Microsoft Courier
Microsoft built book-like tablet prototypes around ink, clippings and a bottomless journal, then killed the device because it refused to become another Windows PC.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Never Born
- Peak stage
- working prototype
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A cancelled dual-screen digital notebook developed inside Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division.
Courier paired two touch displays with a pen-driven scrapbook interface for collecting, sketching and rearranging ideas.
Existence timeline
J Allard's team explores a digital journal device.
Detailed interface videos make Courier publicly known.
The team tests folding devices built with Samsung.
Platform and email questions reach Bill Gates and leadership.
Microsoft disbands the Courier effort.
Pen and dual-screen concepts surface in later Microsoft work.
Why it ended
Microsoft leadership ended the project in 2010 after questioning its platform, email and relationship to Windows.
Last confirmed trace
Samsung-built prototypes, concept videos, interface studies and interviews with former executives document the device.
What it left behind
Courier's notebook metaphor resurfaced in later dual-screen products and remains one of technology's most admired cancelled interfaces.
How we classified it
The proposed archive unit never reached ordinary public access in the form being documented.
The strongest verified milestone maps to working_prototype under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.