Microsoft Origami Unfolds

College Student writes "Microsoft has officially unveiled 'Origami', a paperback-book sized portable hybrid (laptop & PDA). From article: 'The new machines will connect wirelessly to the Internet and carry full-sized hard drives, but they are not intended to replace current PCs....The new PCs are expected to sell for between $599 to $999, but Microsoft said it is possible to sell one for $500 if the manufacturer selects components carefully.'" More details at the official Microsoft site, and via Channel 9 a look at the system with the UMPC general manager.

Comments

A few questions:

[TripMaster Monkey]

Why no physical thumb board? Surely the screen could have slid up (a la Sidekick) to reveal a physical QWERTY keyboard...it's good that there's an option for the onscreen thumboard deal in the lower corners, but it's intrusive and unnecessarily difficult (I have to learn a new key layout now?). The alternative,of course, is the stylus...and although I recognize the versatility of a stylus, I was still more than happy to retire mine when I switched from Palm to Sidekick.

Is this thing supposed to be a phone as well? The teaser site touts Origami as the "go-everywhere, do-everything mobile device", but in the screen shots I couldn't find any phone software, and I can't imagine holding this thing up to my ear (until Sidekicks became popular, everyone looked at me funny when I answered a call, and the Sidekick is about a quarter of the Origami's size).

Does it run Linux?
No...seriously. Does it? Or will it in the future? The device looks great, but I'd be happier running Linux on it than Windows. Unfortunately, I don't think Bill will buy back your Windows CE license if you do decide to switch. ^_^

Re:A few questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

The link shows the Skype icon on the desktop.

http://cebitnews.turnpages.com/pdf/pagina.001.pdf

Re:A few questions:

[pimpimpim]

look at the pictures on this dutch news site:

http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=689884&c=134

Apparently, it has a rotatable back, revealing a small size keyboard. This would make it interesting for me. And I'm also interested in the hardware issues, might be a nice thing to run linux on, I'd buy it instead of a laptop. What also would be nice is a USB port to connect a real keyboard to it.

Re:A few questions:

[1000101]

"Unfortunately, I don't think Bill will buy back your Windows CE license if you do decide to switch.

I doubt he would too since this thing runs Windows XP

Re:A few questions:

[shmlco]

One of the prototypes does have a thumb keyboard if needed, with the screen rotating on the base to reveal it (sort of a "plus" shape).

Personally, they indicated that it will slot in between cell-phones and notebooks, and be easier to pop into a purse or backpack. The real question is: Does that slot exist?

In additon to the obvious music and movie applicatons, I also wonder how many companies will port their games to it. Could this also be MS's entry into the "Game Boy" market?

Re:A few questions:

[Luscious868]

What also would be nice is a USB port to connect a real keyboard to it.

I think they all have has 2 USB ports but I know for sure that at least one model does.

Re:A few questions:

[Total_Wimp]

-No keyboard at a time with mobile computing is moving to keyboards: check

-It's basically a big PDA at a time when the PDA market is on it's death bead: check

-It's not a phone at a time when the smartphone market is growing rapidly: check

Either Microsoft knows something nobody else does, they're just playing a niche for incrimental revenue, or, well, I don't know. I don't get it.

TW

Re:A few questions:

[EggyToast]

Well, it's more featured than a PDA, as it runs full Windows apps apparently. It seems like an entry into the ultra-small laptop line. Given the lack of ultra-small laptops in the 500-1000 price range, I could see it selling somewhat well.

I'd kind of like one to replace my 10lb Windows laptop that generally only gets used as an IE check for web design and some small music programs. If it can run full apps, then there's no reason it can't be used for a few media-friendly things; would be kind of neat for a very small music editor, video tool, whatever.

Re:A few questions:

[Deathlizard]

Does it run Linux?

As far as I can tell, Why not. It's basicially a really small tablet PC, so it should in theory run any x86 based OS. the only problem here might be pen based support in X, but that shouldn't be that big a deal since it will support USB keyboards and mice.

Re:A few questions:

[Total_Wimp]

The only differences between a Windows Mobile PDA and a PDA-sized computer that runs Windows XP are software and hardware support. Since most Windows software and PC hardware assume you're not using a PDA formfactor, even this is less usefull than you would immediately assume.

For example, I've heard this thing might run Halo. Great. How do you control it? Once you add a controller, how portable is it? Yes, you can probably think up some stuff that would be usefull, but along the way I'll bet you reject a whole lot of hardware and software that just don't seem to fit. By contrast, almost everything written for the Windows Mobile platform works great on a mobile device.

TW

Re:A few questions:

[Jearil]

speaking of pictures..

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/howtobuy.m spx

anyone notice how horrid Microsoft seems to be with photoshop? The screen isn't even on the device! Or maybe that's a new feature... able to move the screen around off of the device.

Someone's gonna get in trouble over that ;p

Re:A few questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your facts straight there killer...

-It's got a keyboard when the mobile computing industry in increasingly moving to keyboards - check.

-It's basically a small laptop at a time when small laptops are selling like hotcakes - check.

-It's not a when is - Well, yeah but who cares?

Either you didn't do your homework, or... aw who am I kidding, this is Slashdot, we KNOW you didn't do your homework...

Re:A few questions:

[saboola]

It's basically a big PDA at a time when the PDA market is on it's death bead: check

It's as much as PDA as your desktop is a PDA that sits in one spot and never moves. This thing runs a full blown operating system, not Pocket 2006 or Windows Mobile or whatever the kids are calling Windows CE these days. As it runs Windows XP, I see no reason why it should not be able to run any Linux distro that runs on a similiar X86 platform. I am looking forward to it. A PDA to me has always had limited functionality, where as this I see no reason that it could not fully replace a laptop. Just my $.02

Re:A few questions:

[Ucklak]

Microsoft use Photoshop? No, that Acrylic!!
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/gr aphic_designer/default.aspx

Re:A few questions:

[tchuladdiass]

You know, the same counter arguments seem to apply to Linux-based devices. Most people who want one think of the idea that you can easily port desktop Linux software to them, but when you do the usability goes way down (even on my Sharp Zaurus, which gives a 640x480 display and keyboard, it is still uncomfortable using software that is designed for a desktop environment on it).
Of course, for me the advantage of Linux-based devices is that I don't have to shell out $$$ for software, as I can port / adapt / write my own where necessary.

Re:A few questions:

[CreatureComfort]

As an owner of a Windows Mobile PDA (Dell Axim x50v) I can say authoratatively that Windows Mobile software sucks in so many ways it's hard to count. The OS is buggy, slow, an so severly crippled in areas that desktop users take for granted that it is physically painful to use. The software selection for add-on programs is so diminuative that when I switched from PalmOS, I honestly thought that I had to be missing some secret community of developers. I couldn't believe that 1) there were no Windows versions of so many of the Palm apps that I had found essential, and 2) there was no active community of programmers and hobbiests trading code and writing scripts to do all the little things that hadn't been included in the OS.

The Windows Mobile world is dominated by a very few developers who write commercial software for profit. The wonderful selection of little free/share-ware apps that exist in the desktop and Palm world is totally non-existent in the WinMobile world. In addition, MS makes it exremely difficult for the hobbiest to "play around" with the devices and this keeps many who might be interested from even bothering.

Some examples:
There is one, and only one, program that can be used to completely backup your Windows Mobile device, and it is not included with the OS. This program must be bought, from a third party, and the WM 5.0 version took 4 months to be released after WM 5.0 was released.

To "Active Sync" your WM 5.0 device you MUST have Outlook or Outlook Express, not only installed on your windows desktop, but it MUST be the default email client.

There are only two usable alternatives to the internal contact/calender management programs, both commercial software, and almost no external script abilitiy to customize these apps beyond the limited choices offered by the developers.

I left Palm because the hardware offereings have fallen so far behind state-of-the-art it is pathetic. My Dell has built-in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, SD card slot, CF Card slot, and a true VGA screen. There is no comparable Palm offering, even the rediculously overpriced LifeDrive. I find myself using my Dell much less than I used to use my Palm, with the exception of GPS navigation, which the Palm couldn't do at all. I am using my laptop much more, but carrying that bulk around is tiresome, in more ways than one.

I will definately be keeping my eyes on these new devices. If I could get a $600-$800 device in a paperback size form factor, with a full OS, good battery life and a thumb keyboard, I would jump at the chance.

Re:A few questions:

[akac]

Well the first issue is you bought a Dell Axim. Those things have great specs, but the implementation of WM5 is awful, slow, and buggy. Second, there is a huge group of developers giving free software, code, and so on. Look at 4winmobile.com, http://www.pocketpcdn.com/ CodeGuru has a section, and there are many many others. Most people share code on the newsgroups too.

Look, I know that WinMobile isn't perfect, but most of what you are writing is out of ignorance and not fact.

Re:A few questions:

[Keebler71]

What also would be nice is a USB port to connect a real keyboard to it.

According to this story... it has two USB ports.

Re:A few questions:

[IflyRC]

Actually Microsoft contracts out most of the brochure type web development to companies around Seattle. Some companies have specific contracts for parts of the Microsoft web site. So no, it was not a Microsoft employee who screwed up.

Re:A few questions:

[EggyToast]

I agree that support is the biggie; software that requires something that simply is impossible to do on something like the Origami form factor will likely simply stay broken. Still, there's plenty of apps that are available for Windows, work fine with a mouse/tablet, and would be handy to have in an ultra-portable system. Plenty of games will probably not work, but a game that simply requires mouse input? Probably work like a charm. A music application that, again, just requires mouse input? Probably a better interface compared to a mouse, especially for live interaction.

I don't think it's going to appeal to people who look at Tablet PCs and say "what's the point," but I think it does present some interesting options for those who like the idea behind Tablet PCs, but don't like the high price and large device.

Re:A few questions:

[SeeMyNuts!]

That's the new BSOD feature. The screen physically slides off and melts into a pile of goo on the floor. The box comes with five BSOD replacement kits, with the BSODs timed to have the kits run out right after the warranty expires.

Re:A few questions:

[EraserMouseMan]

Some people amaze me. First of all these OEM devices are running XP Tablet Edition. The devices are being made by other companies. MS is not making hardware here. Other companies have determined there is a demand and they are making the product. Microsoft is merely working with them.

Secondly an Origami device extends the functionality of the products that are hot (bluetooth cellphones with internet capability). Who the hell wants to surf the internet on a phone? Who the hell thinks it is ideal to show their friends their digital photo album on a tiny iPod screen? Who wants to lug around a big laptop bag with them everywhere they go?

This device is a perfect addition to somebody who doesn't need to do much more than surf the Internet and check email. But it is also perfect for anybody who already has a main computer but needs something that is the size of a small tablet and has full XP functionality that they can easily and comfortably take with them to a coffee shop, meetings or on an airplane.

I've been wanting a device in exactly this form factor for years. I can't wait till they hit the stores!!!

Re:A few questions:

[ChrisDolan]

At least some versions are expected to have keyboards.

Re:A few questions:

[Moofie]

The fact that there are different implementations of WM5, some of which are crap, means that WM5 is crap.

Re:A few questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Even on the desktop there are device drivers that just plain suck. Most likely the issues you're seeing are due to sucky device drivers.

Also, if you look on MSDN the whole Windows Mobile SDK is available for download, all you have to do is some reserach to learn how to write WM applications. It's almost identical to writing desktop applications but not all of the desktop features are supported. Seriously, think about it, if Windows CE/Windows Mobile supported all of the same desktop features, wouldn't it be Windows XP? These devices have 200-300mhz processors, 32-64meg of ram, and no hard disk, there's only so much space to work with.

Origami looks cool, it would be nice to have a full desktop system readily available. But, i still can't imagine myself carrying around a paperback book all the time, it's still too big for me. My Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition is actually a little bigger than i honestly like becuase it doesn't quite fit in my pocket comfortably. I had a Windows Mobile smartphone and with it syncing over the air to my exchange box i found i couldn't live without it, and it was still small enough to fit in my pocket comfortably.

Re:A few questions:

[Fedarkyn]

I know your pain. I retired my palm zire 72 (palmOS) for a xda2 (windows mobile) because it's a pda and a cell phone. I dont want to walk with a belt full of gadgets if one can do it all. Unfortunately even the phone application annoys me (no usability) and the whole device is slow and boggy. I'm still waiting for a true "killer gadget" that will be a pda and cell phone with bluetooh, wi-fi and more...

Re:A few questions:

[naily]

Skimming through these threads I see the jist: it's either slow & buggy, with poor, expensive dev community (WinCE/Pocket), or great, cheap dev community but lacking sophistication (palm).

Sounds like a cue for Apple to me...

Re:A few questions:

[CreatureComfort]

Actually the x50v has a 624 Mhz processor, 64MB RAM and 128MB internal ROM and a full 640x480 vga screen. Throw in the 2GB SD card and 4GB CF card I have and it should be a sweet little machine.

As to the size, I already carry a paperback book around with me almost everywhere. I do some book reading on the Axim (much better than my old Palm), but there is still something about paper I like, and the screen is about half the size I would prefer for book reading. The bookreader software doesn't support scrolling, except autoscroll, any more, and flipping the page every 150 oor so words is annoying, especially since a lot of the technical and non-fiction I read lends itself to looking back several sentances or paragraphs as you read along to keep things straight.

Re:A few questions:

[moochfish]

Remember that this project has been in and out of existance since 2001 (or was it earlier?). I'd say this product is 5 years too late to be given any serious consideration by the mass market.

Re:A few questions:

[vonwao]

-It's basically a big PDA at a time when the PDA market is on it's death bead: check

-It's not a phone at a time when the smartphone market is growing rapidly: check


In this case, maybe it's a contrarian move by M$ that actually might pay off. Think about it, technolog buffs on Slashdot hate it... but just maybe it's what the average joe actually needs.

Most people I know who bought PDAs (including me) rarely use them. I hate using the tiny stylus. It's more like a toy than a tool for me.

What do I want to do most of the time, when I don't feel like shlepping along my heavy laptop with all my valuable data? Most of the time it's Gmail, or look up some info on the web. The other thing I sometimes I wish for is GPS navigation while I'm driving.

It seems like this device would meet my most important needs perfectly.. The crippled web browser and small screen on my PDA make it awkward (and therefore useless) for most of what I wished to use it for.

Otto

Re:A few questions:

[kellyb9]

Does it run Linux?

No, but i got linux running on my toaster.

Re:A few questions:

[tricore]

So what is that 2 year warrenty? so it only BSOD's every 2/5 of a year? DAMN when did microsoft learn how to write that good of code!

Re:A few questions:

[thatguywhoiam]

So no, it was not a Microsoft employee who screwed up.

If Microsoft approved the mockups their agency sent, it becomes their screw-up.

Re:A few questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the picture in question has not only been made with Photoshop, if you look at the file itself, you'll see that it was "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh".

Re:A few questions:

[IflyRC]

Quite possibly the mock-up was right? Who knows. It's a screw up, not a bad one but it's only made worse by the MS hatred perpetuated here at /.

Re:A few questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the Standardization project at this URL. It makes the XDA II and related phones perform much better. If it only had vga resolution, I'd be very happy with it.

http://home.comcast.net/~sx66-blueangel/

Re:A few questions:

[Planesdragon]

-No keyboard at a time with mobile computing is moving to keyboards: check

Rebuttal 1.a: Mobile computing has been solidly in-keyboards since, oh, the days of the Palm III. I've owned a PDA constantly since then, and I've always had a keyboard --a real, touch-typable keyboard--only a simple setup away.

Rebuttal 1.b: It has a keyboard, same as tablet PCs have keyboards.

-It's basically a big PDA at a time when the PDA market is on it's death bead: check

Annoyance: It's death BED. As in, what you lie in whilst you are dying. It's not a death bead, able to be strung along a string. (I understand typos, but mistakes that are a totally different word demand correction.)

Rebuttal 2: The PDA market is, like most markets, one of cycles. There is a solid market for an electronic organizer / personal computer, and there always will be -- attached to or seperate from a cell phone.

-It's not a phone at a time when the smartphone market is growing rapidly: check

Yes, exactly. A phone has to do a whole bunch of things -- like actually be comfortable held up to the ear -- that any other portable device doesn't. Remember the N-Gage?

Re:A few questions:

[pimpimpim]

ah, dammit, someone out there reads slashdot, they fixed the picture!

Re:A few questions:

[linuxrocks123]

> I don't get it.

I do. Everything you say is true; devices like this are certainly niche, and Micro$oft will probably lose money on this. M$ created this because it would rather lose money than let Linux own this admittedly niche market. Check out this website: http://www.nokiausa.com/770

Origami is basically a clone of the Nokia 770, except that Origami runs inferior software (Windows XP with IE vs. Linux with Opera Mobile), will cost more (>$500 for Origami vs. $360 for the 770), and is significantly heavier (2 lb for Origami vs. 8.1 ounces for the 770). Also, the Origami may have a slightly larger screen (=3 hours for 770). The two devices have the same screen resolution (800x480) and the same wireless connectivity capabilities (WiFi and Bluetooth: neither is a phone).

Remember that in the mid-90's, Micro$oft used its muscle to destroy a competing OS in the almost nonexistent market for pen-computing devices. M$ just wants to make sure it doesn't lose this market to Linux, no matter how small the market may be.

Re:A few questions:

[im_thatoneguy]

http://www.oaktreeent.com/web_photos/Telephones/US -West_Old-School_Cell_Phone_Horiz_Tan_web.jpg

"Why would anybody want that thing?"
"It's such a terrible size! It's too big to fit in your pocket, and if I really wanted to make a call, I could just go to one of a billion phone booths."
"Once again, they've created a product that looks like ass."
"Please... change my life? It's just a phone, talk about over hyped."
"The quality is so much worse than a land line."
"The battery life is terrible!"
"Maybe it if it was a lot cheaper, but at that price range, come on."
"The interface is terrible."
"Looks like it'll only really appeal to a niche market."
"Anyone who has used buttons will know that you'll be constantly breaking that keypad."
"Just another example of a company trying to jump in and create a need that doesn't exist."

  This is still front lines, cutting edge gadgetry here, which is going to create a whole new market, not just exploit an existing one. PDAs failed because they were a whole new paradigm
"I can't use my normal applications? What applications can I use?"
This is, your normal computer, that sits on your desk, now sitting in your hand. Everything you do day in and day out is possible on this thing. But not just, anything is possible, everything you already do on your pc is possible on this thing. Only now it's finally a size that can be whipped out and put away quickly. Something that even tablet PCs are fighting, they're still trouble to take out and put away. Imagine your desktop, in your hand, on the street, available at a moments notice. Sign me up... for version 2.0

Re:A few questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

"The screen physically slides off and melts into a pile of goo on the floor."

I heard that the screen slides off and turns into a massive pile of shit on the floor.

Re:A few questions:

[BeanThere]

Heh ... u beat me to it ... funny, MS using Macs for their marketing material, says it all.

Interestingly, even the images on the "Acrylic" site are not made with MS products ... they also sport "Adobe" in the headers.

Re:A few questions:

[Durf]

Yes . . . I, too, wonder how many companies will port their games to Windows XP.

Re:A few questions:

[shmlco]

As not all of them have keyboards, plus the fact they've added special navigation keys, plus the fact they have touch screens, plus the fact there seem to be potential processor and graphic system constraints, I'd say a port specific to the platform just MIGHT be in order.

But, hey, thanks for playing...

Re:A few questions:

[rtb61]

It still makes no sense, notebook full sized on the desktop, screen size always rules when multitasking (desknote semi portable 17" wide screen), unltraportable means in your pocket not in your hand or in a backpack (whip it out? stop, drop what ever is in your hands, open your bag, take it out and turn it on, use it, put it back, pick up what ever you put down, then start walking again).

A mini-tablet PC dud in the making. Maybe, just maybe, the only original thing about origami, will be new ways that microsoft will be bending the truth, to try and sell the thing.

Well at least it is now obvious why microsoft was so violently opposed to the $100.00 notebook project and with a likely unsubsidised retail of $200.00 it looks to be by far the better option (can't beat microsoft's blind greed though, help the underprivileged or go for the imaginary profits, duh, feed the overprivileged every time).

Re:A few questions:

[ejp1082]

You're right, it's a normal computer, like the one that sits on my desk. Which is basically my laptop.

Here's the thing... once something scales passed the size where it will fit in my pocket or on a belt clip, then the next logical size is that of a laptop, since at that point I have to carry it around in a backpack anyway - which means that "whipping it out" becomes quite the chore. I can't see what advantage this thing gives me over carrying a full laptop, with a bigger screen and full keyboard.

Simply, it's too big to be a cell phone, PDA, or portable media device... and too small to replace a laptop. If there's a market for this thing, I personally just don't see it.

Re:A few questions:

[cfuse]

I doubt he would too since this thing runs Windows XP

What? No Vista? I would have thought that Microsoft would be using this as another opportunity to 'foster innovation'. And really, what's the use of this thing unless you can have portable, wireless Halo 3 deathmatch?

Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Wardini]

Or I'll just wait for that $100 PC. When is that coming out?

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Anonymous Coward]

Use your imagination... a $100 laptop is a ONE HUNDRED dollar laptop. In electronics you usually DO get what you pay for.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Mr. Underbridge]

Or I'll just wait for that $100 PC. When is that coming out?

Unless you live in Sudan or somewhere else fun like that, for you the answer is "never."

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[PFI_Optix]

Unless you live in Sudan or somewhere else fun like that, for you the answer is "never."

This is something I just can't wrap my head around. The more they sell, the cheaper they are to make. There are thousands of rural/poor school districts in the U.S. that would LOVE to get their hands on semi-rugged, simple, cheap laptops and give one to each student. I guess because we don't live in Africa the fact that we don't have the money to provide technology to our students doesn't matter.

They could sell tens of millions of those in the U.S. and make the units even more affordable in places like Sudan (mark them up to $150 here if you want, then it only costs $50 to put on in the hands of an African student).

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[DogDude]

You're right. Anybody want to bet that the group that puts cheap technology in the hands of average (and poor) people will be Microsoft? They've already done it once. I'd put money on the fact that they'll do it before this blowhard at MIT or Harvard or wherever builds this mythical $100 laptop that hasn't even been prototyped yet. Microsoft has enabled more people access to computers than every other computer-related company on the planet. I wouldn't be surprised if they did it again, and this device was the beginning of it.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[molarmass192]

BTW, I'm not ragging on you, just the whole "sell 'em to the 3rd world" movement. The problem is that the per capita income in Sudan is $460 per year, as compared to $40,100 per year in the US. $150 is an impulse level 0.3% of income over here but a whopping 10.9% of income there. To equate the economic impact, that's like selling them for a bargain $4,370.90 here. To make matters worse, Sudanese are a bit more preoccupied with buying food and shelter with that $460 than we are here. You need to visit one of these 3rd world countries to really understand that they have far more pressing issues than getting a wireless tablet. I've never been to Africa, but I've been to Honduras and Haiti and let me tell you, at $2,900 and $1,600 per capita income, the shanty towns in those countries would be Beverly Hills to most Africans. Besides, you need electricity to recharge these things, there is virtually no power grid in most of these poor countries.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[PFI_Optix]

I think the point of the $100 laptop was supposed to be making it affordable to charitable groups so that we could flood the poorest nations with them and give children access to technology that might help them find a way out of poverty.

What I don't get is what we're talking about here: they are supposedly (I haven't heard anything to the contrary) only going to make them available in those poor nations. If they could make this a viable platform for American students, American (and other first-world) schools would snap these things up as a budget-friendly way of acheiving a 1:1 students-per-computer ratio. The more they sell, the cheaper the laptops are to make. They could be sold in the first world at a 100% markup and still come out VERY cheap, allowing a second laptop to be provided to the third world at the cost of shipping. And if they manufactured twice as many as a result, they'd be that much cheaper to make, which means even more free laptops for the poor.

As for plugging it in: the MIT model is supposed to have a hand crank for charging.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[demachina]

"The more they sell, the cheaper they are to make."

To an extent, since volume does drive down price but there is a hard wall at which prices are not going to go below on things like display, battery, CPU and RAM. I imagine the touchscreen costs quite a bit more than a simple LCD and keyboard.

What you are looking for is really Negorponte's $100 laptop. If it survives and gets rolling, which is still a big if, I'm sure they can sell it to low income American's not just Africans and Asians. They aren't targeting Americans because even poor rural American's are less in need than the extremely poor, isolated and at risk children in Africa and parts of Asia.

