Will this tablet give you a headache?

Has your computer ever frozen on you? Of course it has but don’t worry, it even happens to the experts.

We’ve all heard of Microsoft and their arch rival Apple.

Although they are often classified together, up until this week there was a major difference between them.

Apple is mainly a hardware company (think iPods, iPads and Mac computers) whilst Microsoft is a software company (think Windows operating systems and Microsoft office software).

It may have come as a bit of a surprise therefore that last week saw the announcement that Microsoft would soon be selling their own tablet computers. At a launch in LA, Microsoft showed their upcoming tablet which goes by the name of mPad (actually, I made that last bit up about the name mPad as it is in fact called “Surface” but personally I prefer mPad).

As a strategic business move this is quite risky. Using their software in their own hardware will have obvious advantages in terms of the potential to win some of the market share from Apple but do they risk upsetting some of their major customers?

OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer use the Windows operating system in their PCs.

Putting it another way, companies like Hewlett-Packard and Acer have a supplier (Microsoft) who has now suddenly become a competitor.

Are they going to be happy paying a supplier who is now directly competing with them?

Maybe the question is irrelevant though as after all, what other operating system could they use?

The other interesting thing was that the launch was very “Apple like” with the presentation being very slick.

Well, I say very slick but there was one moment when Microsoft boss Steve Sinofsky had just explained to the audience how users could “browse smoothly” when you guessed it, the device froze.

The video below shows Mr Sinofsky in action when the new tablet froze at the opening presentation.