Slashdot Mirror
OQO Examined
D4C5CE writes "The vapor solidifies... After years of waiting and an appearance at CES early this year, some people have finally had the opportunity to try an OQO 'Model 01 ultra personal computer (uPC)' at CeBIT America, and published this report. The device is available to a few lucky pilot customers, but for the rest of us they still won't be shipping before this fall, and they have yet to beat the Zaurus line (hopefully also with wireless connectivity in its clamshell versions soon - Are you listening, Sharp?) to justify a $1500+ price tag."
Before you ask "Why?", I listened to a presentation of OQO's business plans and was told that they're aiming for a market of CEOs and folks like pharmaceutical reps (i.e. NOT slashdot readers).
I would be worried, though, about the plan to underproduce in the first year. I think they're going for something like the PT Cruiser, where undersupply is supposed to generate immense demand. I personally don't think that it will be a winning idea for OQO. Maybe for the iPod mini. But one of their competitive advantages is being "first-to-market" (in this particular product space of the ultra-portable) and they'd lose that if they tried to artificially underproduce.
I was told that the price will be $1500 and that it would beta on first-class seats of trans-Atlantic flights this fall. But of course that could all change. These signs all point OQO trying to position itself as a luxury product and thus wouldn't do so well in the mass market.
Interestingly, the presenters suggested that customers would have a desktop, laptop, AND an OQO (i.e. an OQO would not be a replacement for a laptop). I wonder if that is too many gadgets. Personally I will be going for a full featured ultralight laptop (IBM X31 and Sharp MM20 come to mind) instead for that price.
Finally this this thing is coming out. I sure have been waiting for a while. Its hard to find a device with the right combination of connectivity media, good input interface, powerful enough hardware, but in a very mobile form factor. I have an eNote Lite, AKA the Lindows MobilePC, which is a pretty damn small machine. However I still have to pull it out and boot it up etc. I tried an iPaq but solely Bluetooth didn't cut it, and text input was too hard. The OQO is something I could take with me in my pocket when I don't want to bring a bag, be always ready to go, has a full qwerty keyboard albeit awkward looking, and with hardware that packs a punch. The only other thing I could ask for is telephone, but thats going a little overboard. $1,500 might seem a little steep, but I'd definately shell it out for this seemingly perfect solution to all my problems.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Would make an awesone handheld gaming system if it were priced about $1000 lower ... for $1500 I might as well go buy a 12" Powerbook ...
Now that Sony is leaving the US market by pulling the Clie, maybe Sharp will get their shit together...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
That's a lot of money for what is essentially a miniature laptop. Is it really worth it, when you can buy a 2ghz laptop with 256+ MB of ram for less than $1000?
Unfortunately for then I think this is a "Mac" type product. No offense to OQO, but I think Apple would be able to pull off something like this.
Does anyone have an idea how well the screen would hold up to scratches and all, being exposed the way it is?
Peace
As soon as Apple make one, my PowerBook's for sale.
You listening? Are you? It simplifies the battery life problem, it simplifies the 'supply of large LCDs' problem, I don't care that the performance is not all that good (provided it's still a G4). I want one. I will give you money for it.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
The comparison with the Sharp Zaurus is sort of stupid. The OQO is meant to be a compact PC, not a personal digital assistant. Comparing them is somewhat stupid.
However, if you must compare them, I think the OQO is light years ahead of the Zaurus. 1 GHz processor, lots of RAM, 10 GB HDD, Firewire, Full-size USB, the ability to run non-embedded OS, etc. I'm personally going to be very willing to shell out $1500+ for one of these. Being able to carry an actual PC (not a quasi-PC) in my pocket is beautiful.
It looks only slightly bigger (I have a Palm VIIx) which I hafta keep in my laptop case, it's not very portable at all and I am pretty unhappy with it in general... But that's a different story.
:( ]), portable kb for the palm, etc etc... I can carry this cool device on my hip (?) and be just as productive while I am mobile as when I was carrying that big bag of shit around.
Hell, this here little beauty could replace both the laptop and the palm. Now, instead of carrying a briefcase around, which holds my laptop, power supply, net cards (802.11, ethernet, modem [winmodem builtin
bash: rtfm: command not found
"Oh Kwo"? "Oh koh"? "Ock oh"? "Oh Queue Oh"?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I can see this as a PDA and laptop replacement for guys like me who use both. Looks like the PDA market is going to crater in the next year anyway. They have just about all the right features except for 802.11g. I particularly like the accelerometer to protect the hard drive.