Negroponte designed their machine from the ground up to achieve the lowest cost possible. Microsoft and its partners did not on this. This device is designed for road warriors with a lot of money to burn. I wish them luck, well not really, but has been already belabored here, this thing is hitting an already known bad bad market niche, its too big, too little and too expensive all at the same time. I really hope they hardened the screen so it doesn't get scratched trashed by carrying it around without a cover.

Uncle Bill also wants his cut out of this and that alone pushes the price out of the range you are looking for, which is why Negroponte didn't use Windows on his $100 laptop.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Sudan, you insensitive clod.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Mr. Underbridge]

The more they sell, the cheaper the laptops are to make. They could be sold in the first world at a 100% markup and still come out VERY cheap, allowing a second laptop to be provided to the third world at the cost of shipping.

Actually, I'd heard they were going to do just that - sell them to anyone for $200, using the proceeds presumably to help fund the program.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[PFI_Optix]

To an extent, since volume does drive down price but there is a hard wall at which prices are not going to go below on things like display, battery, CPU and RAM. I imagine the touchscreen costs quite a bit more than a simple LCD and keyboard.

Even with CPUs, volume reduces cost per unit. The figures I've heard are in excess of 100 million units, which is why these laptops would work for that.

What you are looking for is really Negorponte's $100 laptop.

I think that's what was alluded to here.

Uncle Bill also wants his cut out of this and that alone pushes the price out of the range you are looking for, which is why Negroponte didn't use Windows on his $100 laptop.

I've heard that Bill offered Windows for that laptop for free, but they declined because of stability concerns, instead going with a custom Linux installation...which probably makes the most sense as you could tweak it for the specific hardware to get much better performance than Windows would allow.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[PFI_Optix]

Can't read the article (yay for school content filters) but that's the first I've heard of them actually talking about that.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Mr. Underbridge]

Wow, that's a hell of a filter. Basically, they said they were mulling the idea of licensing them to some other company who would produce them for ~$170 (including some profit) and sell them for $200, kicking back $30 to the program.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Glsai]

If I'm not mistaken these PCs were destined for the $100 dollar price tag so they money to make them could be easily raised and they could donate them to areas of Africa. For sure though the PCs will have a hand crank as opposed to using electricity from the wall.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[SeeMyNuts!]

I browse the web with a somewhat upgraded 8 year old PC. The primary issues are RAM, sometimes, and that many Flash websites seem to require a quad core Opteron to run properly. New embedded CPUs are much faster than this PC, and RAM is not expensive. $100 might be achievable, with very thin margins and high volume, if open source software like Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris, Firefox, OO.org, etc. are used.

However, looking at credit cards and current consumer debt levels, people will probably just get the $500 smart phone or whatever.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Anonymous Coward]

Do students really need computers in the classroom? Fucking no. They need to learn shit. Trust me, I grew up with computers in the classroom, and look at how much good it did me.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[danielk1982]

I think the point of the $100 laptop was supposed to be making it affordable to charitable groups so that we could flood the poorest nations with them and give children access to technology that might help them find a way out of poverty.

I actually talked to a volunteer who works in Chad 6 months out of the year; focusing on setting up small scale IT infrastructure for schools, and newspapers. I asked her what she thought about the $100 MIT laptop. She says its ok but stressed that that lack of laptops is not a major roadblock to riding poverty from the areas. She was more worried about who will actually distribute these laptops, whether they would be seized by a local warlord or corrupt government and sold back to Europe or re-distrubted to party loyalists. She also said that providing and setting up vanilla PCs is not the big problem but maintaining them is. Literacy rate is low in most areas and they found that the infrastructure they set up would fail because of lack of knowledge (think printer ink is gone so nobody uses the printer until they come back). And then of course there are always software/hardware problems on the network (no matter how good it is). Whats worse, people with skills tend to leave.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see now:
1. The definition of poor isn't "makes average income" it's "makes the lowest bracket" income.
2. The cost of living in the US is higher so the higher income is offset to some degree
3. If all we do is give them food they'll stay poor for a long time.
4. Go look at the MIT laptop.
5. No, wait shut up first and stop talking about things you do not understand.
6. Let me clarify, it has a hand crank that can power it.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[TheRaven64]

I attended a talk by Alan Kay a week or two ago on this topic. He said they would sell them in lots of 10,000 (I think) to anyone who wanted them and could handle their own distribution (charities, governments, companies). If a US state education board, for example, wanted to give one to every child in the state then they could.

Another interesting point he made was that they were hoping that developing countries would steal the design. All of the software will be available for free (and Free) and so any country with the manufacturing infrastructure can start building them quite easily, providing local employment.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Mr. Flibble]

This is something I just can't wrap my head around. The more they sell, the cheaper they are to make. There are thousands of rural/poor school districts in the U.S. that would LOVE to get their hands on semi-rugged, simple, cheap laptops and give one to each student. I guess because we don't live in Africa the fact that we don't have the money to provide technology to our students doesn't matter.

They could sell tens of millions of those in the U.S. and make the units even more affordable in places like Sudan (mark them up to $150 here if you want, then it only costs $50 to put on in the hands of an African student).


When I was in Kenya in the summer of 1990 building a medical clinic in the town of Shiru (2-3 hrs East on the Kinshaha Hwy from Kisumu) I had the opportunity to meet many of the people in the area naturally.

They were all smart, and as well educated as you might expect people in that area to be, in fact, I was quite impressed with their level of education. However, in the area where I was, power was not common. There was a grand total of 3 light fixtures in the two medical clinic buildings. Everything else was done with dirty kerosene home made lamps (made out of garbage, very impressive improvisation).

The children there generally owned one set of clothes (often their Scouting uniform - which had no badges or any other "bling" of any kind). They had no pens, no pencils, and certanly no paper. In fact, I understand that being able to give most third world children pens or pencils is often a wonderful gift.

Nobody owned shoes, although running is a popular pastime. The kids played soccer, and since they could not even afford a soccer ball (I really wish we had brought some, if you go to Kenya, bring some balls *AND* a pump for the children, they will love you for it) they made their soccer balls out of woven strands of some kind of grass or reeds. Very well done, I know I could not do it.

There was no source of clean water, in fact, we did not have filtration for ourselves and had to boil everything, even then we did get some contaminated water, and nearly every North American in the group fell sick for over a week. These people drink water that is contaminated with human waste and many parasites because they have no other options.

The nearest phone was in Kisumu. (That may have changed now...)

And this tea plantation/village was right on the Kinsasha highway.

If these children got laptops/pdas/newtons for "education" they would sell them (or more likely have them stolen) and buy their families things - like better food, medicine for diseases, clothes, improvements on their houses, or even pens pencils and paper for schoolwork.

People have been getting along without laptops in school for a very long time, they are not required for education. In fact, they are not really required for any NEED that I know of. People in third world countries have needs that need to be met before they can begin to rely on "Toys" like laptops.

They could use more pens and paper first, and clean water, better homes, clothes and medical care first IMO.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Tweekster]

Very interesting read about Kenya. But I think you misunderstand who exactly these devices are targeted at... These devices are not for the extremely poor, they are for the people that no longer have to worry about the very basic struggle for survival..because those are the individuals that can bring education to a higher level and bring the entire society up. The poorest of the poor are not the targets here, the people above that level are.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Deliveranc3]

Look dude if your country wants to embrace socialism fine do it the rest of the world is in awe of your stupid war spending. But if the U.S. government thinks that it can spend more on warfare and the world will make up for it's lacks it's got another thing coming.

The people who are doing this while they might be American want to change the world and primarily that means giving people options other than working for rich foreign investors whether that is selling crops, buying technology, getting health care or anything else.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Mr. Flibble]

True, but really, the crux of the problem is that a PC does not really help your learning - in fact it may detract from it. People have been learning from dead trees and with pen/pencils for some time, so we know that it works. The problem with a PC method of learning is that there are too many distractions, or at the very least, there is not yet a good method of using a PC for instruction - although that will probably change.

I don't think that a PC is required for education - yet - but it is starting to become mandatory in college/university (in first world countries).

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[Tweekster]

You are dead on... Computers in the classroom is an expensive scam (go read about the billions fraud during the 90's)

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

While I agree there are more important issues, if it was made well enough and had the right support your single $100 device could act as every book, pen, and pencil needed for a long time. Even one per group of kids, 3-5 per group.. You could save a lot of money compared to axing a bunch of trees. But then again I have to wonder why they would be doing this first rather than us, who would make a much better test market.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[mrchaotica]

The problem with a PC method of learning is that there are too many distractions, or at the very least, there is not yet a good method of using a PC for instruction - although that will probably change.

Uh, except that this is Alan Kay (the guy behind the $100 laptop idea) we're talking about. He's spent the last 20 years working on using computers as learning tools for children, and has come up with some pretty revolutionary (although not well-known) stuff. In fact, considering that and the dynabook, this project is the culmination of his entire life's work up to this point. Because of that, this project has probably the best chance ever of producing something genuinely useful for education.

Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in

[ejp1082]

The problem is that those dead trees, pens and pencils aren't cheap in their own right. Even assuming that there are no licensing fees, the cost of printing up a textbook for each subject area and grade level easily exceeds $100, not to mention the shipping costs.

If on the other hand you can put one of these laptops in their hands, then the cost of printing the textbooks drops to zero, and distribution becomes much cheaper as well. And then imagine if we could somehow set up wifi in some of these villages and get them access to resources like Google and Wikipedia, and its easy to see what benefit these have over conventional textbooks.

Even for Americans... personally, I always hated textbooks, walking the mile to and from school with a 100+ pound backpack was never fun, and I'd usually do some triage at the end of the day to determine which books were worth lugging for homework and which I could leave and get done in homeroom. I'd have loved to have one of these things (or even better, have the books and homework accessible via the web). Using a PC doesn't neccessarily help your learning, but it still makes sense to make some of this stuff virtual.

Nokia 770

[LiquidCoooled]

Isn't this similar to the Nokia 770?

Only more expensive...

Re:Nokia 770

[Mr Europe]

There's at least one MAJOR difference Origami is running some Windows version and Nokia 770 is running (Debian based) Maemo! Open source.

Re:Nokia 770

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point, except origami has a 40gb hd... i see no mention of space besides the ram.

Re:Nokia 770

[Vengeance]

Not entirely:

THIS will have a battery life of about 2 hours, maybe 3 on the outside.

Re:Nokia 770

[Feneric]

You can almost say the same thing about it and the Newton. In many ways it's like a more expensive Newton with a very similar form-factor and even the built-in stand.

It has some plusses and minuses though.

On the plus side, it's color (the Newton is grayscale) with somewhat better resolution, and its wireless stuff is all built-in (the Newton has pretty much the same wireless capabilities but only via PCMCIA cards). It's probably got a faster processor (not clear at first blush from the specs) but I'm sure that difference will be absorbed by software.

On the minus side, the built-in stand doesn't double as a screen cover like it does on the Newton. It's heavier than the Newton. I'm guessing that with its color display its battery life will be nowhere near the battery life of the Newton. It's not clear from the specs, but unless they made some big changes its OS is unlikely to be as stylus-optimized as the Newton's, and since the stylus is its main form of input that's a big drawback.

Re:Nokia 770

[JFlex]

Yes it does.. but this one is gonna run Windows.. so its gotta be better!

Re:Nokia 770

[lazarus]

Yep. Strangely neither of these devices comes with a calendar. Something *I* would expect in a portable communications device. Clearly as these large powerful companies full of smart poeple don't think this is something I should have, I must be wrong...

Re:Nokia 770

[Feneric]

Er, moderators, how is a comparison of Oragami versus the Newton any more offtopic than a comparison of Origami versus the Nokia 770 in a discussion about Oragami?

Re:Nokia 770

[un1xl0ser]

Yeah... except the Nokia runs Linux.

Re:Nokia 770

[Deinhard]

Remember...it's running Windows XP. I think MS expects people to run Outlook for their calendar.

Re:Nokia 770

[wbd]

Have you actually ever used a Newton? I still have four of them (one in each form factor except the eMate) and NONE of them have a screen cover that doubles as a stand.

The 1xx form factor and the 2xx do have flip back screen covers, but that's it -- NONE of them are designed to or can be used as a stand.

(Well, there was the trick on the 2xx unit of rotating the screen to landscape, putting the screen cover on the desk and sticking a rubber block erase between it and the Newton itself....but that's NOT an intentional design and you have to carry around an eraser....)

The 1xx units had the screen cover on the top not the side and while you might try to use it like an easel to hold the unit up, it sure wasn't stable. Not surprising, since it was a screen cover not a stand...

Re:Nokia 770

[BladeRider]

If you check out the Maemo software for the Nokia 770, they have Calendar software, todo, etc. It's the open source way to allow the user to decide what they want to install.

Re:Nokia 770

[at_slashdot]

Isn't this similar to the Nokia 770?

Only more expensive...

It's also uglier, on the flip side it probably can run all the viruses that are available for Windows.

Re:Nokia 770

[outZider]

Hey, fanboy. I love Newtons too, but get real.

  * It runs a real operating system
  * It has a processor that is faster by at least five times
  * It has a real display
  * It has a lot of software freely available

This, as a portable computer, is far more capable than a Newton. As a PDA, the Newton wins. By a hair.

Re:Nokia 770

[Frankie70]

There's at least one MAJOR difference Origami is running some Windows version and Nokia 770 is running (Debian based) Maemo! Open source


Yup.

In other words, the average chap wouldn't have to learn a new UI with Origami.
Also more existing software would work on it.

Re:Nokia 770

[LDoggg_]

In other words, the average chap wouldn't have to learn a new UI with Origami.

That is barely relevant.
You can pretty much expect that you'll get different UI with a handheld than you would with a desktop. Doesn't seem to be a problem when people get a new cell phone with a million options.

The major difference is in the toolkits developers will be using to produce software for the thing.

Re:Nokia 770

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem for me is the 770 doesn't have the storage to say, watch a video. It's completely for internet use, which limits it's usefulness for me. iPod videos and PDA screens are just too small for video. This could be a good fit for that.

Re:Nokia 770

[k2r]

> It runs a real operating system
> This, as a portable computer, is far more capable than a Newton.

Well, yes, Microsoft BOB XP.
It tries to be everything and the kitchensink at once and will be mediocre in all aspects.
Noboby needs a car with the horsepower and the crave for gasoline of a SUV shrinked down to the size of a "Smart"-car as a cart replacement when shopping.
It's clunky and ugly.
I hope it dies horribly and fast instead of becoming "industrial standard".
I really hoped for something innovative.

Apple, please reincarnate the Newton.

k2r

Re:Nokia 770

[LDoggg_]

I've got a gig flash card on mine.
You could do a good quality full length movie in xvid in less than 700 megs.

Re:Nokia 770

[joschm0]

Yes it does.. but this one is gonna run Windows.. so its gotta be better!

That was meant to be funny, wasn't it?

Re:Nokia 770

[joschm0]

The biggest problem for me is the 770 doesn't have the storage to say, watch a video. It's completely for internet use, which limits it's usefulness for me. iPod videos and PDA screens are just too small for video. This could be a good fit for that.

What you want is a laptop. The 770 on the other hand is perfect for browsing your email at your local coffee shop.

Re:Nokia 770

[mschaef]

"* It runs a real operating system"

NewtonOS was a remarkable piece of software for the time, moreso than Windows has ever been. Prototype based object orientation was baked into the system software, individuaul objects could be split between ROM and RAM to save storage, and the system had a built in persistant object store, among other things. For a 10-15 year old design running with just a couple MB of ROM and a couple hundred KB of RAM, it's an amazing accomplishment, and probably still far more appropriate to a handheld device than Windows (even CE).

Re:Nokia 770

[Feneric]

Yep, I've used a few. The Newton 2X00 covers bend backward to work as a stand when in landscape mode. It works that way by design and was even advertised as so in some of the marketing stuff. It's not much different from the one on Origami.

The pre-2000 versions didn't work the same way (or at least they weren't stable when used in such a mode). My only gripe with the setup is that it didn't work well with a plugged in keyboard.

Re:Nokia 770

[outZider]

I'll give you that. It was a better operating system at its core than the Mac OS was, and that gave me a few nervous laughs at the time. Nevertheless, driver development is a huge hassle now, there's no support behind it except for community. Be OS almost has a bigger following at this point. ;)

Re:Nokia 770

[anomalous cohort]

I don't have one but I am always on the lookout for stuff like this so I checked out the product literature when it first came out. I invite all Nokia 770 owners to correct any erroneous statements in this post.

The Nokia 770 seems to be an always online device. It doesn't seem to do a lot when there is no Internet connection available. That covers work, home, and local coffee shop but what about in transit or at the beach? Not a lot of public wifi there.

You can get an office productivity suite for the Origami device so there is something that you can do with it between access points.

I'll place my order for the Nokia 770 the day it comes with Open Office (and can still be purchased for $350).

Re:Nokia 770

[GodSpiral]

Between the 770 and the pepperpad http://www.pepper.com/products/pepper.html
there's no appeal for the origami.
The 770 is actually pocketable, and much cheaper.
The pepperpad is cheaper than the samsung, has built in hardware keyboard with the same concept, has useful battery life, other input hardware. 256mb ram and 20gb space is useful enough.

Having a faster processor, and XP, is not even close to worth the extra cost and low battery life

Re:Nokia 770

[zootm]

What you want is a laptop...

That's what I think is being missed about this device — the Origami stuff appears to be an attempt at creating a very compact laptop-style device, whereas the 770 is firmly aiming to be an "internet appliance". If the Origami does what it's supposed to, they're not really comparable.

Re:Nokia 770

[Chanc_Gorkon]

AND Origami has a hard disk. The Nokia does not. This is more like the Archos PMA400.

Re:Nokia 770

[soupdevil]

The Nokia is a browsing device. That's all. It has no hard drive. Despite the fact that it's roughly the same form factor, it's nowhere near the same kind of device. My cell phone is shaped like my tv remote, and they both have number keypads. That doesn't make them comparable.

Re:Nokia 770

[Anonymous Slacker]

Correct.
From all the specs I can find on the Origami, it's just a small-form-factor TabletPC.
Uses Intel Pentium/Centrino M processor, up to 60GB HD, minimum 256MB ram, minimum 800x480 touchscreen.
And of course, full WinXP TabletPC edition.
- this means it does everything a desktop WinXP box will do and more, except high-end graphics hungry apps (no WoW, I presume).

I assume Microsoft is aiming at the potential consumers out there who like the idea of TabletPC but don't want to spend the typical $1400-2500 it costs for a full-sized one.

If I didn't already switch from a smallish-form-factor TabletPC (8.4" screen) to the smallest-form-factor WinXP Oqo Model 01 a year ago, I'd seriously be looking to get one of these when they hit the market.

I've seen the Nokia 770 in stores. The user interface isn't intuitive enough for my tastes (I'm a long-time windows user) and I was surprised at how small the screen is.
Granted, it didn't heat up as much as most Win boxes I've seen, and has impressive battery life, but that's mostly hardware as the 770 doesn't use a full x86 processor.
(for comparison, the Oqo uses a Transmeta Crusoe, and I get about 1 3/4 hours battery-life before having to swap batteries or recharge. They now have a double-sized battery available which should help on this end, but that adds to the bulk of the unit)

Re:Nokia 770

[tao]

You can do quite a lot even being offline (my favourite waste of time being playing old LucasArts games in ScummVM...), and if you're in transit or at the beach you're still able to connect via your mobile... There are already a fair amount of open source software released for the 770, including Abiword, Gnumeric, etc. Open Office is a bit too bloated though.

Re:Nokia 770

[Anonymous Coward]

With a Bluetooth phone in your pocket or bag and a decent data plan you can have your Internet connection in the transit or at the beach with the Nokia 770.

Re:Nokia 770

[markdavis]

>There's at least one MAJOR difference Origami is running some Windows version and Nokia 770 is running (Debian based) Maemo! Open source.

There are two other major differences: The 770 is half the price and is MUCH smaller/lighter/more mobile. If only it had a slightly faster CPU and triple the RAM... Can't have everything!

My review is here: http://markadavis.org/770review.pdf

Re:Nokia 770

[Tim Browse]

Slow down with the logic there, Captain - this is slashdot.

Also, try using more car analogies.

Re:Nokia 770

[anomalous cohort]

There are already a fair amount of open source software released for the 770

Where do I go to find this software?

Re:Nokia 770

[tao]

Some of it can be found in the Maemo application catalog.

Re:Nokia 770

[mrchaotica]

...a smallish-form-factor TabletPC (8.4" screen)

What TabletPC would that be? I haven't seen any ones that small, and it's exactly what I'm looking for (something slightly bigger than an Origami or 770).

Re:Nokia 770

[Anonymous Slacker]

TDV Vision v800xpt, though I'm not sure if they can be found for sale anywhere anymore.
http://www.advueu.com/003/productitem.php?id=36

You might get lucky and find one of the updated versions - if so, I highly recommend one with at least 512MB of ram.
Also, the speed (or lack thereof) of 800MHz Transmeta CPU really showed on the one I had. Even with all of the WinXP "graphical enhancements" disabled, it is slow responding at times, even drawing with the pen in MS Paint felt a bit labored.
As for the pen, I'm now much more in favor of the Wacom digitizers (which this model does NOT have), simply for the fact that the Wacoms don't require a battery in the pen itself.
I don't know about you, but I've never seen a rechargeable AAAA battery, and the non-rechargeable ones aren't terribly common or inexpensive, either.

Nowadays, there are some newer TabletPC's with similar sized screens, though you'll have to check the prices to see if they are in your budget (the v800xpt was about $900 when I bought it, far cheaper than anything else at that time, over 2 years ago)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/evalua tion/products.mspx
It looks like Fujitsu, Motion Computing, and Itronix all have TabletPC's in the 8.4" to 8.9" screen-size range now.

Re:Nokia 770

[mrchaotica]

Oh, now that's a good website! Now I just need to find one that'll run OSX (since I am, after all, replacing my iBook). Hopefully Inkwell will work if I find one with a Wacom digitizer...

Re:Nokia 770

[mschaef]

"I'll give you that. It was a better operating system at its core than the Mac OS was, and that gave me a few nervous laughs at the time. Nevertheless, driver development is a huge hassle now, there's no support behind it except for community. Be OS almost has a bigger following at this point. ;) " You're absolutely right, of course... for years, NewtonOS has been an absolute disaster in terms of support. I can understand why Apple didn't do this, but open source NewtonOS would have been a compelling thing, particularly on modern hardware.

Tablet PC

[Eightyford]

I read the article, but I just want to be clear. Are these nothing more than smaller tablet PCs? I just assumed Origami was a bigger deal than that, considering all the hype.

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Microsoft feel the Tablet PC concept didn't fail badly enough the last time they tried it, so in true Microsoft fashion they've reworked it, rebranded it and relaunched it as a NEW! EXCITING! same old thing. Except now they look like Sega GameGears and have a cheap plastic stand that fold out. Woo.

Re:Tablet PC

[Gr8Apes]

I watched the initial promo trailer for this thing. Near as I can tell, it's a wireless enabled tablet PC, possibly with Bluetooth - it's implied by the phone camera transfer. It also has Voice Recognition software and hand writing recognition software. Whoop de doo. While neat in concept and allegedly able to do things like tele-conference, there's no phone capability. That seems a huge oversight to me, since that might have made this more enticing, much as anything from MS is enticing. Oh, and it plays games. Can't forget that! ;)

Cons: It's large, the size of your larger college textbooks. No built in phone. No built in camera, still or camcorder. Touch screen with no protector, I can see that becoming opague with scratches in no time. VR software on MS hasn't been the greatest, now it's supposedly flawless, and on a tablet no less?

I think I might wait for Apples iTunes PDA phone instead. When it comes to items like this, Apple seems to deliver.

Re:Tablet PC

[Billly Gates]

I am thinking its microsoft's answer to the blackberry

Re:Tablet PC

[Total_Wimp]

I am thinking its microsoft's answer to the blackberry

I was thinking, "you have go to be kidding," then I realized you were probably just hoping they'd have to shut their doors due to patent disputes.

Either way, I got a good laugh out of it.

TW

Re:Tablet PC

[CPUGuy]

I don't know what college you went to, but all my books were 5x that size.

Re:Tablet PC

[e2d2]

I read the article, but I just want to be clear. Are these nothing more than smaller tablet PCs? I just assumed Origami was a bigger deal than that, considering all the hype.

Why is it, after every product release, someone says "is this it? I thought it would be more considering the hype".

What, do you actually fall for the corporate hype?

