Compaq Itsy Usability movies

Jón Ragnarsson writes "Compaq Western Research Lab has put some movies of the Itsy running Doom, Java, X and other stuff... The ARM CPU still amazes me after all those years... " My love affair with the itsy goes way back to stories that we posted years ago. I even saw one at the 98 LinuxExpo. This is the box that we always wish would be mass produced, but just doesn't seem to ever get any closer. Its still cool tho.

Comments

mass production

[Kyobu]

Does anyone have an explanation for why Itsies can't be mass-produced? Because they're so cool. Is it because price is prohibitive? Or materials? Anyone know?

Re:mass production

[Mondragon]

Go to Compaq's web site, download the plans, and build one yourself.. :-)

Honestly, though, there aren't any seriously expensive or hard to find components in that device. You might have been able to convince me a few months ago that ARM chips were in short supply, but with the number of companies shipping products based on it going up, I think we would have heard of any production problems.

Realistically, it may just be that Compaq doesn't see a market for it. However, it may not cost them too much more to actually produce and ship it. Obviously, if they don't plan on shipping it, they've already acknowledged that they're going to take a loss on the research and development, so recovering that cost should be a non-issue at this point. The real cost actually comes from advertising/marketing (if they want to seriously push the product) and with production time. These wouldn't be that hard to pump off the line, but that means that they have a production line that isn't producing something else, which perhaps was a more profitable product. There's plenty more random reasons as well (like the PDA market is really heating up and getting seriously competitve at this point, and you can't make a lot of money just on the few gear-heads who buy your product because its' guts are cool). A lot of things have to happen before you can release a product to market.

But, putting all that aside, I've heard that they will be shipping a product around Christmas.

Re:mass production

[^]

The Itsy is a research prototype, and isn't really well suited to an end user. I've done some work on them. On one hand, they're very powerful for their size, and can do almost anything you need. On the other hand, the stylus interface can be troublesome at times, and the hardware can be downright demanding. As just a single example, if the case is screwed on too tight, this can cause undue pressure on some components which results in a noisy interface to the flash systems, causing a boot failure.

That is, the Itsy doesn't really have the reliability and fortitude that an end user wants. Now, sure a unit which does could be designed, but that's quite different than mass producing Itsys.

Douglas Adams was wrong.. :(

[F2F]

So, finally the Old Prophecy has come true (and it did way ahead of its time for this planet): an Interface has come, that allows you to command your radio with only but a simple gesture...

This is Good, for it will be the doom of the evil mouse and keyboard... Rejoice!

It's a pity though that we'll have to sit *very* still in order to view the whole pr0n collection we just downloaded uninterrupted by random scrolling...

Wander where Compaq R&D get their ideas from? :)

Flame On :)

Why not Mass Market?

[kill bikini-bot kill]

Yes, I was wondering why they aren't moving more quickly toward the mass market. I do notice that the web page looks a lot slick than it did a few years ago (or so I remember anyhow).

There are probably several reasons that none of us can go out and buy one right now. Obviously the charter of the project says that the goal is to explore new interface innovations in hand-held computing--these guys are just doing research and development, not necessarily even looking for a commercial poduct. Also, I imagine that there may be some marketing thought the either consumers are not ready for such a device (the general consumer, I mean--I'm sure as hell ready) or that they need to exploit the market for stuff they already have out there more before moving on to something drastically better. Do you really think that Intel or AMD don't have some increadibly cool processors sitting around that aren't going to market for years because of stategy not technology reasons?

Anyhow, they provide directions on how to build your own itsy. I just signed up to have the url for the directions emailed to me. I wonder if interested Slashdoters could get some sort of bulk discount on the necessary parts?

Introducing: THE ITSYSLASH! cool.

Build your own!

[PopeAlien]

Hey this is cool-
It looks like they are making all the source code, hardware specs, and other information availiable for download -I'm impressed! Does anybody out there have the time/resources to put one of these together?
-

Usability?

[Miska]

Hold on, did you say this was from a research lab trying to innovate the user interface? The interface is cute, but not really usable.

Lets bring back good old Donald A. Norman ("Design of Everyday Things"). He esentially says people shouldn't have to remember a lot of 'unusual'/not everyday information when using things; the information should be there at hand.

Lets have a look at Itsy: no visible information aside from the name, only a possibility to it through a bunch of undefined moves - which probably vary contextually. Poor user has to learn a whole new interface (not any more natural than what s/he's leaving behind)

Poor user; at least keyboards have letters printed on them.

Then again, the voice interface seems interesting.

Tiqit

[gargle]

Also take a look at Tiqit, founded to market minature computers by the Stanford professor whose matchbox web server was slashdotted sometime back.