FlipStart to Replace Your Laptop?

WED Fan writes "Paul Allen has a new hardware venture, smaller than a laptop, larger than a blackberry. According to the Seattle P-I, the vision is to replace the laptop for most everyday use, such as office applications, email, and web surfing. 'Really, FlipStart gives you everything that your laptop does [...] We're not promoting the idea that you would do CAD design on it, but for Office applications and most of what people do with their laptops, it's great.' But at a $2000 price tag, this could be a little bit out of the range of many users. The product will launch on FlipStart.com in the not to distant future."

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Vaporware since 2004

[Crash McBang]

Google 'flipstart' - you'll find that this thing has been Vaporware since before 2004.

I'll believe it when woot has it on sale...

I loved my sub-notebook for some things

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Psion 7. Instant on. Zero boot/wakeup time. Pretty good battery life. Smaller/lighter/slower than a laptop. Pretty decent keyboard (better than a blackberry etc)

Sucky things: If it is too big to fit in your pocket you have to hand lug it and the size is not a huge benefit over a regular laptop. Screen is really too small, even for word processing etc.

Re:The Sub-Notebook returns!

[Volante3192]

It's not from Microsoft; it just happens to run Windows.

Paul Allen hasn't been with MS for decades.

Re:The Sub-Notebook returns!

[AKAImBatman]

Apple was originally going to do the same on their 17" PowerBooks, but they killed the idea for a simple reason: Adding the number pad forced the keyboard to shift to one side. Which ruined the ergonomics of the device, and generally required that users type in an unbalanced configuration. (Not so good when you're using it on your lap.) That's why the 17" PowerBooks all had that odd space around the keyboard area.

Re:The Sub-Notebook returns!

[AKAImBatman]

This is actually a 1024x600 screen. So prepare to squint.

Re:The Sub-Notebook returns!

[backwardMechanic]

I have an old Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook P1032 from ebay. It's 9 inches wide, comes with a touch screen, and happily runs Linux. It's a bit low on memory (128MB), but it comes with 8 hours runtime using an extened battery, and is great for watching movies on planes. Or coding, whichever you prefer. Sub-notes are neat, but certainly not new. Vapourware comes and goes, while Sony and F-S quietly keep producing them.

http://www0.epinions.com/pr-Fujitsu_LifeBook_P1032 _FPCM02053_PC_Notebook/display_~full_specs

Re:The Sub-Notebook returns!

[Kwiik]

It might not be from Microsoft, but that doesn't mean Microsoft hasn't already "pretty much" failed at this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Mobile_PC (code name "origami")

Nokia 9300

[Colin Smith]

The Nokia 9XXX machines are basically next generation Psions with a phone built in. The 9300 has a usable but not good keyboard. The 9500 is better, but obviously bigger.

It fits in the pocket and can do pretty much everything a laptop can do. The really massive benefit though isn't readily apparent. That is, you always have all your data with you.

Re:Get an OQO instead

[ArhcAngel]

I'm shocked this is the only comment mentioning the OQO! I had the opportunity to work with the OQO 1+ model for almost a year and while it was not a speed demon by any stretch of the imagination it was more than competent. With the 02's bumped up processor speed and mobile broadband built in I can hardly see any reason to even introduce the flipstart (or should that be falsestart). At $2K I can purchase the fully loaded OQO 02 with Windows Vista (yes there are tutorials on installing Linux)and that includes any shipping costs.