No product lives up to the hype, hence the word HYPE.

I'm not sure exactly what product you are waiting for but I have bad news - it's never coming. Except for the beer fetching robot, that really is coming.

Re:Tablet PC

[Billly Gates]

I am not saying these things are the best things since sliced bread.

Microsoft has been mentioning they want one and Microsoft did the same tactic in the PDA market agaisnt palm and thus suceeded. Corporate departments swallowed them up and the people who purchase PDA's and Blackberry's have money. I think this is what microsoft hopes. Will it suceed? I dont know.

Re:Tablet PC

[stinkwinkerton]

The tablet PC FAILED? Holy crap, someone better call all those businesses that are buying them for their employees!

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Sure, they didn't take over the laptop world, but the product is still out there and a lot of people are still buying them and using them. That's a far cry from failure.

Re:Tablet PC

[revscat]

Why is it, after every product release, someone says "is this it? I thought it would be more considering the hype". What, do you actually fall for the corporate hype? No product lives up to the hype, hence the word HYPE.Why is it, after every product release, someone says "is this it? I thought it would be more considering the hype". What, do you actually fall for the corporate hype? No product lives up to the hype, hence the word HYPE.

You can be disappointed without being gullible. I saw the initial "commercial" for the Origami back a few weeks ago, and what THAT showed was actually pretty cool. This, however, is very different from what was shown there but also pretty uninteresting.

I like technology, so even though I have next to no respect for Microsoft I nonetheless was interested. I'm also disappointed that this thing has turned out to be so banal. It has nothing to do with gullibility.

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, I don't know, I'm actually sorta interested in this. Only two things are really giving me pause at this point.

1. I already have an HP Tablet PC and, frankly, while it's been a pretty decent laptop, it wasn't great for what I expected to use it for. The distance between the pen and LCD, to say nothing of the weird lag it experiences sometimes (what you for get putting XP on a 1ghz Pentium-M), have made it practically impossible to finished, production level drawings. I guess that's the tradeoff I made switching from the Wacom, where you can't see what you're doing. Back to ink and paper for me unfortunately, wish I'd figured that out $1600 earlier.

2. It's Microsoft, and, as much as I've done OK using their products in the past, their attitude over the last couple years in regards to unfairly killing other software, direct competitor or not, and the whole falling to the darkside of DRM bit, really gives me pause. I'd really like to see somebody make an art-centric tablet with a thinner screen guard and either a stripped down 98SE/NT5 OS or something like Photoshop with file manager utilities that was also priced reasonably (fat chance). Apple's probably not in a position to do it though :/

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the 10,000 employee company I work at is just fucking overflowing with Tablet PC shipsets. All our warehouse staff have them[1]. We have thousands of them! So do our suppliers and customers; everywhere you go, you can't move for people with Tablet PCs! Our customers too; they're just clamouring for our mobile software for their Tablet PCs[2]

And then I woke up and it was all a dream.

A couple of million units shipped is nothing. No one wanted them. The Tablet PC has effectivly failed in the market. The Tablet PC and the Itaniuam share some common bonds; they have found a small niche of users, the people behind them will spend millions telling you how great they are, but they never lived up to the original market hype and sales projections.

Tablet PC: failure.
[1]: Actually, they have small handheld devices like the Tortoise 7500 if they have anything at all.
[2]: Actually, they're also using small handheld devices like the Tortoise.

Re:Tablet PC

[Gr8Apes]

It depends which promo you see. The one I saw today made it look 3 times smaller, some guy with huge hands and fat fingers playing with it.

The longer promo shows several people playing with it, and from those, it definitely appears to be the size of a reasonable hardback book, especially when placed into its traveling case.

On the topic of college books, one of my texts that I still own, is about 4 x 7 x 1" in size.

Re:Tablet PC

[Scrameustache]

I just assumed Origami was a bigger deal than that, considering all the hype.

Here are two things you need to learn about: Astroturfing, and product placement.

The hype was just that, hype. Don't EVER fall for the hype. All those articles about "what IS Origami? Origami will use Intel chips!!!" etc. They were just publicity, disguised as articles.

It's sneaky, it's dishonest, and to quote Paul Anka: Just don't look! Just don't look!

Re:Tablet PC

[Dr. Mojura]

Except that I can easily fit a Blackberry into my pocket, where as I'd look pretty ridiculous carrying the Origami around in my pocket. The Blackberry is so successful because it does a few things very well, and is very portable... on the other hand, it seems the Origami aims to do everything, but unfortunately probably won't do them as well or simply. Microsoft seems to have no understanding of the "sometimes less is more" philosophy.

Re:Tablet PC

[e2d2]

Yeah true. I just found out about Origami from CNN yesterday and what is the first thing I do? I start wondering what the hype is all about. Dig a little deeper and find it's a tablet. Dig further and find it's another type of tablet and I'm a bit disappointed. I know that CNN has to draw eyeballs, but they totally spun it as if this secret product meant a whole new direction for MS, ala Apple with it's IPod.

Pretty much another let down.

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

They failed to live up to the expectations, and they possibly failed to make the revenues to offset the R&D into them. It's like the Turbo Grafix 16, sure some people had them, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a failure.

RE: Tablet PC

[Mad Ogre]

I'm a shooter... write for a gun magazine and everything. This Tablet PC thing reminds me of something. The Beretta Cougar which is now out of production. The Cougar was a fantastic handgun. Very reliable and very accurate. Beretta just sat back and waited for Lethal Weapon 5 to come out with Mel Gibson packing a Cougar or something. Then they put the Cougar in a glossy wooden presentation case. Then they tried a high tech looking aluminum case. They really didn't know how to market the Cougar, who to sell it to or how. So the Cougar didn't sell. Marketwise, it was failure. But that is no reflection on the gun itself. I had one for several years and I loved it. Owners love them. But just because others didn't buy them isn't an indictment of the product. Much like the Tucker car, it was just ahead of the times. Tablet PC's are much the same way. The devices themselves are pretty good... but who are they selling these to? And are they putting in sufficient hardware specs for those users? From what I've seen in the tablets that I've checked out and who was wanting to use them... no. Either not enough memory, storage, or horsepower under the hood. Local clinic had a couple doctors buy them... but the Tablets couldn't run the software that the clinic uses. So the doctors dropped them and picket up little notebooks instead. Close, but no cigar.

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

from what i can see.. yes it's basically a Tablet PC; but half the size, half the cost, and half the battery life. ;-)

honestly, i think this is what the Tablet PC should've been from the beginning. it has just the right size and just the right price. previous/current Tablet PC's are nothing more than laptops with swivel touchscreens. i think people are missing the point by comparing this to an ipod | PSP | PDA | cell phone. this is a Tablet PC, it runs Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 as the operating system, and can run windows applications. it's a computer, not a one-trick-pony media device. i think MS will struggle to market this properly. but if they can bring this out to market for under $1000 AND improve the battery life, i'll consider getting one.

Re:Tablet PC

[Breakfast Pants]

No, they failed if they didn't meet their projections. They didn't. At all.

Re:Tablet PC

[Jack9]

If you read the article, why are you asking for clarification? ALL IT EVER WAS, WAS A TABLET PC. It was always going to be junk nobody wanted and nobody is going to use. Why MS is even bothering marketing it, is beyond me.

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

But if someone was making a linux or OSheXed version:
OMFG BEST PRODUCT EVAR!!!!!!111!!!!111ELEVENTYELEVENONE

Re:Tablet PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm.... I projected I was going to get laid three times last week. I only got laid twice. Dammit, I failed to get laid!

Re:Tablet PC

[GregWebb]

Right now, I think this is too big and too expensive.

But not too much of either though, and I can see myself buying one in a few years if they're still around.

What I've wanted for ages is a combination of a PDA and an iPod (and, as a dedicated Psion S5 user on grounds of that marvelous keyboard, if they can get that in too then fantastic!). I want something that I can cart around with me everywhere to capture basic notes and other info. But I would _love_ having my full CD collection on there as MP3 files (which comes in at around 30GB and is why I don't want a Palm LifeDrive) to plug into my car stereo for when I'm driving around, and I want integrated satnav on the thing as well. By putting them in the one box I can have a single interface to poke and not need to worry about the music hitting a noisy patch when the satnav wakes up. Power? Not a major problem, car will be running it anyway.

So, as it stands it's too big, too expensive and needs a bigger HDD for me to be interested. But, bring out a version with a 5-6" screen rather than 7", a 60-80GB HDD, GPS somehow (expansion card is fine by me) and a cradle for me to fit it in my car, and I'd probably pay UKP350-400 for it.

Re:Tablet PC

[BeanThere]

False analogy; in business, if you fail to meet sales projections by a large gap, you have probably lost a lot of money. Generally most people don't start out business ventures planning to lose money, usually a business plan that loses money is regarded as a failure - almost by definition.

Re:Tablet PC

[Geckoman]

When MS first started talking about the Tablet PC at PDC 2001, this is the type of device they were predicting. Unfortunately, tablets got derailed by bad implementations and marketing that were beyond Microsoft's control.

Their first mistake was ever showing tablets that had the now-ubiquitous convertible spinning screen and keyboard. Tablets were originally conceived as a new platform, but the unimaginative laptop manufacturers seized on them as a mere laptop feature, and proceeded to produce small, underpowered, overpriced laptops with touch screens rather than capitalizing on the tablet's unique features and strengths. MS should never have even hinted at laptop-like tablets in the early presentations.

The other major mistake was that manufacturers didn't do enough to get tablets into the hands of users. Everyone I went to PDC with in 2001 came back raving about tablets, but almost none of the people we described the concept to got it. Without fail, though, everyone I know who eventually got to try one hands-on said, "Wow, this is really cool!" (followed shortly by: "I wish I could afford one.") Unfortunately, it was early 2005 before I ever saw one in a store where shoppers could try them, and even then it wasn't obviously labeled as a Tablet PC, nor was there any real indication what that meant.

It appears that MS is determined not to repeat the first mistake this time. At the very least, it should be interesting to see what new mistakes they can come up with.

Re:Tablet PC

[Breakfast Pants]

Ok, well they have lost a lot of money and have not recouped the money spent on the development effort and will not for the foreseeable future. Is that clear enough?

Not this again

[timeOday]

I feel there's a void of uselessness in sizes between the PDA and the laptop. If I can't put it in my pants pocket, then I have to carry/backpack it, so it might as well be a laptop with a real keyboard.

Re:Not this again

[guacamolefoo]

I think that there is room for a device between laptop size and pda size. I remember the old HP Omnibooks and the Jornada-type devices.

MSFT's info says that this thing is the size of a paperback. Maybe a trade paperback. I'd like something in a clamshell design with a screen that is maybe the size of my HP17BII calculator, or just under 6" by about 3". A little keyboard below and a screen on top. Maybe use a Thinkpad nub for a pointing device. Allow PCMCIA and USB, and really that's all I want. I could add wifi via pcmcia if I really need it, or a Verizon wireless card that way.

I'd need maybe a couple of gigs on the drive, like 2 or 4. They can get that in an iPod, why not a small palmtop?

I wouldn't look for a really snappy processor, as battery life (and size/heat) would obviously be issues.

It would just be nice to have something small and thin to work with from time to time if I'm waiting in court or travelling or sitting at home with the kids. PLus, lugging around a laptop is a pain in the ass.

Re:Not this again

[guacamolefoo]

I think that I may have found something in the ballpark of what I want:

http://www.mobileplanet.com/product.asp?code=12897 7

(not pimping the site, just found it)

Anyone with OQO experiences, please feel free to share.

Re:Not this again

[BigBunny]

How about a purse?

Re:Not this again

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a purse?

I think you mean "How about a purse, bitch?"

Re:Not this again

[LeDopore]

"Is that an Origami in your pocket, or..."

Re:Not this again

[rcs1000]

OK. I have one. The OQO has the following problems:

(1) It's heavy.
(2) It has a terrible keyboard.
(3) It's too small to do serious work on, and too large to carry anywhere comfortably.

I personally prefer the ultra small Sony UX1. I've put Debian on it, and - despite being rather old now - it's sweet :-)

Re:Not this again

[shaka999]

Hmmm, personally I find a PDA near useless. Too small for anything but a calendar and my phone now takes care of that.

I think the new size could be perfect for many applications. I haven't heard media center mentioned but if this has XP media edition I think it could be a hit. Use this for a front-end on a box with a tuner and you can have a portable TV anywhere in your house. Not bad. Sony has been selling these for a while and ridiculous prices. The price points listed are cheaper then the Sony TVs and come with a bonus computer :).

Re:Not this again

[Tom]

I feel there's a void of uselessness in sizes between the PDA and the laptop.

There is, and that's not going to change until someone invites inflatable screens and keyboards that don't suck.

The notebook has a full keyboard, a touchpad and a large screen. The PDA is small enough to fit in your pocket and has whatever screen real-estate that provides, sacrificing the keyboard.

There simply isn't a go-inbetween. "half a keyboard" doesn't cut it. A slightly-larger-than-PDA screen immediately loses all the advantages of the PDA while not gaining much on notebooks. It's a curve with two peaks, and the valley inbetween is there to stay.

Re:Not this again

[shaka999]

Ok, just adding to my post. Compare to this item at amazon http://tinyurl.com/p875r. The price should be about the same as this "location free" TV yet have much, much more functionality.

Re:Not this again

[Ender_Stonebender]

Sounds like you want the Vulcan FlipStart PC (runs Windows XP, may be vaporware) or the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 (runs Linux on an ARM CPU, shipping now).

Re:Not this again

[sbryant]

Yeah, but look at the price! It was reduced from $1960 to $1650, but even for that money I'd want something significantly more powerful. It's only got 1GHz CPU, 20GB HD, 256RAM, 802.11b, USB 1.1. A laptop for $1000 would exceed it on all of these points.

I have a Jornada 710. It's just the right size (fits in my back pocket), has a wide screen (640x240), a keyboard and goes for 9 hours on the standard battery. I think this model came out in 2000 or 2001. I'd really like something with the same form factor, but more up-to-date innards, including much more storage space and WLAN. I don't know of anything on the market that matches. :-(

-- Steve

Re:Not this again

[spockman]

Almost all of your comments, except keyboard, are addressed in the newest model. http://www.oqo.com/hardware/basics/

Re:Not this again

[Acer500]

The Toshiba Libretto is amazing and its size was just about right for me. I wish they weren't so incredibly expensive though.

Re:Not this again

[smithmc]

  I feel there's a void of uselessness in sizes between the PDA and the laptop. If I can't put it in my pants pocket, then I have to carry/backpack it, so it might as well be a laptop with a real keyboard.

Maybe so. Meanwhile, however, as far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't have a keyboard, I'm not interested. It's just too useful and important an input device to do without, for anything that purports to be a "PC".

I applaud new products, but...

[BTWR]

I applaud new products, but hasn't this been done before? Haven't "palmtops" been around for like 5+ years? Is the new innovation simply the price? I'm not bashing MS here, i'm simply wondering what the big breakthrough is. (and if it's the price, then that's fine - I don't recall how much palmtops cost. If they usually cost $2000, then this $500 version truly is special, i suppose...)

Re:I applaud new products, but...

[richpulp]

The form is like a chunkier HPC 2000. That ran at 800 x 600 rather than the 800 x 400 the Origami UMPC runs at. It does remind of the old HPC 320 LX as well, except that had a dinky keyboard and a clam shell design.

Re:I applaud new products, but...

[Locutus]

But this is Pen Windows 2006(tm) so it's a new invention by Bill Gates and everyone will want one. Microsoft invents everything. Didn't you know? ;-/

Well, with billions in cash, Microsoft can pay the press to publish anything... And they do, they do. IMO, Microsoft is the McDonalds of the tech industry. Those who know better, go elsewhere. Those who don't, think it's the greatest. So where we have a McTablet, or better yet, a McTablet-mini. BFD. The only interest I would have in this is how fast will they show up on eBay for under $200 so I can put GNU/Linux on it and make the ultimate universal remote out of it.

LoB

Nothing to see here

[MrMickS]

Title says it all really. There's nothing really new here. Wintel have been trying to push this idea for a while. So far it doesn't address what users really want.

Hype

[shamowfski]

I'd like to thank the Microsoft Hype Machine for providing me yet another huge let down. The fact that microsoft doesn't have an actual product to market I guess shouldn't surprise me, but for a few weeks, I did have hope...

Re:Hype

[Odocoileus]

HaHa, your a MS groupie!

Re:Hype

[j0217995]

I wonder how much hype actually was Microsoft's? I know Scoble said a bunch of stuff on his blog and channel9 on what it would not be, how many other news sites went balistic and pounced all over this? Was there just an over reaction across the board that is now being blamed on Microsoft or were those sites just paid by MS to boots "hype." Nothing ever lives up to the hype.

Re:Hype

[shamowfski]

Origami Project

Re:Hype

[Rhipf]

I don't think this was anymore over hyped than a lot of Apple "announcements". It's been said before and I'll say it again... If Steve Jobs had announced this as the next Ipod everyone would be talking about how amazing it is.

Re:Hype

[shamowfski]

Yeah, but apple never would have released this as the next Ipod. Apple usually (at least recently) tries to integrate some style into their products. These UMPC's are ugly as hell imho.

Re:Hype

[elrous0]

HaHa, your grammar sucks!

The Reactions To Oragami Around The Net

[Anonymous Coward]

The reactions to Oragami remind me of on of my favorite bits from HitchHikers Guide:

"One of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round to see what the first was looking at, but it wasn't looking at anything very much."

This is new? Remember QQO?

[Winterblink]

Linky

I remember seeing this thing on a CNet video a year ago, it was extremely impressive back then running a full version of XP with all the inputs and outputs you could want.

more pics etc.

[DrSkwid]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/08/origami_um pc_clunker/

another MS hardware failure, to be sure

Re:more pics etc.

[pimpimpim]

_another_ MS hardware failure? MS hardware itself has a pretty good reputation actually, I know a lot of linux-only people that use a microsoft mouse for this reason. The OS can be another thing, as the register article mentions the daily reboot necessary for the previous tablet pc os.

Re:more pics etc.

[Hosiah]

I know a lot of linux-only people that use a microsoft mouse for this reason.

Sit down and take a deep breath: the reason so many Linux geeks use MS mice is because Linux users in general like budget hardware, and you can scoop up boxes full of discarded MS keyboards and mice in the closet of the FE's office at your job. We use them because they're what's always there until we can find better.

What we *prefer* are Logitech trackballs.

On a related note, just because you pipe Dukes of Hazzard on your TV station 24 hours a day with no other choice does not mean people prefer it.

Re:more pics etc.

[pimpimpim]

What we *prefer* are Logitech trackballs.

Funny that you say that, I bought one ("marble mouse") a month ago. I am now using an old-fashioned roller mouse and noticed that I didn't like new optical mice because they jitter every now and then. I needed about a week to get used to it, in the beginning I was rolling all over the place. Now I would want one at work too. They're superior to optical mice as the surface if controlled: no jitter. They're superior to mice in general because you don't have to move your wrist all over the place.

Re:more pics etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

MS doesn't make the hardware - that's a Samsung prototype. So while I agree on their mice, don't expect this to be anything other than a cheap-feeling, yet expensive, tablet PC.

Re:more pics etc.

[TwilightSentry]

I've had 3 MS mice and one keyboard die on me. These were their $$$ models, too.

When can I have a mouse that runs Linux?

Re:more pics etc.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Tablet PCs are regarded as a failure in the market, and the X-Box and XBox 360 haven't been as stellar as hoped, and that is what people are talking about when referring to Microsoft electronic devices. Mice and keyboards are a bit more trivial as electronics devices and don't really count. When it comes to real consumer gadgets, Microsoft has yet to sell a success.

This new Tablet PC device is uncomfortably sized between a small PDA and a small laptop, so it will be compared with both. If I want portable computing, I'll take a MacBook Pro. If I want ultramobile computing, I'll get a Blackberry. There's not much here to make Origami devices stand out from those two extremes.

Re:more pics etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

the X-Box and XBox 360 haven't been as stellar as hoped

For being their first entry in new market, 2nd place in sales is hard to beat!! I would never say that the Xbox hasn't been "stellar"...have you forgotten all of your video game history?;-)

As for the xbox360...only time will tell

Re:more pics etc.

[dlelash]

I believe MS mice and keyboards are actually made by someone else (Logitech?). Appropriately, I've never had problems with the hardware itself, but the MS control software has often led to weirdness on my Mac.

Re:more pics etc.

[Overly Critical Guy]

The X-Box barely tied with Nintendo at 15% of the market. Time will tell with the XBox 360, but it's been a less-than-stellar launch, especially in Japan. More Gamecubes sold last Christmas than XBox 360s.

not Microsoft hardware?

[acvh]

Ok, I didn't really read much on the subject, but it sounds like all Origami is is a spec for this small form factor ultra-tablet PC. That lets Microsoft talk like they've invented something cool, but require the hardware vendors to make the investment in product development. When it fails they can just blame the hardware guys, and roll the features into the next generation of Windows.

Re:not Microsoft hardware?

[Locutus]

Exactly right. You might have noticed that with the new xbox180 they're attempting to get hardware vendors to OEM the software and take the losses instead of Microsoft. Hardware vendors are getting smarter these days though. Well, some of them. MSFT will find someone who thinks Bill G invents everything he talks about and will convice his BoD that a deal with Microsoft is a good deal.

Here's how it works. Now that Bill and Steve have put the stop to Palm's growth/threat by losing over $8 Billion to keep Windows CE going, they now can start inventing the handheld market. Just wait, we'll probably hear about a new R&D project inside of Microsoft call Global Positioning System. ;-/

LoB

Video

[mancontr]

YouTube video: Origami

PDA/Game/PocketPC/DVD-MP3 Player/GPS-Combo

[digitaldc]

The evolution of the PC continues, and a challenge to the PSP. If it does everything it says it can do well and the price is lowered a bit, it will sell.

Will it run Linux?

Behold... the colorscreen Newton!

[Anonymous Coward]

I will dig my Apple Newton out from my closet and avoid the 800 dollar sting. It's been in there since '96.

Like a Libretto?

[kahei]

If this thing is like a Libretto, or like that ultra-small Vaio than Sony built for a while, then I'd buy one. I'd buy one because I have a lot of word documents, excel spreadsheets, half-finished novels, C# code and so on to work with wherever I am. Can't do it on a PDA, can't yank out a full-sized laptop all the time either.

Why anyone would buy this kind of thing for the same niche as a PDA or mobile phone, though, I can't begin to imagine. I can foresee a future in which I am the only one with an Origami. The question is whether I can foresee a future in which Microsoft stop creating Next Big Things and go back to doing useful stuff.

Newton anyone?

[cunamara]

This just looks like a retread of the Newton, in terms of form factor at least. Andnot all that different from the Nokia 770. Everything old is new again, I guess.

My version of this story was passed up for this?

[Kasracer]

I had several more sites with loads of information for my version of this article. I event had a link for umpc.com which is a website created by Intel for the UMPC community and even has a web forum with development information.

I feel cheated =/

yes but...

[tehwebguy]

...does it run vista?

Re:yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. But only versions 1, 3, 4, 9, 16 and 22.

Operating system : Windows XP....

[inmortal]

And how much is the cost of the operating system?

Ironic: Will they sell a version "empty" (without OS)?

Maybe you can install linux to it and then sell the windows OS and then have it for 100$ "less"?

cya

Re:Operating system : Windows XP....

[CastrTroy]

No, if Dell has taught us anything, it's that the Linux/ No OS version will cost $100 more than the windows version.

Re:Operating system : Windows XP....

[PFI_Optix]

And how much is the cost of the operating system?

Well, since you probably won't be able to buy the OS without the hardware, $0 :p

Ironic: Will they sell a version "empty" (without OS)?

I should think it's possible, but I seriously doubt it. Won't be long before someone gets Linux on it, though.

Maybe you can install linux to it and then sell the windows OS and then have it for 100$ "less"?

OEM licenses aren't transferable, so no.

Re:Operating system : Windows XP....

[Phillup]

Quite frankly... I expect to pay more for a better product!

Paying more for Linux doesn't surprise me nearly as much as how much they pay for Windows to begin with...

Video?

[Lord_Dweomer]

So I've been in the market for a portable media player, mostly for my Divx movie collection and TV shows to watch on the morning commute. My main concern is ability to handle obscure codecs, screen size, and battery life. This thing should be able to handle codecs fine....the screen looks decent...but how is the battery life for playing movies? That seems to always be the shortcoming of these devices. Now if you slapped a fuel cell in there, then maybe we'd be talking.

