I also wanted to gather my thoughts on what we know and what is still up in the air.

For those that haven’t seen the new interface yet (where have you been?), here’s a quick video intro:

I’m not going to go very in depth in this post because many other sites have covered what we know with extreme depth and clarity.  If you’re looking for an in depth article with very good analysis, see this Engadget article.  For my part, I’m simply going to cover things from my personal perspective, picking out the things that I really like or things that I think will really apply to my life.

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