Slashdot Mirror
Unreleased OQO 2+ OLED Version Sells For $6,500
psych787 writes "OQO's product line — much loved by their community at oqotalk — has recently suffered a slow, agonizing death. After dropping warranty repairs, not returning several units sent in, disconnecting phonelines, and leaving trash at their headquarters, a couple of units have survived and found eBay. The last one went for $4.5k. Now the only PC for sale to include an OLED has gone for $6.5k. At that price, perhaps a competitor bought the device to come up with something that meets the same market?"
Sigh...
Fist I have to work on Saturday night, and this is what is on slashdot.
I know I want to pay $6,500 dollars for a laptop with a 5" screen!
Damn, I don't know how this company possibly could have gone out of business with idiots like that. OLEDs aren't *that* great. Take a look at your cell phone and ask yourself if you want that in a monitor. Mine has screen burn in and flickers if I look at it out of the corner of my eye. (Sure, they may have resolved these issues, but they don't look better than, say, an LED TV).
I'm sure they're just dying to get into that huge market that OQO failed to make any money in.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I guess it just turns out they priced them wrong... shoot, they've got the market for $6500 laptops cornered.
Don't like to nitpick, but did anyone else notice that the winning bid was $6101? Woops
That there may not be enough idiots willing to pay high prices for it. You don't make enough money to stay in business selling only a few systems, even if you can get ridiculous prices for them.
Same kind of deal with the Voodoo 5 6000. There were a few people out there willing to spend ungodly amounts to have a special card, but not enough.
The only way you can have a company that survives on a market like that is if you have extremely low overhead. If you don't really do any R&D, then sure you can deal with low unit sales if margins are high. However to survive as a company that actually makes new products, you need a sizable number of sales.
I just think it's hilarious that this unarguably beautiful and extremely high-tech product is originating from good ol' DeLand, FL. I used to live there during high school, and let me tell you, that place is as redneck as it gets. I guess there really are some high-tech rednecks...
I'm not exactly sure why anyone would pay 6.5k for it. Yes, it is a prototype, but its not an interesting prototype. It is effectively just a smaller netbook, a DIY project in a few years.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
If the company doesn't have a product in the market and doesn't exist anymore... Their former competitors "own" that ever-shrinking PocketPC market - enjoy!
This may be a bit off-topic, but I got a Cowon S9 (the first commercially available full color OLED device) at release, and man, OLEDs are gorgeous. The refresh rate is nearly instantaneous, the contrast ratio is essentialy infninate, and has half the power drain of a comaprable LED. I can't wait to get one for my main PC monitor.
I can see where someone would want to have a working prototype of one of the first devices with an OLED display, it's probably headed to a museum somewhere.
The OQO's, like all UMPC's so far, is a device looking for a propose. Still too small for touch typing, so you end up thumb typing like a smart phone with a slide out keyboard, except the OQO is much more unwieldy to hold. The 5 inch screen Doesn't add much from a smart phone. Netbooks cover the small portable functional browser. Too big for a pocket so a netbook still easily goes anywhere this does. Consumers have no use for it and industry has specialty solutions. I can't think Vista would be the best OS GUI for a 5 inch screen. Then you realize the greatness about getting to run a windows on something so small lacks appeal because all the apps you would care about run better on embedded devices
What a useless piece of junk. But yes, even in a recession, some people have money to throw way I suppose.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
I really wish eBay sellers would take just an extra 60 seconds to wipe off and clean their items before taking pictures.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
... if it were cheap enough. Seriously. OQOs, despite all their limitations and faults, were *awesome* if you wanted what they had to offer. I don't think they had entirely the wrong idea with their product, they were just a) ahead of their time and b) too expensive.
I met a chap at Linux Kongress in Hamburg who was running Linux on his OQO (the original one). He was able to demonstrate his x86 Linux development project on it. It was capable of VGA output, so he was able to run his presentation from it too. And it was small enough to fit in a (large-ish) pocket. The promise of a palmtop fulfilled, in a way. It doesn't matter that it's underpowered - so are netbooks and those are plenty popular.
A netbook-based OQO-like device would totally rock. I'm sure modern technology is up to the task of putting together a *cheap* device in an OQO-alike form-factor. If one were available at a reasonable price (i.e. a bit cheaper or about the same price as a netbook) I'd be very interested in picking one up. Media player, internet browser, ebook reader, running full desktop software. Plug in a keyboard and screen if you need to do anything serious on it - the market also should be capable of producing a docking station with laptop screen + keyboard with a DVI cable on, so that you can carry it around in a laptop case to supplement your palmtop device if you anticipate doing more serious browsing or typing.
The closest things to this that I currently see in development are the OpenPandora (http://openpandora.org), which isn't PC compatible but is pocketable and has a mini keyboard, clamshell design, runs Linux. And the new Intel MID chipset, which may not (?) be PC-compatible from what I've heard but will be x86-based and therefore able to run normal PC software for any OS that can boot on it in the first place. These should give us some of what we want - but hopefully some enterprising company will see the potential for a true netbook-based OQO-alike.
Shoving marginally laptop class computing resources into a palmtop with a thumb keyboard and a dinky, even if cool OLED screen is just stoopid. Either ya have to go bigger and be a netbook, or smaller and be a phone. This OQO concept was a tinker's wet dream, wishing for a market.
When the state of the art gets to the point where a laptop class CPU can operate in a compact mobile phone-sized format there might be some potential for a few vertical markets.. Beowulf cluster in a briefcase anyone?.... Beuler? .... Beuler?
At least for the next few years it's gonna be netbooks and iPhone clones.