BTW, can anybody recommend a PMP? The video iPod has a TINY screen, and I've heard mixed things about most of the other players out there.

Re:Video?

[ikejam]

a wm5 dell axim when theres a discount on with The Core Media player could do.

plus its a pda with wifi as well....

ofcourse its hardly cool, but still.

or you could try creative zen vision, though im not a big fan of the build quality of theur mp3 players.

Re:Video?

[CPUGuy]

If the pictures of the as yet unreleased video ipods are real, then I'd hold off and get one of those.

Re:Video?

[EggyToast]

I own an Archos AV420, which I've enjoyed for portable video. There's a larger one out now, as well. Like most PMPs though, you need to be comfortable transcoding video in order to get things into the target format easily.

For me it's doubled as a portable picture viewer and camera backup, as it has a compact flash slot on the device, making it easy to simply dump a full CF card on to it while out and about. The video makes it fun for plane rides. It's small, but that's why I like it.

Re:Video?

[Lord_Dweomer]

I've actually been looking at the Archos PMPs, since they have a nice form factor, large screens, and seem to be able to play a lot. Have you noticed any difficulties playing any types of file formats? In addition to divx stuff with a lot of random codecs (not just the NIMO one) I have some Xvid stuff as well.

Also, how is the battery life on it?

Re:Video?

[EggyToast]

I've encoded stuff with straight-up DivX and XviD and had no problems. There are some restrictions as far as what types of filters and options you can run, but I stick with ticking on Noise Reduction, High Quality and 2 Pass, and leave the other options off. The nice thing about the players is that if you put a file that it can normally read on there, it will tell you "Error: Cannot play file with [setting]." So you can just re-encode.

It can accept files up to 640x320 and it does look better to have the higher quality video on there. It does a good job of scaling on its own. It also does a pretty good job of detecting widescreen, although that's easy to fix if it detects incorrectly. The biggest problem is if you download a lot of videos, they'll often use some weird format for the audio. I'm not sure why some places or people decide on odd formats for audio, unless they're not really all that aware of codec types and ease of use for users, but ah well. Most transcoding tools will allow you to passthrough the video (or audio) and only re-encode the part that won't work

There was a problem with losing sync for video files encoded using VBR, but that's been less of a problem with current firmware. If you encode everything with CBR then it's not even an issue.

It doesn't play MKV or OGM files, which are a pain to reconvert. But there's only a few players that handle those formats on desktops, and it requires installing codecs, so that's not surprising.

The battery life is approximately 5-7 hours depending on what you're doing with it. If you're watching a huge movie encoded at very high quality, it's obviously going to run through the battery faster. There's 3 levels of brightness, and the lowest setting is great if it's sunny or you're in a darkened room. Max bright is just that -- very bright -- and works well in all other situations, I've found. The battery life has surprised me, as I didn't expect to get very long. But I'm able to go through about 16-20 TV shows at around 20min apiece before I start to worry about the battery (it'll end up around 20% or so). It doesn't die suddenly at the last few percentage bits, so you're really good until it gets to 2-3%. It also lasts a very long time between use. There's very little trickle when the device isn't being used, so I never worry about it being dead if I haven't used it in a while -- at worst it's about 10% lower than it was when I last used it.

And for picture use, it lasts easily 10 hours. I haven't timed it because that's a very long time to be looking through photos, but I've passed it around for people to look at photos for about an hour, and it was over 90% battery life still.

I like the 20gig ones because, well, that *is* a lot of video. Unless you're planning on being away from home for a long time, I found that it held as much as I needed to without being bored. It usually means you'll have a folder of "stuff for AV420" on your computer so you're ready to go, but that's not a big deal.

So how is this different from the Pepper Pad?

[Trelane]

From what I can tell, it seems to just be the Pepper Pad, but with Microsoft Inside.

Re:So how is this different from the Pepper Pad?

[pimpimpim]

Indeed, also the navigation buttons on the sides. But with MS's claimed $500 prize, they are a bit cheaper. For the rest, this pepper pad looks pretty cool to me!

Origami with

[ikejam]

no particular identity
no particular use
no particular target client
no particular chance of success

origami (ôr'-gä'm) pronunciation
n., pl. -mis.

      2. A decorative object made by folding paper.

a decorative object...ohhh..i get it now..

Re:Origami with

[thehubbell]

Yeah, but if your and executive and you see gadget candy aren't you going to get one for the cool(/uber cool) factor. And don't you bet all the self-employed guys might get one because they will find a way to right it off on their taxes as equipment business expense.

"Well Mr. IRS Agent, I need it to do estimates of labor on the go and to show that flash video my cousin made for me to my clients."

Re:Origami with

[knuckledraegger]

The only things that fold are the "C" notes M$ will make.

Intel has one

[sirmalloc]

This video was on digg yesterday supposedly showing Intel's version of a UMPC, with a hidden qwerty keyboard. I like the design, but I don't see anything like it listed under the Products link.

A lot of hype for nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, i cant make calls in this. Why in the world do i need to lug that thing around when my cellphone + PDA can do most of what it does?. I would still need to carry my cellphone even with this around.

Its targeted towards the business market. When was the last time you saw someone from Wall Street being addicted to Halo?.

And take a look at the price. With that price, i would rather buy a MotoRazor and supplement it with a Palm LifeDrive.

Don't Panic

[mgblst]

Seems like it should say these words - always connected to the internet.

Doesn't seem so bad then!

The BIG question.

[xPertCodert]

Will I be able to buy a beast barebone and put a good old Linux on it ?

are you

[Anonymous Coward]

.. just happy seeing me, or is it the origami in your pocket?

comparable...

[Corf]

Active browsing time via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is up to 3 hours. Stand-by time of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is up to 7 days. from Nokia.

Re:comparable...

[TheRaven64]

If you are not actively browsing (e.g. reading an eBook) the battery life on the 770 can fairly easily reach 5 hours. It's the only device I've ever owned where the advertised battery life was the worst case, not the best.

Re:comparable...

[owlstead]

Well, yes, I think that he/she was referring to that. With THIS, the author obviously meant the evil microsoft mini-tablet.

Just what Sony did several years ago

[mlewan]

However, the vgn u70 and u71 never took off. These Vaios are lovely machines in a lot of ways, but the keyboard is rubbish, and there is no way to place the screen in a comfortable position on a table unless you bring the bulky dock station.

Re:Just what Sony did several years ago

[pimpimpim]

Well, but look at the price! > $2000 is way too much for such an inbreed between laptop and pda. Also, the thing looks a bit too thick, and I guess that screen quality is only getting better in time, so the same format might work better this time.

still too big... ugh.

[RevAaron]

why do they gotta make these things so big and fat?

all i want is something the size of my former Newton MP2x00. It is the sweet spot between huge tablet PCs (I will not carry around an 7 lb tablet just like a notebook- sorry) and too small PDAs (3-4" screens don't cut it for a lot of things). I want something that will fit in a pair of my pants with deep pockets, or in a jacket pocket- something the Newton MP2x00 did, as well as various handheld PCs (Jornada 720, Sigmarion 3, HP200lx) I've had or tried.

*sigh*

I'd go buy a sony U50/70 but there's no way I'm spending USD $2000 on a device I carry around with me all the time. Something $500-1000 is more like it, but with our luck it'll end up being more like $800-1200 for one of these things.

Oh well... I guess I'll have to keep using CE devices for now, taking a PDA and using it as a computer. It works pretty well, don't get me wrong- but the hardware (mostly the screensize) doesn't cut it.

Re:still too big... ugh.

[CottonEyedJoe]

>why do they gotta make these things so big and fat?

This is exaclty whats wrong with them. The market for these things, like the market for Newton's, will be fairly small because you get a much less functional device for the same price in a package which just isnt small enough to carry around. If I've got to carry a 3 lb, non-pocketable brick, I might as well be carrying my 5 lb laptop.

I do see a small market for them, Some business travelers will adopt them, and companies may use them as inventory control devices (like the boxes FedEx and UPS drivers carry). I cant see busy housewives with designer cases toting these things around though. Another possible use is as an "Xbox portable", a full powered, full resolution gaming console with a screen built in.

Doctors and Lawyers loved the Newton, and some might buy these things, but the functionality offered by the newton has largely been replaced by other, smaller devices (though not as elegantly as the newton did); Even the newton was too big to see widespread adoption.

Re:still too big... ugh.

[RevAaron]

This is exaclty whats wrong with them. The market for these things, like the market for Newton's, will be fairly small because you get a much less functional device for the same price in a package which just isnt small enough to carry around. If I've got to carry a 3 lb, non-pocketable brick, I might as well be carrying my 5 lb laptop.

But that's just it. If a company were to make the Newton today- top of the line-type specs and the exact same physical screen size (but a higher-res) it wouldn't have to be a 3 lb non-pocketable brick like these things.

Even the Newton wasn't that- the Newton 2x00s weighed 1-1.4 lbs depending on what kind of batteries you had. The earlier Newtons were quite a bit smaller, but the Newton 2x00s were the top of the line, the last models made, and the Newts most beloved by most Newton enthusiasts. I don't debate that for most people a Newton is too big to fit in a pocket, even though I carried my 2100 around in my back pocket or in cargo pants of jeans with no problem.

Even if it doesn't fit in your pants, at least it is small enough to keep in your hands, like a lot of the paper-based day planners people carry around. A 5"x8" 1 lb Newton is easy to tote; a 5 lb laptop is not. I have owned a couple different laptops- a 7 lb Dell and a 5 lb iBook- and both of them never left the house for me to take to work or class more than a couple times.

Doctors and Lawyers loved the Newton, and some might buy these things, but the functionality offered by the newton has largely been replaced by other, smaller devices (though not as elegantly as the newton did); Even the newton was too big to see widespread adoption.

I don't presume to tell the world they should use the device I want. But with hardware and software as it is today, there *is* room in the market for something in the middle like the Newton 2x00. The thing is that a Newton 2100-like device would be quite a bit smaller and lighter than the Newton 2100 itself was. It would be easy enough to shave an inch or so off the length, make it a lot thinner (.25-.5" thick), and give it the kind of capabilities that make it more of a computer.

Actually, something like this exists- the Samsung Nexio S160. There's a newer model too. I think there was a newer model too. That is pretty close to what I'd like, just about exactly. But even when there is room in the market for something like this, even when people want it, there is no way they're going to speak $1200-1500 on it when they can get a PocketPC $250-450- everything but the screen being the same or better.

Why does Microsoft have to go and push some big honkin device like this instead? These Origami tablets truly are big enough that you should (and probably are) asking "if it's this big, why not bring a laptop?" There have been a few powerful pocketable computers I've used that have been very close to the sweet spot of size vs functionality vs price:

1. Newton 2100
2. Jornada 720
3. Sigmarion 3
4. Nexio S160
5. Sony Vaio U-Series
6. OQO

It's a shame, because the stuff it takes to make what I and others want- and those products prove it. The first two products are discontinued, and finding software for tem is getting harder and harder. Numbers 3 and 4 are only available via import from the Far East, and also have software compatibility issues- they both run the relatively-new Windows CE 4.x, but since they aren't available directly in the European and American markets, software is somewhat hard to find, with most software being written for PocketPC- incompatible with vanilla WinCE [1]. The Sig3 only comes in Japanese. The last two are really, really expensive ($2000+), and while they look like they'd be great for me, I just couldn't deal with carrying around a $2500 device in my pocket, subject to the abuse my Axim X51v or Jornada 720 recieve, let alone the kind of abuse my Newton 2100 took in stride.

[1] Think of WinCE as vanilla Linux with X11 installed. PocketPC is that, plus GNOME/GTK.

You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[rogerborn]

There is a difinitive difference between the design paradigms of Apple Computers and Microsoft Window devices, and it affects everything you do with computers. The development of ORIGAMI proves this.

"Microsoft hopes the computer makers will make great UMPCs for the market." - B. Gates

"Let the market drive the design of these devices" - B. Gates

Do you see the evolution here? Let the market drive the improvements. Hands off the suppliers of these devices. Let them follow whatever pattern works. (Maybe they will get lucky...)

But it is the customer who suffers, right? People buy the newest things running Windows. What do they get? Beta devices. Buggy. Feature poor. Scant battery life. Rotten interface. Such a great way to build a world-class device that everyone desires, isn't it?

Now look at Intelligent Design in consumer computing. Look at anything made by Apple.

Most likely, you will find that any product made by Apple is of excellent design right out of the box. There is no throwing of the standards out to the market and hoping something intelligent immerges. Apple takes control of the hardware design themselves, and it is not released to the consumer until it is perfect, and with an intuitive human interface that work flawlessly. And what the consumer gets are jewel-like Nanos, glittering iPods, and awesome, elegant iMacs, MacBook Pros and Towers. Things anyone would be pleased to carry or place in their homes of offices.

Besides this, there is no hopeful evolution of Apple's software either. Instead, the software adds real value to the excellent hardware, and most of it is absolutely free. And if it is not free, it is well worth investing in, for the small amount that it costs. Nobody has software like Apple's software - Tiger OS X, iLife, .Mac, iPhoto, iDVD, iTunes, GarageBand, iWeb, iDisk, etc., etc.

Apple computers and iPods reflect intelligence in their design of both the hardware and software.

Let's just say, that in comparison to all the Windows devices out there, it is like the difference between a man and a monkey.

So, why choose chancy evolution in your computing over intelligent design?

Don't monkey around. Get a Mac. It is the intelligent choice.

Regards,
Roger Born
"Sorry. No Refunds"

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[PFI_Optix]

Most likely, you will find that any product made by Apple is of excellent design right out of the box.

You've obviously never used OS 8.

Don't monkey around. Get a Mac. It is the intelligent choice.

No, thanks. Don't like the things myself. Ever since the first iMac and Apple's abomination called iPod, I just have no use for their products. I can get the same (actually, better) level of functionality with a lot less money by going elsewhere.

But kudos on a well-written propa...err...post :D

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[vykor]

functionality != usability

One of the main lessons you learn in industrial design. It really doesn't matter how much functionality you can pack into a widget, or even how cheap (for some reasonable value of cheap) you can make the widget, if your target user base can't make proper use of it.

Many in the technology industry just don't "get it". Apple is starting down the right track, but even some of their stuff is mind-bogglingly unintuitive. And attitudes like yours is so very prevalent among the engineering divisions. "We have 2x the feature set they do at 80 percent of their price! Why isn't our product selling?"

It is really time that human interface design gets a bit more attention.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple reinvents the wheel and then charges you more money than for comparable products. what's that thing about man and monkey you said again? lol.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Billly Gates]

Come on this guy loves Apple!

Apple is great

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[rogerborn]

PFI Optix!

Excellent point about the pre-Jobs OS 8 at Apple.

Actually, since Jobs "The Creator" came back, most everything i pointed out is more fact than poppa-ganda. ;-)

But, who sez Apple computers cost more than PCs do? Hasn't been true for a while now. Check out the mini, or the iBook. And where could you get such software functionality in any PC at any price?

=)

Best regards,
Roger Poppa-ganda Born
"Who sponsors your feelings?"

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Billly Gates]

THe 1984 mac was brilliant and Apple made some pretty innovative things in teh past. I think the 1984 mac was one of the greatest revolutions since the www came into existance and brought computers to the mass and created windows, fonts, and UI's to the whole market.

The apple powerbook was the second. Apple came out wiht multimedia systems yeras before pc's did and its laptops came up with innovative things like touchpads and trackballs first.

Apple computers are designed for people and not high end users. Today I feel they are real artsy and designed to look cool but its all show. THe Ipod was a great idea too but mp3 players were on the market before. They just never really took off.

I purchased my ipod mini mainly because of Itunes. It had the largest collection of music around. MusicMatch and others are catching up with the amount of titles carried so its kind of mute today.

WIndows no longer is the piece of crap it was. Its expensive and proprietary but so is apple now.

I think Apple deserves credit for its past acomplishments but I would liek to see something innovative and new again. Not something artistic and nice to look at.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Bloke down the pub]

It is really time that human interface design gets a bit more attention.

It gets plenty, but sadly most of it from people who thinks it's a synonym of "pretty" or "shiny".

Can we add aesthetics to the list of things that usability isn't?

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[simong]

I thought that said human sacrifice design for a moment. *drifts off*

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[rogerborn]

Hey Billy!

Great analysis here.

Actually, I wish Apple would come out with the ITEM all of us seem to want - something to surf with, answer emails, and watch our media.

My idea is something between the iPod and the iBook - 9" IMOS wide screen (16x9), super thin clamshell, with a 55 key full sized keyboard. It won't need drives if it has enough flash memory, thereby giving it excellent battery life. let it download via USB2 and/or Bluetooth, with WiFi on board, and I think you have the device we all wish ORIGAMI was (and isn't).

Such a device would be so popular that clothing manufacturers would invent clothes and jackets to carry this thing in, IMO.

Regards,
Roger Born
"Always drink upstream from the herd"

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[PFI_Optix]

I don't find any OS particularly intuitive, though I do find Microsoft's to be the closest to it probably because I grew up on DOS and Windows 3.0+. OSX is a huge improvement over past efforts by Apple (just like XP for MS) but it still leaves me wanting more. Linux is catching up nicely, I'm hoping it takes the lead something in the next generation of OS releases.

Apple is notoriously bad at ergonomics. I've got a box full of iMac mice to prove that point. I'll take Microsoft's peripherals over Apple's any day.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[PFI_Optix]

But, who sez Apple computers cost more than PCs do? Hasn't been true for a while now. Check out the mini, or the iBook.

Apple makes a $500 anything? That's a typical promotional price for an entry-level PC, complete with monitor and printer.

And where could you get such software functionality in any PC at any price?

What is there that I can't do with my PC? I've been trying to figure out what functionality I'm missing, and I just don't see it.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[bill_mcgonigle]

Apple makes a $500 anything? That's a typical promotional price for an entry-level PC, complete with monitor and printer.

Right, so Apple won't compete in the Dell firesale price range. You'd have to spend at least $700 to get a Mac system with kvm and a printer. Just like Toyota won't compete in the Chevy Aveo price range - the base model Corolla is 50% more expensive than the Aveo and it has the same features! Ergo, nobody buys Toyota?

What is there that I can't do with my PC? I've been trying to figure out what functionality I'm missing, and I just don't see it.

You're closing in on it - functionality != usability. That's why Toyota and Apple both sell their product.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Achoi77]

Ugh. Let us not mention those hockey puck mice ever again. That was an overdesigned piece of hardware in an attempt at Apple to try and be radically different. That mouse sucked. Fortunately they learned from their past mistakes and took those aspects into consideration.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[ianpm]

But it is the customer who suffers, right? People buy the newest things running Windows. What do they get? Beta devices. Buggy. Feature poor. Scant battery life. Rotten interface. Such a great way to build a world-class device that everyone desires, isn't it?

Now look at Intelligent Design in consumer computing. Look at anything made by Apple.

Yes, lets look at the first generation iPod. Which had a crappy battery, got so hot you couldn't touch it, and possibly would burn your skin, and generally didn't work at all including skipping, cutting out, etc. And this was AFTER Creative had already proved it was possible to make an MP3 player

So judging Apple by your own daft set of rules: they blow.

Which to be honest, I've always known anyway.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[PFI_Optix]

Right, so Apple won't compete in the Dell firesale price range. You'd have to spend at least $700 to get a Mac system with kvm and a printer. Just like Toyota won't compete in the Chevy Aveo price range - the base model Corolla is 50% more expensive than the Aveo and it has the same features! Ergo, nobody buys Toyota?

I'm not sure what you just replied to, but it's not what I wrote. :p

You're closing in on it - functionality != usability. That's why Toyota and Apple both sell their product.

I use Apples on a daily basis. I also use PCs, both Windows and Linux, on a daily basis. I prefer the PCs to the Apples in every way.

I ask again: what am I missing by not using an Apple?

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

I ask again: what am I missing by not using an Apple?

Being COOL!

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing:
      - Sleep Mode (that hold onto even audio drivers and such in proper state *EVERY* time
      - Telnet is usually shut off by default (HAH, my last job had a 50+ lab where every computer was open, for
      writing even, when you were on the internal network)
      - Intelligent Transparencies - when the effect is used properly, it makes some (me) people alot less claustrophobic -
      - Core Audio ENOUGH SAID.
      - Core Input (i think..) but whatever underlying scheme they use to bind keys to events is TOP NOTCH, fully arbitrary,
      and not to be found anywhere else. Mac seems to be king of accessibility features currently, too.
      - i could go on - but i'm too busy trying to insert my penis into the superdrive of my new mac mini intel duo i picked up.
            can't wait for the 2 gigs RAM to get in!

yeah. whatcha missin?

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[le0p]

Which is why I'm on my fourth iPod in less than a year and none of them were dropped. Flawless!

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[utexaspunk]

The new mac mice aren't much better- They're still super-flat, which gets mighty uncomfortable after extended use compared to a hand-filling logitech mouse. They don't have right buttons or scroll wheels -except for the mighty mouse, which opts for that weird ball thingie that doesn't give you any sort of feedback (like the little 'clicks' you get when you roll a scroll wheel) and strange sense-o-matic right clicking action. They don't have forward/back buttons, and the mighty mouse puts buttons right on the points you would use to pick up the mouse when doing an extended drag. Don't get me started on that smooth acrylic it's made out of, either. All-in-all, Apple mice are CRAP-ola.

Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution

[mrchaotica]

Just like Toyota won't compete in the Chevy Aveo price range

Bad Example.

Just put a Pentium 4 in it

[the eric conspiracy]

And you have a handy dandy toy that will keep your pocket warm for an hour or so.

Looking good

[drwiii]

This is a phenominal concept.

They've just created a middle market between PDAs and laptops. And it may eventually end up pigeonholing Windows Mobile to the cellphone arena. As natural market forces push the price down (at $500 it's already close to the high-end iPod), don't be surprised if this is where portable computing goes in the future. Add a Bluetooth keyboard and it's a laptop.

It's not going to break any performance records, but then again it's not meant to. It's a PC you won't mind taking wherever life takes you.

Re:Looking good

[JavaLord]

This is a phenominal concept. They've just created a middle market between PDAs and laptops. And it may eventually end up pigeonholing Windows Mobile to the cellphone arena. As natural market forces push the price down (at $500 it's already close to the high-end iPod), don't be surprised if this is where portable computing goes in the future. Add a Bluetooth keyboard and it's a laptop.

These have been around for awhile, see the OQO . Oragami is just bigger, but much cheaper. I might actually buy one, I've wanted an oqo for awhile but the price is steep just to make my commute more enjoyable.

I was kind of let down by this announcement, I was expecting a real all in one device, something that would run XP, but also work as a cell phone and a GPS unit. Yeah, I want too much.

Re:Looking good

[aug24]

Tell me anywhere and anywhen you wouldn't rather take either an 'instant-on, massive battery-life PDA' or a 'decent keyboard 'n' screen laptop'

I dare you.

Justin.

Re:Looking good

[HaydnH]

"This is a phenominal concept... They've just created a middle market between PDAs and laptops..."

As others have pointed out above, there are already other products like this on the market, see the above posts. To me this is M$ taking other people ideas, copying them and spending more dosh on marketing to win the battle - hmmm... they've never done that before now have they?

Re:Looking good

[Anonymous Coward]

Hospitals.

Nurses and doctors carry around big tablet PCs now so that they can handle all the various patient charts. Lot of times, it's too big for what they need, but PDAs are too small. I can definitely see this taking over in that market.

Re:Looking good

[16K Ram Pack]

I don't believe there's much of a computing market between something you can fit in your pocket and something quite heavy to carry around. Once i've got to carry a bag to hold something, I may as well carry a laptop that gives me much more power.

Re:Looking good

[drwiii]

Sales presentations.

Fold out the kickstand and do a low-footprint powerpoint presentation to a small group of people on their own desks. After the presentation, load your app, pass it around the room for people to fool with. No more cut-down-software PDAs, no more bulky laptops or tablet PCs to wing around, no more CD-Rs/flash-drives/5MB emails and praying people have a PC, powerpoint, or the right DLLs to show something off.

Digital media acquisition.

Download photos from your digital camera or videos from your camcorder, record lectures in class, load them into the editing app of your choice, do your thing without breaking a sweat. Connect to a wireless AP and mail it off, sync with home, whatever. No headaches, small footprint, etc. You get the idea.

