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Unreleased OQO 2+ OLED Version Sells For $6,500

Posted by timothy on from the no-no-you're-supposed-to-haggle dept.

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?"

5 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Heh by ShakaUVM · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:Heh by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      it has to be rare and desirable to be a collector's item. I don't think the "Sony iPod" my friend bought back from Taiwan will be able to sell that high, even though it's pretty rare.

      I don't think OQO is rare and desirable enough to demand 6.5K. Someone who is paying this amount of money either has a very specific reason to do so I think.

      An OQO is pretty rare. They were expensive computers in their day, and still have the distinction as the smallest complete x86-compatible PC ever made. (You can get pico-ITC boards smaller than an OQO, but you'll need to add storage, RAM, screen and power...). Heck, you could make it the smallest Hackintosh in the world.

      The OQO 02+ is considered very desirable as it upgrades several annoying components on the OQO 02 - the CPU is better (Intel Atom vs. Via C7). The OLED version had more RAM (2GB vs 1GB), and the SSD as an option. The "normal" OQO 02+ (the one that went for $4.5k) qualified for the Microsoft XP Home license too (the netbook discounted cost).

      Either way, they were also the cheapest OQOs if they were released, with the OLED one starting around $1.5k. Upgrade to an SSD and you'd have a pocketable PC that you could do iTunes, VLC, full desktop Ubuntu, VMWare, Visual Studio, what have you. Or hell, why argue about Flash support, when you can run full Firefox with flash?

      I have an 02, and wanted to buy an 02+. But given OQO is out of business these days, oh well. I won't part with that much cash for an unsupported piece of equipment I intend to use. All I can hope for is the upcoming Archos 9 (running Windows 7) will be small enough to be hand-carried. But pocketing a

    2. Re:Heh by the_humeister · · Score: 2, Interesting

      For my money, I'd rather have one of IBM's Power6 systems. The least expensive one is only about $5.5k, less than the OQO.

  2. DeLand, FL by aquarajustin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  3. I'd totally buy one, if a bit cheaper. by Lemming+Mark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... 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.