If you're going into the $1500 price class, you'll need to take on things like Acer's c110 10.4" tablet PC. It's in the same priceclass, has equal or better specs (what's the battery life on the OQO anyway?), and is still smaller than an 8.5x11 sheet of paper and around an inch thick. I'm betting the pen support is better and the ULV centrino will really give the transmeta chip in the OQO a run for the money. Plus I'm betting the RAM and HD are more expandable.
There just doesn't seem to be a realistic compromise between size and function right now, and one of the main reasons why is we're still too keyboard-centric with interfaces. It's just really hard to do even a modest text document on anything the size of a PDA or this thing. Voice recognition keeps being touted as the holy grail and end of all these problems but where is it? I remember VR demos from the 486 days, you can't tell me a 200-400mhz PDA can't manage that much horsepower.
What I'd really like to see is disjointed systems. With bluetooth finally hitting mainstream I want to see a PDA that can autodetect when I've got some portable storage device or HD based mp3 player in my backpack and mount the volume automaticly. If they had that, you wouldn't need much more space on the PDA than just the OS, everything else you could keep on multipurpose portable drives.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Now that we have Sony Vaio Type U , I wonder why this OQO took so long to design/produce/whatever!
I have seen Sony Vaio Type U in person. They are sold in shops already. And obviously, the Sony Vaio is more appealing.
BTW, OQO's weight is 14oz (or 397g). Sony Vaio Type U is 550g.
The Fox TV show 24 has been a paid-placement bonanza for interesting tech gear for a while. An OQO was used by the CTU (for non-24 fans, that's the "Counter Terrorism Unit") pretty heavily in hours 20 or 21 this year (Season 3). I'm pretty sure that the screens it was throwing off were dummied up, but the hardware was unmistakable. In season 1, there were so many Apple computers used, that it seemed at times like an Apple commercial. In season 2 (and even the previews for season 2), a new Powermac G5 showed up just after they were announced, but before the time that anyone but the Pope and Steve Jobs himself actually had their hands on one.
I've been dying for one since the announcement, and will be first in line to try one (to complement my laptop, multiple desktops and army of servers that I have). Then again, I was first in line to buy a new Newton, the first Linux Zaurus, and the original Rio MP3 player.
I suppose I'm one of the 50,000 suckers that Handspring co-founder Donna Dubinsky described by saying in a talk I once heard as "50,000 people will buy anything. Talk talk to me once you've sold 200,000." (my weak-memory paraphrase).
The device seems to be priced beyond the PDA market so the average person using it would be expecting more functionality than it provides (i.e. laptop capability). But if a CEO really wanted a portable system do they really want a stripped down laptop that is still laptop size or do they want something like the Treo 600? Its smaller, its a phone, and it has the nice data connectivity options all for a fraction of the price.
Now perhaps people really DO want to carry around something this big, but it escapes me as to what they would really want to do with it. Devices in this smaller factor seem to be more suited to trimmed versions of large applications for viewing and light updating/editing of data as opposed to being full time PC replacements. I'll bet good money that by the time this device really hits mass production, there will be better smart phone style devices out there which will offer MUCh more utility while having their costs subsidized by cell phone companies and being overall more useful to the end user.
Have you seen the new Archos AV500? Its arm just like the zaurus, should be run openzuarus roms with a few hacks. but it has an 40GB drive.. and soon a 80Gb drive. Supports TV caputer and mpeg4 (D)encoding. Now that rocks. It doesnt have the keyboard, but for an 80Gb drive with a full running linux system Ill suffer the keyboard. Im just waitng for a full mandrake arm port now that would rock!
"The OQO Model 01 ultra personal computer (uPC) is a fully-functional Windows XP computer."
Yet another wonderful toy being sold with the word "Windows" plastered all over its site, just because that's necessary to sell anything nowadays...
I remember an old joke that stated, basically, that Apple could come up with an amazing computer that fits in your pocket, is more powerful than a supercomputer, and makes your penis bigger, but the first question people would ask is "Yes, but does it run Windows?"
Will this thing be Linuxable/BSDable?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
...oh wait, that's nothing new on /.
You people keep trying to think that this OQO device is marketed as a oversided PDA with a keyboard. You people seem to think it's too big to fit into pockets. You couldn't be further from the truth on both counts. Why don't you try to see this device in action before passing such ignorant judgment on it?
http://news.com.com/1606-2-5222650.html
This is supposed to be a single ultraportable solution that's supposed to replace a business-oriented desktop, laptop, and PDA. It had a docking station that allows it to hook up a full-sized keyboard, montior, and mouse so you can use it more comfortably and efficiently as a desk environment. It's supposed to replace a laptop because it's ultraportable yet still runs the same WinXP apps that a business person might need (full versions of M$ Office, Visio, etc....not just some watered down PocketPC incarnations of any program). It's supposed to replace the PDA because there is absolutely NO need to sync between a PDA and a laptop/desktop since it will replace all 3 devices.