The laptop was the PC without the overhead, and the UMPC looks like the laptop without the overhead. It's the low-cost PC platform (and your data) when, where, and how it's needed. And as someone who has been hauling around a laptop for far too long, I'd like to say it's about damned time.

Re:Looking good

[aug24]

Interesting.

If I'm going on a sales jaunt out of the building then I'll prolly want more than just that app anyway, and for those I'll want a proper screen and keyboard. So I want the laptop anyway, and I don't want to take this thing in addition.

If I'm going somewhere with a digi camera / cam corder, then I usually take enough storage not to need to get to a server. If it needs to get sent home regularly, then I see your point.

Cheers,
Justin.

Over hyped

[dfj225]

I think this product is rather mundane after hearing all the hype about Origami, not that I really bought into it to begin with. Still, this doesn't really seem to fill a niche that wasn't already filled. It is certainly not the iPod killer some called it earlier.

Some problems I can see:

It doesn't really offer more or better functionality than a Nokia 770 or a tablet PC. In fact, I think I rather have a small tablet PC so I would have access to a keyboard. With a codename of Origami, you would think this would have some kind of fold out keyboard, wouldn't you?

The battery life seems short (about 3 hours according to Scoble). If this is supposed to go everywhere with me and be my constant companion, it should last for at least 8 hours.

For the size and price, I don't really see this causing a new usage pattern beyond what people use portable computers or PDAs for. I suppose there is some market where people wanted something more powerful than a PDA but smaller than current tablet PCs, but it doesn't seem like a big one.

Re:Over hyped

[Billly Gates]

No this is a big deal.

Its for the blackberry market and unlike the Nokia it can run Microsoft office meaning outlook with scheduling and the ability to read email attachments unlike the blackberry and Nokia's products. Sure they have scheduling but it doesn't integrate with Microsoft Exchange and other proprietary MS standards that corporate America loves.

I think it may spell the end of the blackberry as most bussiness users will see it as primptive and proprietary just like the palm pilot after those nice color windowsce pda's hit the market.

Also they can be used as multimedia players unlike the blackberry and unlike the Ipod it comes with everything but the kitchen sink as a multifunction device.

My guess is ms will give them away for free to all first class business passengers for commercial jets like they did with the windowsCE pda's and it will just spread throughout the market.

Remember IT needs to approve such devices for many executives and many dont want to be sued by NTP thanks to fud it caused, not to mention no one has ever been fired for chosing Microsoft based products.

UK:R had it right

[Rydia]

"Microsoft Is Putting a PC in a Different Kind of Box"

Shameless plug...

[Anonymous Coward]

Flybook... Nuff said...

Re:This is new? Remember QQO?

[Corf]

QQO was groovy-lookin' but unfortunately had a price tag in the $1500-2000 range if I recall correctly.

Specs vs a laptop?

[Div3B0mbr]

I haven't had much time to finish looking through all the sites for specs, but I'm assuming for the price it can't really beat out a laptop. Just a quick search over at Circuit City shows me that I can get a decent laptop (suitable for work, mp3s, etc) for close to the price of one of these things.

Here's my link

actually

[Ivan Matveitch]

These days GNOME has a better user interface than OS X, and it runs fine on $200 computers.

Re:actually

[cosmo7]

These days GNOME has a better user interface than OS X, and it runs fine on $200 computers.

Plus, girls will go wild for your anti-grav hoverbike.

My prediction re: Origami

[Mille Mots]

My prediction is that the various manufacturers will fold early in the game. The design is just not cut out for success.

--
This sig left intentionally blank

Re:My prediction re: Origami

[Bloke down the pub]

The design is just not cut out for success.

It looks OK on paper.

Neat input method, but the size is problematic...

[Knutsi]

If you look at the Microsoft webpages linked to from the main story, it has a flash movie showing to quarter-circles on bottom corner of the screen, featuring a virtual keyboard. The idea is neat, and I really hope it works (bearing in mind that it can probably be easy to push to "buttons" at the same time, and only get one response from the system...unlike the multi-point tuchscreen featured in an earlier Slashdot story).

Anyway, the idea of a super-PDA basically replacing the PC has for me allways been very attarctive, as long as I can plug the little beast into a screen at work, then my high-resolution TV at home, and a projector when I tell my boss how much money he will get when _I_ get what I ask.

The problem is that these super-PDAs are allways to big to be practical. Mobile phones got a well earned success when they became small enough to put comfortably in a pocket. The PSP I recenly bought doesn't, and that causes me to rarely use it... its just not practical.

Any super-PDA bigger than a medium size cellphone is doomed to be a laptop. Maybe the best solution is simply to put all your stuff online, and access this from home, work and your cellphone on demand.

Of course, the current cellphones have a long way to go as well. But with global wifi looking possible, the future is bright none the less... (:

You're not the only one to be cheated

[OzPeter]

I'll admit that at the time there were no details of the device, but I had:

2006-03-02 04:58:46 Origami unfolds (Hardware,Microsoft) (rejected)

This was the day before the public website unveiling and link to the story in The Age.

I love how the name of the posted story is so close to mine. Which is realy an assumption that only I can make the connection that the story started to "unfold" and that origami is "folded paper".

Unrelated Live.com problem...

[MMC Monster]

Mostly unrelated. Mod me down if you will, but this is interesting.

1. Use firefox.
2. Search for a term on google.com/ig
3. Then go to Live.com
4. Start typing in the same search term. Live offers you the autocompletion based on what you typed in google. (This is firefox doing it, not the live.com website).

My guess is that Live.com is reusing some google cookie or code.

Re:Unrelated Live.com problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.
You said it yourself.
This is Firefox doing it, not the live.com website

Re:Unrelated Live.com problem...

[cparker15]

... (This is firefox doing it, not the live.com website).

My guess is that Live.com is reusing some google cookie or code.

Score:1, Offtopic should read Score:-5, Stupid.

Security Problems?

[putko]

I can imagine that this will open up even more methods of attack. Victims will come into range while, lending new meaning to "drive-by install".

Good luck, Bill!

What will Apple do?

[XxtraLarGe]

Apple hasn't come up with a tablet PC, does anybody here suppose they will try to come up with a competitor for this market? I'd envision them doing something along the lines of the eMate, obviously in color and much less garrish this time.

Re:What will Apple do?

[EggyToast]

They probably will, thanks to the new Intel chips, but we probably won't see anything for quite a while. I could imagine Apple making quite a splash with a small, touchscreen, mini-iBook thing. But, again, we won't see anything until the entire current line is updated and strong, I imagine.

Re:What will Apple do?

[diamondsw]

I'd suppose they've decided there is no such market, and they're perfectly happy to let other people bleed money. Jobs first move on coming back was to kill the Newton. Certainly if there was evidence that it DID exist, they have all of the technology in place (Inkwell, etc).

Agree 100%

[brunes69]

I had high hopes for this "Origami", I thought it would finally be the integration device we'vbe bene waiting for (cell phone, PDA, MP3 player, games machine, digital camera, all in an easy to use functional package), but I am very disappointed by this "brick" machine.

Sure, this may serve a neiche of people who want something smalelr and cheaper than a laptop but more powerful than a PDA, but how large is that neiche? PDAs and smartphones are getting better all the time, and like the parent said, if it is bigger than a PDA it might as well be a small laptop.

Re:Agree 100%

[16K Ram Pack]

Agree too.

If it doesn't fit in my pocket, it's not something I can just take out and use, like in an airport or railway station. In which case, I have to take something out of a case and sit down with it. May as well just use my laptop that has a keyboard and costs a lot less.

Re:Agree 100%

[xiaomai]

I'm wildly surprised by how lame this thing is too, but is it even cheaper than a laptop? Dell has some pretty decent laptops for $600 all the time. I don't know how they expect to sell these things...

I for one...

[jandersen]

imagine a Beowulf cluster of ...

Microsoft Orgasm Unfolds...

[sweetnjguy29]

...Bill Gates got some?

Competition for RadioShack TRS-80 Pocket Computer

[AppleTwoGuru]

"This new TRS-80 Computer is another "first" from the company which brought you the best-selling, world renowned TRS-80. A truly pocket-sized Computer (not a programmable calculator). Of course it is an ultra-powerful calculator too... And it "speaks" BASIC - - the most common computer language, and the easiest to learn. You'll soon be impressed by the phenomenal computing power of this hand-held TRS-80 - - ideal for mathematics, engineering and business application."

http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html

Probably just a needle...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in the haystack. Your submission was likely to be one of many on the same subject. I tinkered about it too, but decided that the odds my hard work would come to a submission would be most likely redundant.
 
I wish slashdot had a sort of database on which submissions were in the pipeline - headlines only. This way you know not to submit a similar submission if someone else came before you. It's only fair.

Re:Probably just a needle...

[Kasracer]

Well Zonk is known for dupes so I think I had a little more than a needle in a haystack of a chance :)

Blackberry killer

[Billly Gates]

Microsoft has been quietly hoping for an NTP victory so they could market their blackberry killer.

This device unlike the Blackberry plays video's and wma's and perhaps even mp3's. It can be a multimedia device, a pda, and you can check yoru email.

Microsoft won over the palm by having these features even though there was no way in hell you could watch any video with a 16 meg windowsce powered device, it still made consumers drool.

Microsoft is doing the same here and corporate america will use these first as they want to standardize on only microsoft products.

Not to mention you can view attachments with origami unlike the blackberry.

Re:Blackberry killer

[overmycrossbody]

BB killer? My BB fits in my pocket. Where are you going to put origami?

Re:Blackberry killer

[Billly Gates]

Look at the pic? It looks like the same size of a newton. Bigger yes but it has more features and its not that big like a tablet pc.

Re:Blackberry killer

[Overzeetop]

You're going to look pretty stupid holding that up to the side of your head to talk, though, don't you think?

I'd buy one for $300 if it could double as a web browser and a really snazzy home theater remote control. It's got to be fast to turn on and fast to sync up to a wifi net, and the battery better last for about 4-6 hours running full tilt, and at least 2-3 weeks on standby. It might work as a PDA replacement with the right scheduling software and calendar functions, plus really good pen based input. Aside from that, you're back into vertically integrated applications that have really small markets (relative to desktop OSs).

Re:Blackberry killer

[otis wildflower]

You're going to look pretty stupid holding that up to the side of your head to talk, though, don't you think?

Since when has that stopped anyone?

Re:Blackberry killer

[Wolfier]

>Not to mention you can view attachments with origami unlike the blackberry.

That's funny.  I can view MS Office documents, images, Pdf, Zip files and other attachments on my blackberry.

Portable computers are an ergonomics nightmare.

[Ivan Matveitch]

I can't stand even normal laptops, to say nothing of poking some little screen with a stylus, or something. Decent computers have Microsoft split keyboards and screens of at least nineteen inches.

Honestly, if people really want to use computers in public, perhaps computer terminals should simply be installed in places like parks and restaurants?

Isn't this just an Oqo?

[sottitron]

How is this new, other than MSFT stepping in to screw it up? Check out www.oqo.com. I have been looking at them for going on 2 years now. Oh, and they DO have a keyboard...

eBay

[Ivan Matveitch]

There are plenty of second-hand computers (and parts of computers) for sale at that price.

Watch me be a hypocrite

[hey!]

OK, I'm going engage in something that I usually detest: predictive punditry.

Here goes: This thing is going to flop.

Here are the reasons why:

(1) It fits into the space between laptops and phones, the same place PDAs are struggling in. They will have to to steal market share from a declining market segment.
(2) Portable => form factor is critical && the form factor == Newton && Newton == marketing flop.
(3) The lowest conceivable selling price is equal to the highest conceivable buying price.
(4) Challenge the iPod? With something this big? Are they nuts?

I am a well known non-believer in convergence as a user concept, but as a marketing concept it's a winner. We'll probably end up with converged devices and laptops pincering any product category in between to death.

What this means is that if there are markets for intermediate form factors such as PDAs and small tablets, they will have to be cheap and as non-converged as can be -- they'll have to be built around a "killer app" for a some market segment. That probably means shirt pocket organizers in the sub $50 range, hand held gaming in the sub $100 range. These may accrete certain PDA like functions as a kind of "freebie", the way even rudimentary non-converged phones have calendars and alarms, but they aren't going to be the deal closers for the buyers.

Re:Watch me be a hypocrite

[utexaspunk]

It wouldn't surprise me if this flops, but I'm not so certain the situation is as dire as you paint it. These devices are different for a couple reasons.

1)PDA's and phones don't run normal Windows software. Sure, there's Pocket Excel and Pocket Word, but they're hardly equivalent to their full-scale brethren. Opening any moderately complex Word document in Pocket Word will chop it up beyond any hope of usability. The same goes for web browsing- even with Opera Mobile, surfing the web on a Pocket PC or phone is simply NOT FUN. There just aren't enough pixels there to render everything properly, and no magic reformatting algorithm is going to work perfectly with every site.
2)This is a lot more portable than a notebook or tablet PC, but powerful enough to do the things most users do with their notebooks/tablets. Tablets aren't bad, but are still a bit bulky for casual use. (On the plus side, they can have much beefier hardware- my Toshiba m400 with 2GHz Core Duo processor, 2GB RAM, and 120GB HD is great for working on huge Photoshop files while riding on the bus! [okay, so I just wrote that to brag ;-P ])

It may be too small for a pocket, but it's the perfect size for a purse. I can see female executives keeping one of these in their purse because, unlike a blackberry, they can run the Outlook they're used to and view Word attachments and PowerPoint slides.

Re:Watch me be a hypocrite

[amelith]

I think you're right. They seem to be hyping it as an "integrated media" platform and go on about its TV capabilities. Microsoft now have Media Center, The Xbox 360 and this Origami thing all competing to be "integrated media centers". I can't see this new thing lasting very long if it looks like it might cut into Xbox sales.

Predictably, the technologically clueless like the BBC who seem to think Gates is some combination of Einstein and the Pope are assuming that because Microsoft are doing it then a.) it will succeed and b.) any competition is doomed. Amusingly, the BBC headline is "Forget About Laptops". If it costs £700 when it comes out here then I don't think many laptops will be forgotten. My laptop runs a MythTV frontend very nicely thank you.

Ame

Re:Watch me be a hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this will be able to do better than the Newton because it comes with a ready supply of software, people who know how to use the OS, and usable handwriting recognition.

Being a regular computer, it can do anything, including replace other appliances. For example, with some mapping software, a USB or BlueTooth GPS receiver, and a dashboard mount it becomes a navigation system. You wouldn't carry around a nav system just in case you happened to find yourself lost, but this is a general purpose computer you would carry around anyway.

Download some DVDs or TV shows and it becomes a replacement for a portable DVD player. Add a BlueTooth headset and you can use it as a VoIP phone (or forget the headset and just us it a speakerphone).

I can easily imagine a woman going on a business trip without having to pack a laptop or briefcase because she keeps a UMPC in her purse. On the plane she uses it to watch a DVD or catch up on some TV. In the rental car she uses it as a nav system. When she gets to her meeting she checks her email and takes notes with it, maybe even hooks up a projector and does a PPT presentation with it. At her hotel room she can use it to call her family by using VoIP and connecting to the hotel's WiFi network.

A Newton couldn't do any of that, except for taking notes. The UMPC may still fail, but it wouldn't be for the same reasons.

dom

Re:Watch me be a hypocrite

[hey!]

I can easily imagine a woman going on a business trip without having to pack a laptop or briefcase

So can I. But one thing I've learned in business is to be careful of trusting my imagination; it gets enamored of scenarios like this too easily. What you have to imagine is the woman in a store looking at this thing sandwiched between ultralight laptops on one hand and PDAs/converged phones on the other. Or, as is often the case, you have to imagine the IT department deciding on how to spend its money: equipping people with just a desktop replacement laptop, or a compact laptop + desktop or an origami style device and a desktop.

Or better yet, have data on how customers view the purchase.

In any case, what lead the PDA adoption was that it was something people bought with their hard earned cash. The whole genre was always a thorn in the side of the IT people. It's possible that given MS support they may be better disposed towards these things, but it doesn't mean that they're going to buy more than a handful for evaluation, when for them desktop replacement laptops are probably the sweet spot. Likewise north of 500 dollars you aren't going to have lots of people buying them when the company provides them with a laptop, as is the case for most road warrirors.

But I could always be wrong. I'd like to be wrong in this case. I create mobile apps for a living and could find a lot of use for a device like this in the $500 range. But the argument that it's compelling because it's almost a laptop intuitive feels wrong to me. To my mind this spells lack of clarity on why this should be bought in addition a laptop, if not instead of one.

Re:This is new? Remember QQO?

[pimpimpim]

ah it can run XP? nice! But wasn't MS planning to have us all buy new dual-core intel pcs just because we would need that to run their new OS, while stopping service for XP completely?

Another shot at the holy grail

[simong]

It sounds and looks awfully familiar. And that was 15 years ago. And more or less blown out of the water by the Newton and Windows 3.1 Pen Computing API. It's too big.
What I would pay for right now is a Blue Angel Pocket PC with an iPod mini/nano small hard or flash drive in. Running MacOS or Linux Tablet Edition. I'd never go in the office again.

I have only one question...

[JustNiz]

Can I install Linux on it?

3 whole hours?

[COMON$]

Wow, that is just about enough time to find an outlet at an airport.

Ultramobile my ass.

A vision of Star Trek?

[smooth wombat]

The first thing I thought when I saw this was that it had some similarities to the tablets that were used on ST:TNG. It's about the same size though oriented differently, has (supposedly) communication wherever one is and appears to weigh about the same.

Granted on the TNG ones you could type directly on the screen but it looks like this might be the first true step towards those ubiquitous tablets.

That's the Intel prototype...

[Anonymous Coward]

...not the Asus product nor the Samsung product, both of which are the original OEM-partners for Microsoft.

Repeat after me:

a prototype is not a product, but an expanded idea of how a product could be

a prototype is not a product, but an expanded idea of how a product could be

a prototype...

Re:That's the Intel prototype...

[cayenne8]

But, will it run Linux?

:-P

Re:That's the Intel prototype...

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

But, will it run Linux?

More importantly, will it run Mac OS X?

MS license fee

[bombadillo]

The new PCs are expected to sell for between $599 to $999, but Microsoft said it is possible to sell one for $500 if the manufacturer selects components carefully.'"

The Microsoft spokesman added. Yeah you could definitely get a $500 dollar price point if you installed linu..... I mean less ram....

Re:MS license fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm sure we could easily knock $100 off the price if we lose the Windows XP Tax.

The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[porkThreeWays]

The nokia 770 runs linux and is more practical. 3rd party bluetooth headset support is available and an officially supported VoIP phone is going to be out in the next couple of months. And if for nothing else, it's fun to hack ;) 350 dollars retail.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[ztirffritz]

You can actually install Asterisk on the 770 and make it into a PBX!http://www.cayennegraphics.com/asterisk770/

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[prell]

Is the best approach really to try and emulate a full-size computer as small as possible? I mean, is it better to try and have a usable web browser, or is it better to try and do what we really want in a different way: leverage worldwide connectivity in as small a form-factor as is usable? So instead of having a web browser that can present websites in a legible format (which does in fact require a screen bigger than would fit in your pocket), you'd have programs that leverage the power of the web, and present data in ways usable on a mobile device -- and do so in ways that take advantage of the portability and convenience of the device in truly idiosyncratic and innovative ways. So you'd have, for example, programs that detect proximity to certain things or people, and allow you to do something with or about them, wirelessly. OnStar and moblogging are good examples, I suppose. If I could think of better ones, I'd probably be working on them rather than divulging them openly ;-) Right?

So in other words, I don't know that I want to carry around a big tablet just to browse the web and read email and watch movies on a small screen. I recently moved to an iMac, and I'm happy to park myself in a certain room and concentrate on programming or watching a movie. I don't need to be able to pick that up and move.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[pNutz]

You can actually install Asterisk on the 770 and make it into a PBX!http://www.cayennegraphics.com/asterisk770/

Soon Nokia will make it even easier

From their website:

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet's software is upgradeable and currently runs on the Linux-based Internet Tablet 2005 software edition. There is a planned launch next year of an operating system upgrade - the Internet Tablet 2006 software edition - that will support additional services, including Internet telephony (VoIP) and Instant Messaging.

Asterisk and Gaim pre-installed, coming soon.

Now if only it used CF instead of RS-MMC (why use reduced size cards in something this big??)

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[wanorris]

The devices you're talking about already exist -- they're smartphones and PDAs. And there's nothing at all wrong with them. They're so portable you can take them anywhere, provide easy access to moderate amounts of information, and they have great connectivity.

But they don't do some things well. Movies are tiny on a smartphone -- it's hard to make out detail. A 7" screen is much better for this except in the most cramped of spaces.

And while some information can be conveniently crammed into a tiny screen, it's impractical for other information. Want to browse through a technical specs document in 8.5x11 PDF format on a smartphone? Prepare to do a lot of scrolling.

And yes, notebooks can do all those things and more, and they're portable. But they're not easy to use in some situations -- for example, referring to a web page for more information while you're out shopping, for example.

In the end, you personally may not need one of these at all. In fact, from what you've said, you don't need a notebook computer, either. But those have caught on just a little, and this form factor may end up catching on as well.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[wanorris]

The Nokia 770 looks great -- the only thing I really wish it had was more memory. It has 64MB of RAM, 128MB of FLASH, and a tiny flash slot (RS-MMC) that doesn't come in very large sizes.

On the plus side, it's a USB host, so you can get a thumb drive or a battery powered USB hub and a 1.8" USB hard drive, but it's a little less portable with all that random stuff handing off it.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[TheRaven64]

The 770 is nice (I have one), but is somewhat crippled by Nokia's decision to only put 64MB of RAM in it (just about enough for the kernel, X and one or two Opera windows). You can mount a swap partition on flash card, which helps a lot, but reduces the life of your flash card. It's also somewhat limited by the fact that you can't install applications on a flash card (just on the internal flash). Oh, and the fact that it has Nokia's 'so near, and yet so far' approach to usability. And the fact that that it doesn't support bluetooth file transfer or OBEX natively to anything other than a telephone so you have to remove the memory card (either physically or unmount it by plugging in the cable) in order to transfer files between it and a desktop.

Apart from that, it's great, especially at the price I paid for it (free).

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[jmorris42]

> The nokia 770 runs linux and is more practical.

That was my first thought. Same display resolution, same WiFi/Bluetooth+cellphone net access model. Now add in a laptop hard drive, faster processor and at least tripple the size and weight so it can run Windows and probably perform at about the same level as the Nokia and get less runtime on a charge.

Of course since it runs Windows and the MHz specs will be higher it will be what all the wannabe lamer nerds will just have to have. Just like WinCE vs Palm. A Palm was more useful but the Windows CE machines had bigass color screens and 400MHz processors and could play two minute movie trailers so of course all the idiots flocked to em. So Palm felt like they had to chase Microsoft's taillights and give up all the features that made a Palm worth owning, like long battery life and simplicity.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[TheNetAvenger]

I agree, just give me a 40gb hard drive, better resolution and graphics abilities, and I would be set...

I even love my M V710, and it is phone with an 8gb transflash device I use for my music collection and movies at a cell phone resolution.

However, these new devices look promising, and should at the very least be the stepping stone to replace crap PDA OS technology, and we will eventually have a full computer with us at all times with some serious hardware in it, even if it is to use RDP or XWindows to access our main computer in the office or the house.

(PS. It is amazing some of the features in even the basic cheap phones now. This is one reason I was so, "you have to freaking kidding me," when the Mac iTunes 100 song limit phone actually got marketing buzz. When I was reading the Apple buzz I actually had in my pocket my V710 with 512mb of RAM in it with 300-400 songs on it.)

Lets hope these devices are doing what they should, and not making MS money, but pushing manufacturers to put more powerful and even somewhat standard hardware in smaller devices for the intent of running full OSes if needed.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[bfields]

The devices you're talking about already exist -- they're smartphones and PDAs.

They phones seem insanely proprietary. (Charging for simple tivo access? For individual ringtones???) For example, are there any phones I can install my own OS and software on (preferably something free and hackable...) and still have them work as phones?

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[tao]

Better resolution? The 770 already has a DPI-value of somewhere around 220... I doubt you can find anything higher than that at anywhere near acceptable prices.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[wanorris]

For example, are there any phones I can install my own OS and software on (preferably something free and hackable...) and still have them work as phones?

There are a number of Linux smartphones that have been made, but I'm not sure any of them are actually available in the US. They seem to be popular in Asia.

