Courier may be dead but the according to Steve Balmer the Slates are coming and they are coming this year.

At the Worldwide Partner Conference Steve Balmer told Microsoft’s 14,000 partners to expect new Windows 7 slates before the end of this year.

Asus, Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Dell, will all be issuing Windows 7 slates in the coming months, although rather noticeably (yet obviously) there was no mention of HP (even if their logo was in the slides).

It would appear that Balmer is sticking to his guns (as well he should) that the slate is just another form factor and from both an Enterprise and home consumer perspective this is a good thing.

At the right screen size (and above)  Windows 7 is a wonderful touch orientated operating system and corporate IT departments won’t have to worry about new operating systems and the issues associated with that. Also of note is that we are approaching the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and the first service pack is usually when the enterprise world gets on-board with mass migration to an operating system.

With a July Beta of SP1 (Update – the Beta of SP1 came out today) in the wings we should see a late August/September release of SP1 which would fit nicely with the release of new tablets “in the coming months”.

For the home user this is great news too. No need to be locked into a platform as their is with the iPad and the ability to have all your applications that you currently own with portability and the ease of a tablet/slate.

The separator in the Windows slate space will be battery life and it will be interesting to see how the various hardware suppliers perform.

Openness and connectability will set the Windows Slates apart from the iPad but those features come at the dread cost of battery life.

It will be interesting to watch.

[Editor’s Note: Image via TechFlash. The Windows 7 Slates Are Coming is a post from: winextra. –mrh]