Slashdot Mirror
Origami Feedback Mixed, says Samsung
Ben Camm-Jones writes "Citing a mixture of reactions from customers who bought its Q1 device, Samsung has said that the pre-launch teaser campaign run by Microsoft about the Origami project may have been misleading."
For those of you who don't want to read the article this is the section detailing how people felt mislead:
"someone [with prior] understanding of Origami, [they have been] saying 'We expected this and expected that' and comparing specification and price with laptop computers," said Steel. But even though a laptop can deliver more, it comes at a price, Steel noted."
Any success at all for the Origami would have been a surprise. It was (is) much too small to be a PC in any context (especially with an anemic screensize, heck lots of tiny devices approach the resolution and quality of the Origami) and way too big to be a portable device like an mp3 or video player.
For those trying to make it PC-like, the device short-shrifted users on usability like keyboard functionality. For those wanting portable devices, the Origami was way overpowered and cumbersome (who the f*** wants to fire up Windows to play an mp3 or a video?!?).
In between someone must have envisioned a niche market -- there likely is one, it's just not very big, and not noteworthy beyond the demographic for which it might be useful (hospitals, shops, warehouse grocery stores, etc.).
The Origami wasn't that much different (IMO) from the notepad type portables, except it was lighter in features, but still heavy in the wallet requirements. Sometimes these devices seem to be brain farts -- "what if"s, and they get run up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes. Hats off to Microsoft for a clever attempt at "mystery" marketing the Origami. Sometimes the buying public has a clue before the marketers.
Work bought it for me, for a very specific purpose. I suspect we're the only people that have a job that it's just perfect for.
It's slow, it's heavier than you'd like, it gets really hot in use, it's fiddly to interact with, and it's not worth anything like the money. I know you should expect nothing else from first-generation hardware, but it really is almost entirely pointless for nearly everybody (it's absolutely perfect for what I need it for, but that's an extremely niche market, believe me, and if Pocket Internet Explorer on a PDA was anything more than a toy, I wouldn't need it at all).
The hype was extremely misguided - it's just a very small tablet PC, it was never going to set the world on fire. But that's neither here nor there - hype or no hype, my main criticism of it is that it's not even very good at what it's meant to do, never mind all the things people imagined it would do before it came out.
Actually, I got to play with one over the weekend. The handwriting recognition was excellent. Without training, it read my chicken scratch quite accurately (not a single misread). The voice recognition required more training, so I didn't use that. Battery life was, as expected, about 2 hours, which was fine for me. There's supposed to be an extended battery coming out for it in the next few months, and i'm almost always near an outlet when i'd be using it.
Weight was fine. I didn't find it too heavy at all. It even played WoW quite well. The digitizer was a little slow to react, but that was about it. I was VERY impressed, considering it's half the cost of tablet PC and provides far more functionality than a pocket pc. Exactly what I was looking for.
I think i'll buy one when the LED backlit version comes out.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here