Palm OS smartphones have plenty of software available for them for you to install, but the OS isn't open or particularly hackable. The next generation of Palm OS is being build on top of Linux, but the timetable and roadmap seem kind of up in the air right now.

In addition, there are a number that run Pocket PC. You can run and develop your own software on these, as well, but it's a version of Windows, so it's about what you'd expect from the standpoint of openness or hackability.

In principle, Linux could be ported to Pocket PC phones, since they are architecturally similar to (and run the same processor family, ARM, as) the iPaq, which has a Linux community.

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[prell]

Yes perhaps you're right: perhaps I just don't have the needs or desires that others legitimately have. And incidentally, I just got a Sidekick, so... :-)

Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though!

[TheNetAvenger]

Better resolution? The 770 already has a DPI-value of somewhere around 220... I doubt you can find anything higher than that at anywhere near acceptable prices

Yep, I stand corrected on the display resolution.

However as interesting as the Nokia 770 is, it doesn't do much more than some of our phones, which is sad considering it is capable of being more that it is, as hackers are finding out.

Nokia needs to pop up the specs on the 770, and then it will be worth a look, but sadly even with the new devices shipping with XP on them, they have pretty good specs even in the inital versions, like ample RAM, Large HDs, better GPU, etc.

Right now for open source compact devices, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for people to install Linux or a *nix on one of the new devices. The devices are fully x86 compatible, which means the door of available devices and compatibility from the Linux world is even more vast. (And no I'm not saying that XP couldn't run on non x86, as it does, but these devices are x86 based, and designed to be so for 3rd party software compatibility)

The Nokia ia nice device, but when my Motorola Cell phone has more storage, it kind of makes you go hmm, what are they thinking...

I feel the opposite

[bradleyland]

I've been crying for something just a little larger for a long time. PDAs are great for IT professionals, but they're too small to be practical in many situations. I have a small form factor laptop, but it's just too big and cumbersome to use on the go, like at a client when they're walking around their office explaining what they want done.

Currently I use a pencil and paper, but I like to archive any documents related to customer service and change requests, so I end up either A) typing up my notes, or B) scanning in pencil drawings. Neither is much fun. I've toyed with OneNote, but it's an application looking for a home. I think this device will be it.

I could buy a tablet PC, but they're all large-ish, expensive, and get pretty hot. I need something smaller, with instant on, and decent battery life. I have a DC/AC inverter in my car that's always plugged in, so charging on the go isn't really a problem. I just need a device that fits these criteria.

Anyone else out there in my position?

PS - I'm also hoping that this has the option to run in portrait mode, as well as landscape. Any word on that?

Re:I feel the opposite

[argent]

How exactly does a PDA fall down in your application?

Re:I feel the opposite

[simonsen77]

Hey, I'm with you... a PDA is too small for my purposes (ie, too little display real estate), and laptops a bit bulky. I've heard that the Origami should get a day's worth of battery life... if so, it will fill a niche in my company - a great tool for remote data collection or display.

Re:I feel the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to check out this. It's the Fujitsu Lifebook P1500D that I've been looking at getting for the last few months.

Re:I feel the opposite

[podperson]

I agree -- what you need is a Newton MP2000.

Re:I feel the opposite

[doombob]

I'm in exactly the same boat - I need something to replace my pen and paper so that I can store, categorize, and search electronically. I borrowed a friend's tablet for a week, when he went on vacation, so I could try it out. Even though it was only 5 lbs, after two hours of carrying it around in my hands and taking notes, it feels like 50. Of course this could mean that I just have to get back into the gym and pump some iron, but weightlifting and using a computer shouldn't go hand in hand.

Re:I feel the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently I use a pencil and paper, but I like to archive any documents related to customer service and change requests, so I end up either A) typing up my notes, or B) scanning in pencil drawings. Neither is much fun.

And typing on a small screen or using a stylus is?

I'm not sure why you want to scan in drawings / have an image from a client site anyway. Most drawings are just mockups of how something should look in Visio or in a CAD program, and you're not going to run that on a PDA like device. And if you do you'll stumble around in complicated menus trying to find the right icon.

I like the idea of analog (pen and paper) recording and then transfering to a computer when you can collect your thoughts and make an informed note of the meeting. Your notes then tend to be better comprehended later on as well.

Re:I feel the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to http://www.intel.com/design/mobile/platform/umpc.h tm and click on "Watch the video of possible usages" to see videos showing how a keyboard can be "extracted" from the device.
Some mechanisms are a very beautiful piece of engineering and design.

Re:I feel the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Thinkpad X40 Tablet (convertible). It's less than 4 pounds, has 6 hours of battery life with the extended battery. Smaller, lighter, and better battery life than most laptops.

Re:I feel the opposite

[Mario B]

This Digital NotePad With Memory might be just what you're looking for.

Re:I feel the opposite

[PhoenixOne]

I was excited when I heard a day's worth of battery life too. But now they are saying 2-3 hours.

I guess some people work much shorter days then I do. ;)

Considering name, why no fold out screens?

[Bombula]

I know flexible LCDs are quite a ways off, but what would be nice would be to have a larger screen area than current PDAs provide. Given the void of uselessness in sizes between PDA and Vaio-sized laptops, it seems like the only solution is to have a dual-head PDA. I figured since Origami suggests folding, that would be what it was offering: a PDA that folds open into a double-sized display, so you can see a lot more information than all of the other current PDAs. A keyboard is also a definite must for me, so I was hoping for the new virtual keyboard or something like it, maybe like sidekick's foldout keyboard.

But I agree, it must all fit easily in your pocket, or there's no point in not havinga laptop. Especially for $500+.

yes but...

[HaydnH]

...did you rtfa?!?

"Microsoft said future models will run on Windows Vista, the next-generation of its flagship operating system due out in the second-half of 2006."

Jeeeeessssshh!

Re:This is new? Remember QQO?

[JavaLord]

Yup, the OQO is sweet, and it looks smaller than the origami. The only problem with the OQO is the price, which is around $2000. I really want one, and have wanted one since before they came out but I doubt I'll pick one up until it's under $1000.

Ah yes another dismal failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

An employee of a certain company hated on $lashdot, I see the push of laptop owners to miniaturize systems and increase battery life while PDA owners wanting more functionality. The problem is that the UI needs to redesigned for each type of input desired: pen-based or keyboard/mouse-based. Software needs to be designed with each type of input in mind. Unless this can happen then we're looking at another flop. My greatest concern here is that the companies invested in miniaturization and a public that doesn't have the patience for another failure could mean this sort of concept being put on the back burner for a long time. As it stands, there must be a viable solution allowing consumers to have the ability to access and work on their data in the same familiar applications as they do on their home laptop/desktop systems. The only way to bridge this gap is to work with application developers. Quite frankly, without software being designed with a pen-based interface in mind, we've had UMPC functionality in the OQO for ages. And at least the OQO offers a keyboard. Why would anyone want to fork money over for the latest rehashed tablet-pc concept sans keyboard?

My advice to the backers of this concept is to focus companies into putting research dollars in more efficient processors and longer lasting batteries on the hardware side. On the software side, APPLICATION developers must be provided with UI standards to reflect pen-based input. I just wished people inside the company listened.

Apple's secret Origami in Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

A rather intense guy gave me his business card in a bar last week (in melbourne),- Rob Yearsley - CEO of a company called Bluebox (hows that for nostalga) I had a strange sense of deja vous because on his card was a pretty picture of somthing that looked strikingly like Origami. So I went and had a look a few minutes ago at ther website: www.blueboxtech.net - see for youurself!

From the looks of it they are working on a software platform to run on Origami like hardware - their main page has a rather Apple-esque device with similar form to what MS are hyping.

Heres the interesting bit, Apple is metioned as a supporter on their site, and it appears they are brewing an Open Source platform called ice os. Tux variant? There is mention of BDS on there though. Does anyone know anything more about this?

Brett T.
"There' Coming!"

Yawn

[jav1231]

Pricy, oversized PDA. This is a device looking for a market. Tablet PC's haven't taken off why should this? Manufacturing, maybe other business markets but with people moving away from PDA's in general, I can't see this being a big deal. It will be a hit with the "Check this out" crowd that has to have the latest gadget but most will find themselves wondering, "Why did I get this again?" The Sony portable play station sits idle in many desks. OTOH, anything that Microsoft can do to waste money is fine with me!

Re:LCARS

[Lord Bitman]

"Type"? What is "Type"? Everyone speaks to their computers on star trek :)
But for that matter, have you ever seen anyone on star trek actually use a tablet to /input/ data? They just seemed to be a way to pass around multimedia documents- how's that for security, don't even have the document on your system, just hand someone the system!

Why yes, I am a virgin!

Sharp SL-3x00? Sony Picturebooks?

[strredwolf]

Wait a minute!!!! Microsoft wants to recreate the Linux-running Sharm SL-3x00s? The ones with the hard drives in them?

And what about the Sony Picturebooks, with the Transmeta processor?

Done before...

It's a Newton!

[aussersterne]

- Form factor is Newton 2100
- Wireless, etc. (just like Newton 2100 these days)
- Does everything a PC does (Newton surfed web, did email, ran webserver, word processing, spreadsheets, databases)

The device looks almost like a Newton sitting in the lady's hands, if you take a step back. Folks, this is the 2006 version of the 1996 Newton 2100 that everyone makes fun of Apple for. Of course, it won't be as good, because part of what made the Newton amazing was Newton OS, which is still one of the best OSes I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Re:It's a Newton!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, everyone said Newton was 10 years ahead of its time, and the world wasn't ready for it. Maybe now they are.

Re:It's a Newton!

[Xofer D]

Does everything a PC does (Newton surfed web, did email, ran webserver, word processing, spreadsheets, databases)

Does it read PDFs? Because that's what makes Newton less than useful; to read PDFs you have to jump through hoops and convert them to gifs or some other image format.

Re:It's a Newton!

[mbourgon]

I think they're killing themselves with the form factor. The Newt (2000/2100) was right at the perfect size - light, big enough to get some work done, but still fits in an (oversized) pocket. I do like that the screen is bigger, but to be honest, any larger and people are going to say "why don't I just carry a frickin laptop?"

This is, after all, just an updated version of the original Wince concept (remember the larger versions?). And again, people are going to say "1000 bucks? For _that_? Screw it, I'm getting a $600 laptop instead."

Re:It's a Newton!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking it looked like a crippled Fujitsu Stylistic.

Re:It's a Newton!

[weg]

Of course Newton has a great OS.. but I prefer a mediocre OS with lots of applications over a great OS with very few applications available...
(I had a Newton for a very long time, I sold it because there wasn't even a decent browser for it...)

Re:LCARS

[smooth wombat]

There were a few shows where it appeared that information was being entered via the tablets. I know during the trial of Data there was someone entering information on one of those pads. There were a few other, rare, occasions that this happened also.

That said, you are correct in that the vast majority of the time those tablets seemed to be used more for displaying information than recording. But they worked everywhere!

Replacing embedded systems USB will be the Key

[HighOrbit]

Over-hyped yes, but this will still have a niche of practical applications. First, it runs standard XP, which means you can now have your standard business applications in a smaller form factor.

Secondly, it is about the size as the Day-Runner that I used to carry around with me in the early-90s. OK, so now imagine a leather book-style case (like the day runner) that will hold a fold-up USB keyboard and mouse. You basically have an ultra light laptop.

I think the real niche for this is to replace traditionally embedded one-application devices like inventory systems. You can now have a much more full feature general computer. So now you can put a shoulder strap on this, plug in a USB device (like a bar-code or RFID reader) do your inventory, look up items on the locally cached database, and run custom designed perl-scripts on the data right there in the field. You will also be able to get away from highly proprietary systems and instead have lots of competing software and USB devide vendors and much better integration into your networks (since it is just a pc).



The bottom line is that you can now squeeze a standard PC into a smaller form factor. This will displace some embedded devices in places that we haven't even thought of yet. At this point, I see very little need for XP-embedded or CE, if I can have the full featured version running standard software. And remember, this is generation one. Future generations will probably have even a smaller form-factor with more powerful hardware.

Re:Replacing embedded systems USB will be the Key

[planetmn]

Why is this one of the few insightful, forward looking comments in the whole story? Everybody is saying, it'll flop because it's not what I want. Well, maybe you aren't the market, but it sure as hell is what I would want and I can imagine a lot of fields where this can be used.

The comparisons to a PDA are faulty. PDAs have nowhere near the functionality and performance of an ultramobile computer. The USB ports give it nearly unlimited expansion. Plug in a small keyboard (I'm sure somebody will make a nice line of accessories). Different accessories and cases can customize it for a persons need. It replaces the PDA, laptop, ipod (including video), portable gaming system, possibly phone (keep in mind, it's expandable and runs real software, so putting a softphone on this would be easy).

My only problem is the price, as I am a cheap skate and $600+ is too much for a device that I don't currently need, though if I were buying another laptop, I'd consider it.

Another common complaint seems to be that MS isn't designing this, merely getting others to create the hardware. Well, guess what happens everytime they do anything but release a new OS (and then sometimes even then)? Everybody accuses them of anti-trust violations. Instead they are releasing a spec for a form factor and functionality of a product and telling hardware vendors that they have software to run on it, and you can make the hardware be what you feel would be best. Seems like a good idea to me.

All in all I think it looks like an interesting idea, and while I won't be buying one right away, I'm definately interested to see how they expand and adapt and hopefully see prices come down a little.

-dave

Re:Replacing embedded systems USB will be the Key

[birder]

This isn't something new, OQO has had a smaller PC that runs full XP for years and it's not all that popular. What it does have over the OQO models is price.

Fujitsu Lifebook

[backwardMechanic]

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook P1000. It's getting a bit long in the tooth (Transmeta Crusoe), but it's light, I get 4-5hrs life out of it with the extended battery, it has a real keyboard and a good screen. I can even wirelessly contect to the internet with it. Oh, and yes, it runs Linux. When it came out, it was impressive.

What are MS playing at? This Origami thing wouldn't have been all that impressive 3 or 4 years ago. Now it looks like a joke!

Re:Keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

At least on of the concept models has a keyboard:

http://www.intel.com/design/mobile/platform/umpc.h tm

However I don't think this made it to the launch products:

http://www.intel.com/design/mobile/platform/device s.htm

Carefully?

[massysett]

possible to sell one for $500 if the manufacturer selects components carefully.

You mean, cheaply.

Vulcan Flipstart

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always kept my eye on the other Microsoft dude's computer... Just wish something would happen.

http://www.flipstartpc.com/

I'm anxious to find out whether it runs Linux (or you can create a Beowulf cluster of them).

P.S. I also curse Paul Allen each and every time I have to type a back-slash in a path name. Which, fortunately, is quite rarely these days.

MS Joke of the week

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you call a crumpled up ball of paper on the floor of the MS design studios?

origami

who cares about the features I just want e-paper

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want something that can open pdf's so I dont have to print off books.

Another picture - Samsung Origami

[digitaldc]

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060 309/capt.nyet25603091324.origami_unfolded_nyet256. jpg?x=380&y=268&sig=z2B4kBDxry.yMRnP9gqQYQ--

Re:Blackberry killer? Hmm, no.

[saddino]

This device unlike the Blackberry plays video's and wma's and perhaps even mp3's. It can be a multimedia device, a pda, and you can check yoru email.

Except for one thing: RIM's customer base is overwhelmingly business and legal professionals who have absolutely no use for video, mp3s away from their desktops; instead they want real-time access to email for communication (which is why the lack of support for attachments doesn't affect its popularity) and the Blackberry fits the bill, especially with its small form factor.

Will some consumers drool over this? Definitely. Will a professional who can't fit this monstrosity into their suit pocket give a whit? My guess is no. And since the average comsumer makes up just a small fraction of RIM's customer base, I can't see this being a Blackberry killer any more than it's a wristwatch killer.

Yep--hardware is the one thing they get right

[blueZ3]

I have three MS keyboards and two MS mice. The ergonomic "split-key" keyboards are great, with excellent "feel," a good layout, and they are quite durable. I know there are folks who take issue with the extra buttons (above the F keys) but they don't bother me (since I don't use them). The wireless mouse/keyboard combo that I use on my XP game machine at home is really nice, and the battery life has been decent. Since I spend my days typing (I'm a tech writer) a good keyboard is a must, and despite looking around quite a bit, I really haven't found anything as good as the MS keyboards.

On the other hand, I'm doing my best to switch away from MS's software. But that's another story.

Re:Yep--hardware is the one thing they get right

[jmorris42]

> Since I spend my days typing (I'm a tech writer) a good keyboard is a must, and despite looking around quite a bit,
> I really haven't found anything as good as the MS keyboards.

Get thee to eBay and buy yourself an IBM Model M or a Northgate Omnikey. They are both still available if you are patient. There is even a company that has bought the rights to the Model M's design and making new ones, can't recall the name right now. A couple of years ago I lucked up on a pair of Model M keyboards with a 1994 manufacture date still in the original sealed boxes. Put one at home and at work and have been happy as a pig in poop since.

Also have an Omnikey, it is very nice also but a little different feel. If I had a matched pair of em I might use them instead. The omnikey will even comes with extra keycaps and stuff to allow you to put CTRL back where God intended it, but since I have to use too many other machines I couldn't get away with that.

Re:Yep--hardware is the one thing they get right

[owlstead]

I like the MS keyboards and mice better than the ones from Logitech. It seems that these are the only ones for sale through regular shops in the Netherlands. I am using a MS 4000 split keyboard, which is the best keyboard I've ever used (even though it's far from perfect). I am currently ordering one for use at home. As an Open Source, Open Standards and Java fanboy, that's a pretty big step. So I agree that hardware that MS makes itself is pretty ok. Unfortunately, hardware that just uses MS software is a wholy different matter.

The good news is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...this thing makes PDAs and laptops look pretty damn good.

iPod killer?

[jocknerd]

Can't wait to use this in the gym! Whats its purpose other than a smaller laptop.

Ridiculous

[Tom]

The new PCs are expected to sell ...

Thanks, but no thanks. I'll buy from the company that says "available today" regularily, not the one that promises and promises and promises, and pretty much all it's products so far have been late, more expensive and less powerful than promised.

2-3 Hours?

[CrazyWingman]

They expect anyone to be able to get anything done in Windows XP in 2-3 hours (the reported battery life)?! It will be even worse on any model that does not have a dedicated keyboard. I think MS has purposely created a product that will tank in order to kill this market before anyone else can make a viable entrance into it.

Post new information when someone develops an OS+interface that may actually be efficient on UMPC. Until then, I'm not interested ... unless it's a fairly open platform, and I can get to work on that OS+interface myself. :)

Could be, but...

[blueZ3]

My guess is that this won't take off, and it especially won't kill Blackberry devices. Most of RIMs new products include a phone. They're not just text message devices anymore, they're like a combination of the "traditional" Blackberry device and a cell phone. Since this new device doesn't offer phone functionality, and since a phone is a business requirement for a lot of folks, I think the "combo" Blackberries will continue to sell well. After all, do you want to carry one phone-sized device, or this big Origami brick AND a phone?

Your point about MS integration is interesting, but a lot of companies already have RIM devices deployed, so I don't know if it holds true. Maybe a small shop where they don't want to deal with running RIM's software... but you can bet that any required MS software, while heavily itegrated, won't come free with Exchange.

I don't think this device is a "Blackberry killer" any more than it's an "iPod killer"

Re:This is new? Remember QQO?

[Winterblink]

Yeah the price was nasty, but when you consider it was hitting the news a year ago or so I imagine maybe the cost might have dropped since then. Though, there really hasn't been much news lately about it, which usually doesn't mean good things.

Still, the form factor of the QQO is a hell of a lot more attractive than the Origami. And I'm not sure of the latter, but the QQO was designed to hook up to monitors and keyboards to function as almost as a portable desktop as well.

Smart Display Replacement

[phorest]

I have a smart display and love it. What is especially nice about mine (viewsonic 5.4" size) is the fact I don't need a special stylus, a fingernail will do. I hope that more touch products without special stylii are marketed.

That being said, it's a little 5.4" screen that works with any XP-Pro or server RDP enabled box. Got mine for 400 bucks after it was discontinued with keyboard and stand included. It probably weighs 1.5 lbs. and has a stand and keyboard with USB's for the keyboard & mouse. It really free's me up to check on backups, read mail, surf etc... all while laying down on my couch in front of the plasma watching old movies.

I believe anyone who ever got to play with one would agree that it is functional, even just being a slave to another machine. But having something around the same size with a fast processor, storage and an OS should be great! I hope they can sell these at the published price-points because Smart Display was a failure due to the high price. For around $1200.00 when they were first marketed was nothing but a rich-toy. I never would have bought one for that price. But south of $1000.00 for something similar with more than just a screen, WOW... Can't wait!

Never be a fan-boy, just callsum like I seeum!

Re:Video? - ZODIAC

[computechnica]

Get a Tapwave Zodiac: you will have a nice 4 inch screen, Stereo Speakers that are very loud, 2 SD card slots for 4Gb of total storage, Bluetooth, and a 4-5 hour play time. Use Core Media Player and pocketDiVXencoder for video. Use LJZ for Console emulation of GB,NES,SNES,Gen,NGP,WS,and TG16. There are also some SD game(Doom,DukeNukem,SpyHunter). There is also a version of Quake avaliable. It also a Palm PDA so you have a Office suit with Document To Go, and a few Web browser that work with a Bluetooth Phone.

This is great!!!

[mrjatsun]

Dump the OS, dump the display, give me 1-2 wired NICs, and a serial port, TV out, and I've got a nice little box to replace my mini-itx box... Lets hope a bunch of folks buy these to drive down the price of the H/W for the rest of us. Then you'll what this H/W can really be useful for..

Unix...

[In Fraudem Legis]

I wonder how long does it take to get rid of the preinstalled Windowz XP Tablet OS and install linux or bsd on it...

What it should have been

[0xABADC0DA]

The killer product in this market is simply a wireless display. Ideally this would have a e-ink, some wireless adapter, a smallish keyboard, and a custom chip that does VNC really fast and efficiently. Then you can use the cell phone network to get your actual computer and all of its capabilities from anywhere over the cell network or get fast response over a house/hotel local wireless network. Or 'rent' a virtual computer from the phone company.

It would be light, disposable, rugged, protect against data loss, fast (if 'close' to your computer), have excellent batter life (10+ hours), etc.

Re:What it should have been

[bradleyland]

Very cool idea, but a couple of things bug me about it -- at least for my situation. When I'm out of the office (arguably when a mobile device is used most), I'll need a way to connect. If I use my cell phone, it will be A) slow as hell, and B) I'll have to pay for the data I'm transferring. I've used VNC over dial up. It sucks. It'll work in a pinch, but it's not the way I'd prefer to work. Connecting use WiFi on location is an option, but WiFi isn't always available, plus you have to manage all the network keys. Also, working on a remote system involves latency. I've used RDP, X tunneling over SSH, and Citrix, but none of them provide the tight interaction that you get from a terminal running locally.

Re:What it should have been

[nuzak]

> The killer product in this market is simply a wireless display.

Microsoft tried this with the "smart display". It sold like ice cubes in Antarctica, largely due to them being expensive and having precisely zero use in home environments for those people who don't already own a laptop for that purpose -- and the laptop can leave the house.

> It would be light, disposable, rugged, protect against data loss, fast (if 'close' to your computer), have excellent batter life (10+ hours), etc.

You just can't power a TFT LCD screen for 10 hours on a charge. At least not without making the battery 10 pounds or so. You have to make tradeoffs. Still, I want to see at least 3.5 hours of battery life (and inexpensive spares) before I consider one of these.

Re:What it should have been

[fermion]

Years ago I helped spec and install a new network. We needed to run a few application on several tens of computers. The computers did not have that powerful, and, in fact, the management was finally convinced to go with a central server running most critical applications, with remote stations simply running clients. Pretty much a mainframe with dumb terminal thing. This meant a much more expensive server, and hopefully cheaper computers. But in the end the sales people convinced management that they still needed to run Windows, and office, etc. We could have run something stripped down and cheap, but once you get into MS Windows, you have to have MS windows on every computer, or the sales droids will give you trouble.

From this experience I will make an assertions. This device is simply a way for MS to push Windows Mobile, or whatever name they have chosen this week. It is interesting that there is so little interest in this product that MS had to invest it's own money to create a reference design. Equally intersting is they are not going to take the risk of manufacturing this device, as they did with xBox. As such, it would do no good as merely a wireless screen. There would be no fee for MS and it would set a precedent about the ability to run remote terminals from a Windows machine with no fee.