Granted, this comes with a slow-ass Trasmeta proc, and the movie URL that I showed above, the guy admits it only gets about 3 to 4 hours of battery life even with the Transmeta proc not consuming so much power but with its power-hungry WiFi hardware. You're probably not going to bother to edit audio on this device since it doesn't have any optical drives built-in for you to rip and encode music off CD Audio. Since it's using a Transmeta proc, you can be damned sure you're not going to be doing any video editing with this. You won't be playing EverQuest either, so forget it. This is NOT what the device was marketed for. Keep in mind that this device doesn't even support wired Ethernet on the base device but only through it's docking cable.
For the business executive on the go, this makes the perfect all-in-one solution. Set up a docking station at home and at the office so you can use the device with comfort and efficiency at the places where you get the majority of your work done, and then use the device detached from its docking cable when you're on the move. You will always have your data with you without having to sync your data between PDA and laptop/desktop.
Get it? Probably not, but I've done my part in attempting to educate the ignorant masses.
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
for those who aren't convinced by the OQO, there are a few other handtops coming out -- comparison chart that might be better targeted to your needs. i reckon most people will be into the FlipStart PC because of it's clamshell design, slightly better specs and cheaper price, but it's not due out until Q1 2005.
read this basic introduction to the FlipStart as well as this updated one if you're interested in the FlipStart (and other handtops).
### http://www.gunfinger.com ### greed / tec
Apple gave the term firewire to the 1394 Trade Association as part of the licensing pool
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
ZDNet has had a nice video interview for the past few days. Check it out.
Of course. Sharp's entire Zaurus business model is based on the rantings of Slashdot posters. That's probably why IBM also jumped on board and distributed the Zaurus under their own brand. They're building street cred.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
A few months ago, I got to try the OQO out. I was playing in the orchestra at my friend's church and the conductor's husband is on the OQO team. My friend's dad asked me if I wanted to see it. I'd known about it for quite a while and said, "Sure!" It's small. Holding it was quite different. It has the IBM stink-pad eraser nub to move the mouse. The keys are slightly smaller than the left over "dots" from a piece of hole-punched paper. The surface was smooth and warm. The only thing I can really compare it to is the casing of the GBA SP, but slightly more substantial. The screen was crisp and the standard XP "teletubbies" background looked crisp and defined. I saw iTunes on the desktop and opened it. I noticed it was a little sluggish compared to my desktop, but opened only a few seconds later. iTunes looked as good as the desktop background. I asked about heat and the guy (I've forgotten his name, but he used to work for Apple) said that they had run the little fan inside at full speed on the prototypes for fears of melting were, as one might expect, rampant. This particular unit, however, had very little fan noise and was warm, mostly from being held. Someone else who was there asked about frame rate. The guy said they got about 30 FPS in Quake (Which one? I don't remember). I had to leave and give the OQO back, but decided that it was worth the wait and vaporware accusations.
> Voice recognition keeps being touted as the holy grail and end of all these problems but where is it? I remember VR demos from the 486 days, you can't tell me a 200-400mhz PDA can't manage that much horsepower.
Having worked on such systems, a few reasons (not to say it isn't coming someday...):
1. Audio systems on most PCs, especially portables, have historically been of poor quality so accuracy suffers.
2. You have to wear a properly configured and positioned microfphone, or accuracy again suffers.
3. Accuracy of 99% (unrealistic) still means correcting one word in 100 -- and corrections may take a lot of time and interrupt a flow of thought. And, since corrections are usually real words and not typos, they may be hard to spot.
4. Algorithm work on the PC moved towards floating point; many portable processors lack floating point.
5. Speech is very useful in interactive conversation between two people -- transcribing dictation when you don't know the problem domain and can't ask questions is a hard problem even for human transcriptionists.
6. Speech gives up some privacy (although cell phones do too).
7. The killer in portability -- SR takes a lot of CPU, which translates into a lot of battery power, which means short lived handhelds.
Personally, I would like to see the older discrete (pause between words) stuff used because it can be quite good when trained -- but the market seems to want continuous. Also, people are trying things like using wireless phones to offload speech processing to network servers (but wireless uses battery power too!)
Also, having said all that, I think conversational interfaces will be more and more important as time goes on in a variety of situations (although they will work alongside other modalities).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.