Imagine if I were running an operation where several workers had to occasional input data from a number of different locations within a plant. With this device, or any tablet PC, or even an MS Windows PDA, each user can have a data terminal, and MS gets a fee. However, with a wireless screen, one can imagine a single PC, and users taking turns entering data. It might be too far to walk to a single PC, but not too difficult to wait a couple minutes to get access. And the PC is safely held in a remote room. And MS only gets on license fee.

Re:What it should have been

[0xABADC0DA]

Yes I share your experience. What is particularly frustrating is that enabling compression to increase the network speed usually slows down the end result by causing more latency. Many times it depends on your network speed, and using 'raw' mode is sometimes a better experience than any of the compressed ones.

But a remote screen doesn't have to be slow. Vnc was designed to be very simple and cross-platform, not to be fast. I have used radmin for instance on windows and it's easily 5x faster than any setting of vnc. It's fast enough on a lan that I do not get frustrated like I do with vnc. And even over radmin there are things you can do that improve the latency. Imagine for instance that your nvidia card in hardware compares the difference between frames and gives the vnc server a mask of pixels that changed (or regions, etc). This would remove a great deal of the latency.

But that's not even ultimately the point... people today read web pages on little 2"x3" screens or smaller. They use thumb inputs. And PDAs are really slow at some things anyway. They put up with a *lot* of hassles for the benefit of having something they can take anywhere that is disposable. Also sure you have pay out the nose *now*, but that's because there is a near-monopoly on the cell network. If there is a demand for lots of cheap wireless data then they'll solve the few technological problems doing it.

This is great for aviation

[Quarters]

If a company makes a new instrument to be installed into the cockpit panel of an airplane the device must literally go through years of FAA testing before it is certified. This is because the device is interfacing with the aircraft's electrical system, possible it's vacuum system, etc... If the device doesn't install into the panel and use the aircraft's systems then it doesn't have to be certified. This stipulation, along with PDAs, has led to an explosion of useful aviation aid software being written. HSIs, moving maps w/GPS, weather maps, flight computers, etc.... The only downside really is the small size of the PDA screen. While it could all be done on laptops the size of an average laptop is too big for the cramped cockpit of a Cessna 152, 172, 182 or a Piper, etc..

These Origami class devices look like the perfect size to be useful in the small environs of a single-engine airplane cockpit.

can i moderate the article?

[BigChiefMunkey]

-1 Punnerific. heh

From the Amiga / Gateway days?

[rubberbando]

I could have sworn that Amiga was working something just like this around the time they went bankrupt for the second time and were aquired by Gateway.

Anyone else remember those prototype sketches / vaporware?

this is not the device you are looking for

[dmoen]

from the parent: I need something smaller, with instant on, and decent battery life

from the article: the new devices, which will have battery life of about three hours

This is not your father's Palm Pilot (or Newton). It won't have "instant on", because it has a 3 hour battery life, and when you turn it on, you will have to wait for it to boot Windows.

In other news, "New" is not necessarily the same as "Improved".

Doug Moen

Re:this is not the device you are looking for

[bradleyland]

It's definitely not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. The most disappointing aspect is the boot time. Pen and paper has no boot time. That's one of the primary reasons that it continues to win over devices like tablet PCs. At least in my use case.

Reminds me of Sony Wireless TV

[xoip]

Anyone see the Location Free TV from Sony?
Saw it in the store twice...first time the dude could not get it to work.
Second time it was deep discounted and listed as discontinued...too much hype around mobility when a laptop will suffice.

Ugly

[sho222]

Is anyone else disappointed by how ugly the two models displayed on Microsoft's site are? The leaked video that was floating around Google Video showed a device that actually looked cool and might attract some of the iPod crowd. The two devices introduced today remind me of the little computer the fat server room guy uses to plug into the serial port and troubleshoot the servers when they barf. I'm not sure if I would like it any more if it looked cool, but the two models on display today spell flop.

$100 subsidized

[emilng]

The thing with the $100 laptop is that it's only $100 because they are planning on offering it in wealthier nations for around $200. That higher cost will subsidize the $100 cost for the poor countries.

The Wall Street Journal has a more extensive article

Build a bot?

[Krystlih]

I think it would be interesting to take this form factor and build a robot out of it. With the full blown Windows OS on there development should be fairly simple, and with interfaces such as USB or Bluetooth the possbilities for using this as the "brains" of a robot would be fairly large.

Two friggin' pounds?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I was listening to my local MS fanboy / coworker / friend talk last week about how this was going to kill the iPod, cell phones, and PDAs.

This thing weighs two pounds, is absolutely huge, and apparently doesn't have the day-long battery life people were hyping (nor, obviously, the ONE pound weight).

I bet this could make a dent in the retail sector, replacing tablet PCs (Woo woo! Cheaper devices, less profit!); but there's no way anyone but a few dedicated MS fans will be lugging these around. MS is totally targeting the wrong sector.

$1000 Why this instead of a subnotebook?

[guidryp]

BTW the only announced pricing I have seen is at least $1000.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/03/09/umpc/index .php
"Samsung plans to put the Q1 on sale in Europe before the end of June. The device will cost around 1,000 (US$1,190), it said."

Exactly what does this get you that a tiny subnotebook would not? Except looking like a dork as you stand around using it. Even using my PDA to read a lot, I prefer to sit down. If you are sitting down, a small notebooks is better has a real keyboard, holds itself up even in your lap to watch movies etc. With a tablet you have to hold it. Compare the size of the Samsung UMPC to the Sony VAIO. Almost the same, I would much rather have the Sony. Fold it and throw it in a bag. This thing will get scratched unless you carry it in a case....

Size:
Samsung Q1 UMPC: 779g 230mm x 140mm 7-inch touchscreen LCD
VAIO PCG-C1MSX: 998g 249mm x 152mm 8.9" LCD (only slightly bigger but real keyboard, bigger screen)

Jpgs:
http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/03/samsung_q1.j pg
http://www.transmetazone.com/articleimages/transva ioc1msx_perpspec2.jpg

More stuff on the VAIO, I think this one never made it to North america, but the could bring it back using the UMPC chips:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1 058

Put the same processor in each, which would you rather have, tablet or submini notebook?

More info from the BBC

[DataCannibal]

Even more info on the BBC web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4789496.stm.

Windows XP ?
Celeron CPU ?
Three hour battery life?

Lame !

Mame, Vice and UAE

[Weaselmancer]

I still haven't found a PDA that has enough juice to run what I want them to run - emulators. The Nokia 770 is *very* close. Runs Linux, so you can port your own software to it. It's just a wee bit short on horsepower. OQO could do it, but I'd rather not spend $2k just to play The Bard's Tale. Maybe Origami will do it. I'm waiting to see some pricing info before I get happy about it though. Hell, I'm waiting to see if they even make it to market before I get happy about it.

Soon as someone gets a cheap PDA/micro laptop/whatever out there around 750Mhz, I'll be all over it. And so will a lot of other people interested in a customizable portable gaming platform.

I know these are mockups but...

[Mongoose]

Why would you have a landscape layout for something you take notes on? You can only see like 1/3 of the top of a web page or document at a time with the current layout. Also using XP's interface with extra wide top heavy toolbars is a horrible idea for such a device. I don't see what all the fuss is about, since we've had devices like this since the 90s. I think after a day of using such a device you'll see why they never became popular: you need a different UI for the software to be usable.

Re:LCARS

[hal2814]

Star Trek showed Kirk on more than one occasion physically signing his captain's log. In fact, sometimes it kind of makes it look like Kirk is really writing his captain's log and it's just being read to us so we know what he's writing. While writing and typing are not the same thing, he was certainly using a tablet (held by a girl in a short skirt) to input information.

Still the best note-taker

[BenEnglishAtHome]

If you don't mind keeping your drawings on paper and if all you want otherwise is to take notes, it's hard to beat a mid-1980s Tandy 102. (Lots of good info and links on that page, btw.) I'm dead serious. Up until a few years ago, I regularly wrote for publication. The gig required extensive travel and *all* I needed was something with a good keyboard to record text. For that simple purpose, these things are still amazing. Instant-on, rugged, super-lightweight, 20 hours of battery life from 4 AA batteries, exactly the right size to actually throw on your lap and get *real* work done - these attributes are nothing to sneeze at.

Compare the typing experience on a 102 to that of a modern PDA with an accessory foldable keyboard. Compare it to one of those idiotic thumb-driven toys. There is no comparison. If you learned to type the old-fashioned way, via a manual typewriter or, at best, one of those brand-fangled new IBM Selectric things, then what passes for a "modern portable keyboard" is a joke. In my heyday, I could pour text into my 102 so fast that the sound of individual keystrokes begn to get lost in a sort of clackety hum.

Right now, I temporarily don't use it. In two years, when I retire from my day job and start writing on the road again, you better believe my 102 is coming out of storage and I'm putting it back to work.

Re:Still the best note-taker

[Anonymous Coward]

The 102 may be the best, but the Alphasmart machines can't be far behind. If your Tandy dies you might want to check them out.

Re:Still the best note-taker

[Blakey Rat]

That's great, but how the hell do you get the text off of it? My G5 doesn't have a Serial port, or anything that's likely to plug into this. It seems like you'd have the same problem you get from trying to use a Newton in this day and age... the device is great, but it can't talk to anything anymore.

Re:Still the best note-taker

[BenEnglishAtHome]

...how the hell do you get the text off of it?

There are several alternative methods.

Re:Still the best note-taker

[Blakey Rat]

Well, those work if you have a legacy PC or a modem, I suppose, but I don't have either. Oh well, I have a iBook for note-taking anyway.

Re:Still the best note-taker

[krbvroc1]

Yeah, when I've called an IT guy to come give me a bid, a mid 80's Tandy 102 is the device I want to see him carrying.

full sized hard drive?

[statemachine]

I watched the video and didn't see where a full sized hard drive could fit. The tablet itself is slightly longer and wider, but thinner than a full sized hard drive. Aside from fitting the form, just putting that size of hard drive in the tablet would make it heavy too -- as well as eat up power and give off a lot of heat.

Maybe the article's author meant a full sized *notebook* hard drive, but there is quite a difference. Maybe he meant full as in disk capacity, but what would that mean... 80GB, 120GB, 200GB, 500GB?

It seems like a nitpicking, but it's a substantial detail to get wrong (or be misleadingly vague about) when one's talking about a paperback sized computer.

Re:full sized hard drive?

[nytes]

I dunno about a full sized hard drive.

I'd feel awfully funny dragging an RP04 around.

Once someone gets Linux running on it...

[PowerMacDaddy]

... it will be the perfect platform for running the Einstein Project on. For those who haven't heard of it, the Einstein Project is the Newton OS running in emulation on Linux PDAs, so you can ditch that klunky designed-for-the-desktop Windows OS and replace it with something better. Photos and more info here.

Why so negative? I'd hi.. err buy it..

[slashmojo]

Its a very small tablet pc.. runs XP albeit modified for the platform and will run Vista too.

As they said you *could* run photoshop on it although I don't suppose there's much point.

Is it too big? Its smaller than my laptop which I got sick of lugging around long ago.. its bigger than my zaurus which I got bored with long ago.

Its not a cellphone.. I have a CELLPHONE for that task.. don't care how fancy cellphones get it will never replace a pc.. too small.. maybe good for a quick ssh session or IM now and then but not much more. I want something I can see without a microscope.

This Origami has a decent sized screen it has vga out so can be hooked up to a monitor, has usb ports so can have real keyboards, has high resolution, has surround sound, has two mics (must be useful for something!), has various controls around the screen, has bluetooth.. not sure about wifi but presume some version will have.. it can run pretty much any windows software.. and..

It has a HARD DRIVE.. 30 - 100+ Gigs hard drive - show me the cellphone that has that.

I run linux on all my PC's and servers but sometimes I could do with a win box also.. this would serve many needs.

Its cheap enough and useful enough to be worth it IMHO. Battery life could be better perhaps but its good enough.. I have found most places these days have electricity.. ;)

Ah, 'bout time the Newton came back!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or does this look a whole lot like an Apple Newton? Rotatable screen, pen/touch based, keyboard connectability ....the
list goes on and on..oh wait...you do get wireless...my bad...Glad to see the boys at Redmond are innovating the hell out of the 1993 form factor.

Lots of mistakes on the site.

[Inoshiro]

Check out this one: "View, Listen, Pay".

It's also a pretty good example of a boring and ugly interface. I hope Apple makes something like this soon.

It doesn't run Windows Mobile

[DigitlDud]

It says its the full Windows XP.

Carrying this Thing

[syntap]

Well, it won't fit in a pocket and if I need a backback I'll carry a 12" laptop. Maybe Origami could come with something in-between, like a back-attachment thing they used in Tron for their discs. Maybe they need to re-shape Origami into a circle.

Overlooked companion product announcement

[thatseattleguy]

In related but far less-publicized news, Microsoft unveiled an alternate version of the Origami, optimized for downloading and viewing Pr0n.

It will be called the "Origasmi".

handwriting recog

[Johnny Mnemonic]

This thing will be made or broke by it's handwriting recognition. I assume it'll use the same tech that Tablet XP uses, and I guess I don't know how good that is--i'd be interested to hear from someone with recent experience.

Would I be interested in something that I could handwrite full speed meeting notes on, and have it 99.5% accurate? Yes, because: a) the notes would subsequently be searchable; b) the notes would be easier to transfer/collab to others in my workgroup; c) I could have booklets full in one place; d) they would be backable, which means that a year's worth of notes wouldn't be wiped out by a run through the rain.

While I believe a tablet PC has these advantages, I just couldn't justify it at $2K. $500 is close to worthwhile. Add in the ability to carry 5,000 pages of searchable reference manual and even as a Mac user I might be interested. I don't need to sync my email so much, which is one of the things I'd presume I'd lose.

Re:handwriting recog

[cmpalmer]

Handwriting recognition on Tablet PCs is very good. Maybe not 99.5%, but good enough to collect solid data in field form collection. It's a bit too cumbersome to write a novel with (or a technical paper).

The electronic ink apps for it work pretty well though. You can take notes as fast as you want and then later do ink to text conversions on them for indexing.

So it is a Nokia 770, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it sucks and runs Windows.

*yawn* Been there done that.

[brain1]

Anyone else remember Windows 3.1 for the Tablet PC beta'd back in the 90's? How about the Newton? How about the dying off of Palm? Stuff that was done 5+ years ago and aren't around anymore.

Now we are supposed to be all over this overpriced toy when a good laptop has dropped in price to where average joe can afford one? It's not surprising given the fact that Microsoft seems to be always a step behind now. How many more years are they going to dress up good old NT in new knickers and sell it as "new and better!".

OK... Maybe I'll give it a second look when a Linux Distro gets ported and the overall hardware price comes down from the stratosphere.

-dh

What a waste of space!

[Overzeetop]

Can you believe how small the screen is relative to the unit as a whole? I mean the bezel looks enormous, and it appears to be mostly unused - a 5 way pad and a couple of buttons add at a good 2" R/L and 1.25-1.5" T/B. Why not have the 5 way on a slideout and buttons on the side, or even just a single fat side? I think it might play better with a 9" screen and very little bezel. Keep all the buttons on one side and let the thing rotate the display 180 for lefties/righties. For me it would just have to fit in a 6x9.5 form factor (1/2 sheet, like my Franklin Planner used to be), and have a nice cover. I'd probably drop $400 on that product if it had a really good scheduler/contacts program. With a good sleep mode, the batteries might only need to survive 4-6 hours of constant use, for my purposes.

Another thought

[simong]

Lots of people thought that this was going to play games, and so was aimed at the PSP market. If they do it right, with a decent graphics card, it probably will, but only PC games, so the Xbox is safe. Lots of people thought it was going to be a media device, and with Windows Media Player, and a decent bus, it probably will be, but it has no removable storage, just a big disk for its size, and dumping a DVD on that big disc is contrary to principles of DRM. It has potential as a portable communicator, but my PDA does that all ready. A built in camera would allow it to extend its messaging capabilities, and hey, why not a 3G or UTMS connection while you're at it, but they're probably not in the hardware spec. So what is it? I'm sure it will include Office or a UMPC version of it, so you will be able to capture those moments of inspiration on the train, but you can do that with laptop for not much difference in price. It will play music and movies but so does my (insert small format mp3 player here). It's got a nice big screen for reading ebooks, and it's stolen a march on the Sony Reader. But it's too big for that and has the same battery life as a laptop. The Sony Reader ain't all that either.
Microsoft find it difficult to think beyond the PC platform, and as the PC platform increasingly means the office they find it hard to think beyond office apps. Maybe we should leave them to their devices (heh), and grit our teeth at work (or persuade our bosses that Linux/OpenOffice is cheaper and more stable), while enjoying convergence in the comfort of our living rooms, and maybe expecting to see UMPCs for cheap in surplus stores in a couple of years time.

Boot time

[vk38]

Any thoughts on whether a device running Windows XP can be made to power on/off (and boot) instantly?

Since it is being sold as multimedia/communications/entertainment device, it should be as easy to power it on/off as a game console (portable or not), or as a music player, or as a PDA.

Unfair to UMPC - extra mass is expensive.

[guidryp]

Of course UMPC cost more. After all it weighs 4 times as much, that mass cost something. The Nokia is a piddly half pound, put that in a pocket and you might forget it is there and sit on it. Poor design Nokia.

Now the brilliant UMPC design weighs two pounds. No accidently forgetting you have that with you. And there is no way it will fit in a pocket so you are are less likely to sit on it. Brilliant design there, always thinking of the user.

Now isn't it worth $1000 (only reported actual price so far) to have a design big enough that you won't accidently have it in your pocket and sit on it?

RS-MMC goes up to 2gb now...

[blorg]

...with larger sizes on the horizon. Although I agree I would prefer if they used SD, which is now the most common card format (having overtaken CF some time ago.) At least the RS-MMC cards can be used in SD devices, and they are actually quite cheap. The 770 takes all RS-MMCs, it doesn't need low voltage like most phones (although I presume there is a battery benefit to going with low voltage.)

The only real limitation is the RAM; it would indeed by nice if they doubled or quadrupled this as it tends to run low on memory if you have a lot of large pages open (or numerous applications.)

The 770 is still light-years ahead of any other mobile device I've ever used (Palm OS or Pocket PC.) There is simply no comparison. The screen real estate is good, but the greater issue IMHO is the fantastic browser that it uses - there is very little that can come close to Opera in the mobile arena.

Playing card

[bradleyland]

Take a playing card, and try to draw a small network schema on it. Draw out a small web app flow chart. Draw a hypothetical database schema for a small app. There simply isn't enough room. These are the types of tasks I do daily.

I'm your typical self-employed small business IT consultant. I have many clients with 5-15 workstations. I get new clients all the time and I deliver a service that most of them have never received. I document their network, complete with layout, device settings, and username/password information. The vast majority of these customers had an IT guy before me that flew by the seat of his pants. He had all their information memorized, but they never had access to it. Now he's gone, they're screwed, and I'm picking up the pieces. When I perform service or upgrades, I provide a record of that action. The customer has an ongoing record of their IT expenditures, and where that money is going. Owners use that information to decide when it makes sense to replace equipment. The appreciation I receive for delivering this level of documentation is incredible. Right now, it's a heavy burden, because the work is two-fold: write it down on location, go home (or boot my laptop) to key the information into my records.

Right now, I print this documentation out and carry it in folders for each of my clients. Update the documentation? Gotta print another copy. I keep the information on my key drive, but I have to have access to a computer to use it. I have my laptop, but it takes too long to boot. Most customers have as many employees as they do computers. Pulling a user off of their computer usually means that they can't work.

Any way, my needs are pretty specific, but the application is broad when you think about it. The tablet PC was the first step in the right direction, and I believe that this new device is the next step. It won't be perfect (like boot time and battery life), but it will be a step in the right direction. I hope it takes off, and I hope that other companies answer with similar products. Are you listening, Apple? Update the Newton. I'm already standing in line.

Re:Playing card

[argent]

Take a playing card, and try to draw a small network schema on it. Draw out a small web app flow chart. Draw a hypothetical database schema for a small app. There simply isn't enough room.

OK, so you need a laptop. Going from a playing-card to a 3x5 card isn't going to do the trick.

Don't boot it, just sleep it, and keep it on AC in your car. Or if Windows does't sleep well enough for you (it does for me, honestly) get an iBook or something that's designed to sleep instead of hibernate. There's no reason a laptop can't be just as "instant on" as a tablet PC or a this thing... and a tablet PC or a laptop really IS big enough to draw on.

Re:Playing card

[bradleyland]

I hear what you're saying, I really do, but I disagree.

The published screen size is 7", so at 4:3 aspect ratio, that would put it at around 5.6" x 4.2". I cut out a piece of paper to see just how big that is. Here's a link to a GIF size comparison.

http://static.flickr.com/55/110212782_2d07bb5d21_o .gif

That's a significant size difference. The Origami device looks like it would be a good fit for me. I've printed out a few and played around. It's a pretty good size (for my needs).

Fortunately, someone also posted a link to a great looking Fujitsu LifeBook that's just a little bit larger, but not nearly laptop size. It's $1500, but it's so perfect, I might just spring for it. Since the Origami device won't have instant on capabilities, the difference between the two breaks down to size and price. Not much else.

Re:Playing card

[argent]

I'm surprised the Origami won't have "instant on" ... are you sure about that?

All "instant on" is, is a fancy name for "sleep"... and (as I noted) Windows devices sleep just fine, they just tend to be a bit battery hungry when sleeping because they assume if you're really going down you'll hibernate. If you have an inverter in your car that shoudn't be an issue.

Or get an iBook. 12" iBook is $1000...

Maybe there is more to see.

[xmuskrat]

Maybe there is more to see.

http://umpc.com/video.aspx

Digital engineering paper

[xtal]

I'm wondering when someone will hit the spot right..

I've carried a pad of engineering paper and a pencil around with me for 10 years. No display technology has come close in terms of flexibility. The peel-off-screen technology is really neat!

My guess for what would be right is something that could display a 8.5" x 11" piece of paper at 300dpi, have PC functionality, be around ~1cm thick, and run for a whole day on a battery charge. I don't think processor power is a requirement, just good wireless 802.11 connectivity. Unfortunately I don't think the technology is there yet.

Sliding Keyboard, Moving Screen Video

[xmuskrat]

Anybody seen this? http://umpc.com/video.aspx

Does anyone else find the origamiproject.com...

[Expert Determination]

...web site as creepy as I do? It's like an ad for getting a spy implant embedded in your brain in a totalitarian society. I could just imagine that ad playing in the background on a billboard in some PhilDickian dystopian future. "Whatever you think, whenever you think it, we'll be there to keep you on the right track..."

the real problem is battery life

[theStorminMormon]

I was really excited by the possibility until I saw the three hour battery life. This cripples the entire project, in my opinion, because it dictates how you use it. Unless you can reliably use it whenever you feel like it during the day without having to monitor battery life continuously or worry about it pooping out on you it's effectively tied to outlets (car, office, etc). I know that's how I'd feel about it because even though I can get 3-4 hours out of my laptop on battery I rarely use it that way because I'm always worried that when I really need the batteries they won't be there.

Until they can get all-day battery life it's just not interesting to me. By "all day" I mean 8-hours with moderate use as a BARE minimum, and I'd really want something more like 12-16. It should be as portable battery-wise as cell phones were when they took off or portable players are when they took off. Otherwise it's just not genuinely portable.

-stormin

Re:the real problem is battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

Battery should hold more power but the device should also be able to swap out batteries while device is in use. If they could get at least 4-6 hours out of one battery, then just carry extra battery with you.

Re:the real problem is battery life

[strider3700]

I write applications for rugged handheld devices. On my desk I currently have a couple of TDS Ranger handhelds. the screen is 320x240 and tiny. But they do get 22-24 hours of continuous use including wireless out of the battery's. Of course the battery pack is close to 2 lbs on it's own...

Re:the real problem is battery life

[abcxyz]

3 hours may be very optimistic. I saw a quote earlier today that said the battery life was estimated at 1.7 hours, which is less than one DVD's worth of movie.

See this PC World article

-- Rick

Likely Market

[M$ Mole]

I work for an organization that writes public safety software (for police, fire, etc). To me, this product is pretty much exactly what a lot of public safety personnel are dying for...something larger and more functional than a PDA, but smaller than a laptop and that doesn't chain them to their cars.

I think this will have a very niche market, but it's going to make money.

What I'd really LOVE to see-

[Anonymous Coward]

is a video of Bill Gates doing a demo of that on-screen thumb keyboard thingy! Please, Bill!! PLEEEEEEEEESE!!!!!!

They were clearing out the older model...

[blorg]

...at $1,300 - or maybe even less - recently. So maybe there is long-term hope.

Can't beat a $3 paperback.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nuff said, nothing to see here, move along.

Who needs a phone these days?

[MrDoh1]

Everyone is complaining that this thing doesn't include a cellular phone. Am I the only one that is very happy it doesn't? I don't even own a cell anymore. And since it is a PC that runs XP and is connected via wifi, why hasn't someone mentioned that if you need phone functionality that there is always Vonages SoftPhone or Skype, or any number of other solutions, or you could substitute email, IM, heck even IRC if you needed to. It's not like this thing isn't a PC running XP. For the most part, if you can run it on your desktop, you should be able to run it on this. Personally, I work in an environment where I specifically can't take a cell phone into work, so if it had an integrated phone, I couldn't even use it at the office, and that's a big chunk of the day.

Personally, I have been waiting for this for years. I always wanted a tablet PC but could never afford one, and they are a little bigger than I would like/need. Several years ago I bought an iPaq 3670. It was/is nice and all that, but it's too limited what with its size and the fact that it runs CE instead of XP. Need to do a little coding? That's tough. Want to VNC into a 1024x768 or higher res screen? You can, but I sure hope you aren't in a hurry and like to scroll. Newer versions of Pocket IE have gotten better, but in the version that came with my iPaq, browsing is worse than pulling teeth.

So far the biggest things I see it missing is better battery life and GPS. (Though GPS may be something the individual OEM decides to implement.) Along the same lines, isn't a keyboard in some form or fashion something the individual OEMs may get to select or not select for their product? An adapter that will allow a connection to a normal monitor like is available on the Dell Axims would also be on the want list. Maybe they will throw a fuel cell in at some point, or maybe the advances in battery tech will get to be shown off in this device. I wonder how it would run with LiPo batteries? Oh, and bluetooth would be nice if it doesn't already have it. The ability to wirelessly add headphones, a keyboard or mouse if needed would be nice.

For $500.00 or so, I just don't see the down side. The above mentioned iPaq was more than that when new and in my mind, isn't nearly as productive. What's the worst that could happen? I end up with a very expensive programmable remote control with network/internet access built in?

For me, I'd love to be able to go outside and lay in the hammock and still be able to watch a movie over wifi, or do some coding, or remotely check on the servers, (the list could go on for a while) all while enjoying the outdoors.

If the devices end up having those things listed above as "missing", I'd be in line today to buy one (if it were available today), and I've never stood in line for a XBox, Playstation, event tickets or anything else, but to me, this would be worth it.

Delve a Little Deeper

[adimiron]

I can't say I'm surprised at the anti-MS FUD here, but there are a few clarifictions:

• To the people saying the lack of a keyboard will be an issue, there's been coverage of the USB port included on the pre-release models to solve just that problem. Some models may incluse an onboard keyboard that flips out for usage. Do some research.
• To those who claim this occupies the PDA space, I don't see that - this occupies the Sub-notebook space. Average specs to conserve battery life, greater portability, able to run a multi-tasking OS - sounds like a subnotebook to me.
• "Is it supposed to be a phone?" No. It's a computer. Why would you hold a computer with a 7" screen up to your ear? (Other than to invite ridicule) VOIP with a bluetooth headset? Now that's a distinct possibility...
• I'm betting that the hardware will allow some enterprising developer to install Linux on it - in fact, I'm hoping that occurs sooner rather than later. I'd love to try to load MythFrontend on it and watch TV remotely over my network :)
• Cost - name me a tablet or subnotebook that can come in at $600-1000
• Pocketability - I'd much rather carry a 7" screen with video-out to use for presentations than a 15" laptop. I can fit this in a large coat pocket, or in a carry-on with my other gear (camera, etc) without having to sacrifice my shoulder to the gods of gadget-bag-weight.
• Travel - I'd love to carry something this small when I go out on photo shoots and be able to transfer my shots right onto the hard drive and edit them on the fly without the weight of a laptop.

There's a ton of Origami-related info out there, from the original Origami video pulled from the advertising firm's site (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV1WGDW37c0) to Engadget's coverage. Dig a little deeper and think about the possibilities.

I think this could be more exciting than most people are giving it credit for...

Microsoft gets hard

[couch_warrior]

Will MS be changing its name to Microhard?

This is the inevitable result of the saturation of the software market. Since everyone has PCs, and all of them run Windows, the only way for Microsoft to grow is to go into hardware.

MS has always seemed to have an "eat its own children" mentality. First they get a vendor to create a market for some service on windows - like speech recognition or web browsers, then they offer a competing product that kills off the original company. One could say the only people that have faired worse than the competitors of MS have been its partners.

Now they seem to be turning on the hardware makers who gave them their monopoly all these years by only installing Windows on new machines.

The secret of the coming demise of MS will likely be this -
First - they will struggle to capture market from better HW products
Then - they will cheat by putting secret features into Windows that run better on MS hardware
Then - Competing manufacturers will realize they are being screwed. They will realize they can gain a price advantage by using a free OS
Then - Linux will reach critical mass and take over as the defacto user OS
Finally Microsoft will become the next Apple - marginalized and largely irrelevant, struggling to survive

Well, we can hope, anyway.

Is this the best they can do.

[jeffgtr]

With all the resources Microsoft has at their disposal, is this the best they can do? This thing just makes no sense to me. Especially after reading the article over at the Register. MS has tried to create this big buzz on the net, like this is some revolutionary cool product. I see neither. Give me a 12" laptop. I've been down the Dell Axim X50V road, at least it was portable, but I just ebay'd it. This thing is even bigger..jeez. It just makes me think there is more fundamentally wrong with Microsoft than even the most rabid anti-MS pundit could imagine.

MS Newton?

[jpellino]

Yikes. The pic on this MS press page looks eerily like a Newton...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/m ar06/03-09Mobile.mspx

I love them, but they're neither fish nor fowl, they can't fit in a real pocket and aren't enough like a pad of paper. When it gets to 8.5 x 11 x .5 and 3lb, we'll treat it like a true book or notebook and use it for everything.

As long as they think they're breaking ground, when is someone with a "full" OS device going to give us if nothing else a piece of paper screen factor, because let's face it - we're still tied to pieces of paper for handling and output and the sad legacy of 24x80 CRT for display... seems easier to munge the screen than the paper or our brains.

Man, the press thought the Apple event was a non-starter, this looks like the headline of the day is "Yippee - Another Newton | Tablet | eBook"

umpc

[glsunder]

I'll wait for the huhpc, ahpc, and wtfpc.

Non-starter, battery life lacking for one

[lux55]

For something they expect to become "indispensable and ubiquitous as the mobile phone" they're going to have to do something to increase the battery life from 3 hours. I charge up my cell only every few *days*, not a couple times a day. How will 3 hours suffice when you're on the go? It won't, that's how.

Huh?

[falsified]

Isn't this just a Libretto? I don't get what the big deal is.

Missing the point entirely

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't about creating an instant success overnight. Neither the PC nor the laptop were instant successes. Early laptops were still clunkers with horrid screens and slow performance, cost a ton, and were essentially unusable. Defining a new category is an iterative process, and this round is all about building relationships with key players, understanding how to specialize hardware, and listening to customer gripes.

As always, generation 3 of these devices will be where they will take off. We're talking smaller, runs vista, longer battery life, etc. Once you can buy a refined version from Dell for $499, we're talking serious market penetration.

Absolutely.

[jpellino]

2-3 hour battery life on an "ultra portable pc" is death on a stick.

You're supposed to be able to keep this with you at all times and simply use it whenever.

Can we guess how much of that is a graphics processor trying to keep up with XP ?

I'll stick to my 5-6 hour 4lb iBook G4 or Portege 2000, thanks. Instant on (-ish), full work day, no-strain weight.

hm... kinda late man

[moochfish]

So... all that hyper over a laptop that has a cheapo keyboard and an exposed screen? I'd rather it be the same size but open up into a laptop... but then I guess they couldn't market that as "innovation."

"View, Listen, Pay".

[cp.tar]

What do you mean, "mistake"?

That's a business model. Let me put it into /. terms for you:

1. View.
2. Listen.
3. Pay.
4. (Microsoft's) Profit!!!

See? No more pesky question marks in there.
Finally, we have a perfect plan!
(Unfortunately, Microsoft has probably patented it.)

Why Microsoft is doing this

[perfessor multigeek]

Don't get it? Seems pretty damn obvious to me.

Okay now, it should be pretty obvious to everybody that this is fundamentally a defensive move by Microsoft.
- They've got the anticipatory buzz from the $100 laptop project hemming them in on one side, with early adopters (including me) saying "I've got to get me one of those and I'll gladly pay twice or three times the hundred dollar price".
- On the other hand they've got existing smart phones and increasingly funtional "super"mp3players like the newest iPods that are becoming more multifunction by the year and are now, effectively, PDAs.
- And internet access all over the place now, including devices integrated into seatbacks of high end air carriers along with web-based storage and more and more enterprise apps running on web-based apps anyway.
- Not to mention the tripling or quadrupling of the percentage of hardcore coders and sysadmins who now carry Mac OS laptops. Used to be that maybe one in twenty true geeks at, say, a UNIX conference had Mac OS devices. Now it's what, twenty percent? Twenty-five?
- And, the eight hundred pound gorilla here, all the game platforms BUT MICROSOFT now have mobile devices that are kicking ass and taking names, not to mention companies like Zodiac doing explicitly multipurpose gaming/pda devices.
So what does this add up to for Microsoft? It means high end business users, teens, early adopters, and damn near every highly desirable market is full of people asking themselves the question: "why should I carry my windows box with me?"
And even harsher, some are asking "Do i need a Windows box at all?"
So MS needs an answer to that question. Of course they've been coming out with some mobile platform model every two years or so for almost twenty years, most of which are flat out vaporware or simply garbage. And if this were about effective mobile devices that professionals are demanding, well, hell, there were excellent solutions available for that in 1993.

Of course, history is full of people doing the right thing for the wrong reason and maybe it doesn't matter why MS has brought this about (and make no mistake, this is their baby) if the results are good.

Except that it doesn't work that way in the computer world. If the driver is going the wrong way it doesn't matter how admirable the bus is. MS has long since been shown to retain iron control over their projects and if this is simply yet another round of a semi-vaporware (notice the paucity of shipping devices) meant primarily to make people less certain that they should buy nonMS devices, then MS will, as always, run this as a cynical bit of theatre, with cool anouncements vastly overshadowing actual shipping devices and quiet sabotage of any project that threatans it.

Despite his statements to the contrary, Otto Burkes was chosen to run this project, at least in part, precisely because his credentials would assist in FUD. Mark my words, eventually internal MS documents will come out that reveal that MS higher-ups were very concerned about the viability of this device in reality and as perceived as a counter to the mobile game platforms.

In every sense, Microsoft is trying to game us. After thirty years of deception and documented sabotage, we should know better than to fall for it.

And lastly, is anybody but me noticing the absurd factor that the ONLY reason this device is so heavy/clunky/expensive/battery-hogging is because MS apps and OSes are such resource hogs? Psions and other such devices have done just fine at all of the business tasks needed with a batttery life measured in days, not hours. For that matter, in terms of the features actually used, MS Office itself, circa, say, 1995 should be able to work just fine on a low power ARM or equivalent. I love that the interviewer asks "can you run Photoshop?" I run Photoshop all the time on a 300MHz machine with 198 Mgs of RAM w

Deja Vu All Over Again...

[Anthony Coward]

How is this not a Tablet PC?

No. Seriously.

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what the world needed a 2 lb PDA!

Question about the 770

[biendamon]

I've looked at the 770 as a possibility, but I'm tired of carrying around multiple devices for all the various portability functions. Does the 770 have enough HD space to use it as an MP3 player? Does it have a good built-in PIM that can sync with my desktop?

Basically, I want one device to be my phone, PDA, music player, and so on. Does the 770 fit that bill?

Re:Question about the 770

[markdavis]

It doesn't have a hard drive, it uses flash memory of whatever size you like. Yes, it can play mp3/ogg/etc. No, it has no official PIM quite yet. No it is not a cell phone, although it will be an IP/WiFi phone.

My review is posted at http://markadavis.org/770review.pdf

which of these things is not like the other?

[roedelius]

iPod
Blackberry
Palm Pilot
Origami
Ultra Mobile PC

What if Microsoft is really trying to kill off PDA

[Anonymous Coward]

*tin foil hat*

What if this thing is supposed to fail? What if they want to force people to buy PC's (running Windows of course) instead of a PDA?

- nosebreaker.com

Sharp already tried this!?!

[White Salamander]

More proof that MS is lightyears behind in the what people want department, Sharp has been making the Zaurus for years with only tepid sales at best. Both the SL-3000 and SL-6000l which look to e a comparable product have done so poorly in the US that to buy a new one it has to be bought in Japan and shipped here. I done think that MS will do any better thn sharp but i wish them luck.

VISTA

[helmutvs]

Ok. How much you wanna bet this this can't run Vista?

Does the clamshell have the Mark of the Beast?

[jdreyer]

Why has it become verboten for anything smaller than a laptop to have a clamshell keyboard? Sure, there are a few Zaurus models, and probably a few I don't know or have forgotten, but for the most part, small computers have integrated or slide-out keyboards which are way too small and which don't protect the screen, or no keyboard at all! You need to protect the screen, and you need to type! What's the problem?

Cool but...

[OrangeTide]

I was interested (nice hardware spec and decent price range) until I realized what OS it ran. I guess I've just had extremely bad experiences with WinCE and PocketPC.

Re:What if Microsoft is really trying to kill off

[hey!]

What if they created a bomb which emitted radiation that was dangerous only to dinosaurs?

Fixed?

[JourneyExpertApe]

Apparently it's been fixed already, unless I'm missing some subtle detail.

Screen in sunlight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their teaser video shows people using it in all manners of "outdoor" activity. I got a laptop for the first time last year, and naively thought I could work outside on my patio in summer time. Well, NO I can't. I can't see shit on my screen. This is a problem with pretty much all color LCD and even TFT technology. So has MS solved this problem? I can't see this device really taking off unless you actually CAN use it anywhere, anytime.

Re:What if Microsoft is really trying to kill off

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point, what if they want it to fail? What if the intent is to hurt the PDA market? Since this device is obvious crap, the few people that do buy it will badmouth it and hurt PDA sales.

Re:What if Microsoft is really trying to kill off

[hey!]

Maybe I'm being obtuse today, but I think I got your point. My point is why should they worry about PDA sales? Not only are they the major OS vendor in this space, this space is shrinking. No need to do what nature is doing for them.

Ditch the colour screen

[The Mutant]

pick up another three hours (maybe more!) of battery life.

The thing is meant to be used away from the desk and indeed away from power points. Device runtime on a single charge is the most crucial factor here, not a high def colour screen that can play media.

I've squarely in the Pocket PC camp now (two 5450's), but still sometimes miss my Newton MP2K's. I used to charge them up Sunday night, top them off Wednesday or so and never would really run out of power.

Of course they were a lot simpler than these devices, but once again - battery life is key.

size, battery, and everything

[tixie]

I think that it is mainly about two things: size and energy. Both determine when and where you will carry it. The rest of it is just about "everything". :) It is bigger than a cell phone or a PDA. If you like to bring a book around all the time, which is about the same size, you will be comfortable with it. If not, you will still use PDA or smartphone. In this sense, UMPC is more fitting for office and business environment since most of the time you will be carrying a bag anyway. It's defintely not something when you are excercising. Energy saving is also crucial. However, this is so crucial as the size. Most tasks requiring long term constant-on features are communication-oriented. You are not likely going to run a long computation task on UMPC. Of course, energy-saving also depends on how the hardware and software are designed. For example, can all the unneeded parts be turned off? I still have doubts that windows xp can be very aggressive on energy efficiency since it is a PC OS anyway. Although new battery techniques are under heavy researches, time is needed to prove their acceptance. Also, I think that the point of UMPC is to promote PC culture. Now that various portable entertainment devices are on the market. Some of them get quite powerful hardwares. It is not a surprise that people will begin to use those devices for general tasks while general tasks belong to PC field. So essentially the point of UMPC is about its "everything" and "everywhere". But that does not mean that UMPC is targetting entertainment. I think that UMPC is still to target less graphics-intensive applications. Now back to the battery problem. General applications are less energy-demanding than graphics-intensive applications. Most of the time, most parts of a UMPC can stay asleep. So given the same battery technique, UMPC should have advantages over entertainment oriented devices. However, windows xp is a full PC operating system. Whether it can provide very aggressive energy-saving techniques remains to be seen. This also depends on how the hardware is designed.

Re:size, battery, and everything (reformatting)

[tixie]

I think that it is mainly about two things: size and energy. Both determine when and where you will carry it. The rest of it is just about "everything". :)

It is bigger than a cell phone or a PDA. If you like to bring a book around all the time, which is about the same size, you will be comfortable with it. If not, you will still use PDA or smartphone. In this sense, UMPC is more fitting for office and business environment since most of the time you will be carrying a bag anyway. It's defintely not something when you are excercising.

Energy saving is also crucial. However, this is so crucial as the size. Most tasks requiring long term constant-on features are communication-oriented. You are not likely going to run a long computation task on UMPC. Of course, energy-saving also depends on how the hardware and software are designed. For example, can all the unneeded parts be turned off? I still have doubts that windows xp can be very aggressive on energy efficiency since it is a PC OS anyway. Although new battery techniques are under heavy researches, time is needed to prove their acceptance.

Also, I think that the point of UMPC is to promote PC culture. Now that various portable entertainment devices are on the market. Some of them get quite powerful hardwares. It is not a surprise that people will begin to use those devices for general tasks while general tasks belong to PC field. So essentially the point of UMPC is about its "everything" and "everywhere". But that does not mean that UMPC is targetting entertainment. I think that UMPC is still to target less graphics-intensive applications.

Now back to the battery problem. General applications are less energy-demanding than graphics-intensive applications. Most of the time, most parts of a UMPC can stay asleep. So given the same battery technique, UMPC should have advantages over entertainment oriented devices. However, windows xp is a full PC operating system. Whether it can provide very aggressive energy-saving techniques remains to be seen. This also depends on how the hardware is designed.

When everyone is a Microsoft hater...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one knows what is going on. Look more closely to at the UMPC / Origami, there are some new things there:

- Has a touch-screen
As far as I know this is a first. Unlike all the PDA's out there, Tablet's generally have a screen that _requires_ a stylus. If you touched it with your finger, it does nothing. It's not like the pressure senstive screen that's on all the PDA's.

- Runs Windows XP Tablet Edition + some new software
The new software is what I think is the key. Tablet PC did not do well, in part, because the existing windows software is just not well designed for touch / stylus. An example is the thumb keyboard that let's you type on the screen with a keyboard that is layed out in quarter circles around the thumbs.

I was personally hoping for much more than this, but at the same time it is a step towards a device that is more ubiquitously useful than a laptop. Give it another iteration or so and we'll have a device that we will carry everywhere.

Apple: We charge you more for less!!!

[RockClimbingFool]

This should be Apples moniker: "We charge you more for less!!!" My favorite example is the evolution of the iPod.

Everytime they update the line, the price remains constant or goes up. And it comes with less and less. It only comes with headphones and a USB cable now. No AC adaptor. No firewire.

I don't know about you but I am updating my 30gigs of mp3s on my ipod everyday. Its the only way i can charge it, unless i shell out $30 for a USB to AC adaptor.

On the go playlists anyone? Oh, that's too complicated for the average user, so we won't have it.

Microsoft's Strategy

[voteforkerry78]

I wonder if Microsoft's strategy is to market to blind people who think they're purchasing PSPs...

WTF?

[Kaldaien]

My PDA cost $600... granted it has the clearest 4" LCD money can buy. What kind of crappy display is this Origami thing going to have for $600-$1,000? I own a laptop and a PDA, I would prefer to keep the two devices separate - I would rather not have one device that sucks as a PDA and sucks as a laptop but has the novelty of being both.

Re:This is new? Remember QQO?

[Acer500]

I agree, there have been several like it on market, most noticeably Sony VAIO VGN-U750P and Toshiba Libretto (since 1996!).

Here's a review of Toshiba Libretto (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1788009,00.a sp which is what I'd buy if it didn't cost U$ 2000.

If the Microsoft offerings come with a $ 500 price tag AND a decent keyboard I'd consider them.

full versions of software?

[lucas teh geek]

From microsoft.com:

Full-size software
Use full versions of Microsoft Office system software, Internet Explorer, and other Windows-compatible applications.

and

Hardware Specifications
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 OS
Approximately 7" diagonal display (or smaller)
Minimum 800 x 480 resolution
Approximately 2 pounds
Integrated touch panel
WiFi- and Bluetooth-enabled

Oh, its gonna be fun using full versions of Word on that 7", 480px high screen! thats probably almost enough to see all the toolbars

Look nice at first glance

[nurb432]

Might be something to carry when a PDA just wont do the job, but a laptop is too much bulk.

Lets hope its not locked into Windows, so we can have a choice of what we want to run on it. ( i know, fat chance )

I love Microsoft. :D

[JackAxe]

Actually in the past, most tablets were only touch screens, which kept me away from them.

http://www.tabletpctalk.com/faqs/hwcomparison2003. shtml

I've been doing research on the newer tablets that implement WACOM digitizers, since I'm an artist and came upon the above link when trying to find out their specs. The first tablet I tried out was only touch screen and the problem with that, is that if you wrest your hand on it for sketching, or writing, it screws everything up. A digitizer using WACOM's tech, even though it's dated with no "tilt" feature, and only 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, is vastly more accurate than any touch screen I've tried, and more importantly, you can wrest your hand any where on the screen.

IMO, these things are just too big and kind of fall into an awkward inbetween area, where a product really isn't needed. They're too big to be convient like a PDA and are too limited to replace a notebook. I just can't see that many peeps buying one, since a notebook can provide soo much more for not much more. Samsung's version is selling for $1100, which makes it way too expensive for what it can't do.

I personally would like one of these, since they're full fledge computers in a smaller package, but at $3k, I'll be investing in a Wacom 21UX instead;
http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_ le1600.asp (These things can be upgraded to 180 viewing angles.)

<]=)

wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/wowthatsug ly

Another pan from the BBC

[twitter]

Ouch, that did not take long. Hype does that to you.

Re:Another pan from the BBC

[DrSkwid]

That's interesting because on last night's main BBC news they described it as "the lastest craze" and gave it quite a postive piece.

Inventory, 1/4 VGA XP? Put down the crack pipe.

[twitter]

I think the real niche for this is to replace traditionally embedded one-application devices like inventory systems.

This thing won't last a day on a single charge. Who's going to swap out their cheap and reliable barcode scanners for that?

First, it runs standard XP, which means you can now have your standard business applications in a smaller form factor.

Oh yeah, like all I want is to run M$ Office at 640x480 or less. Palm, GPE and Opie all work because the interface is geared to a small screen. This device has already been panned by the BBC as not living up to expectations. Sharp and others have done a much better job of making the thing you want. Check out the new Zaurus for starters.

NO! IT'S NOT THE UMPC! IT'S THE NEW IPOD VIDEO!

[rogerborn]

ITS TRUE!

APPLE JUST ANNOUNCED THEIR NEW IPOD VIDEO FOR APRIL FIRST

SAMSUNG is going to build it.

It has the SAME SPECIFICATIONS AS THE SAMSUNG UMPC!

the new ipod video device is actually the exact same samsung model of the new microsoft origami UMPC.

consternation is reigning in redmond over this fiasco.

the new ipod will not use windows for tablet software, and thusly, will have an eight hour battery life, due to using better batteries and more intelligent software. prices are very different, with the redmond device going for 8 big ones and the ipod for 5 hundred.

samsung scored a real coup here, selling the same device to both microsoft and apple without either of them knowing about it.

you heard it here first.

april first will really be april first this year.

regards,
roger born
"Sorry. No refunds."

Kay has actually changed his tune.

[Ivan Matveitch]

Most of the children in his experiments did not learn anything. Maybe he will one day succeed, though.

PIgeon photographed with Origami

[Anonymous Coward]

http://pigeonblog.wordpress.com/2006/03/13/bit-of- techny-stuff/