Microsoft has finally announced their new Origami product which seems to be something between a PDA and laptop. It's got a 7 inch screen and weights about 2 lbs. It runs a "modified version of Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC edition."
"Samsung positions the UMPC as a handheld organizer, an MP3 portable music player, a mobile television receiver, a games device and a notebook PC and believes it will be more successful than the full-sized tablet notebook PC with touch screen, launched four years ago."
This seems really dumb to me. As a Palm user for years, the important point was that it fit in a pocket so you could easily take it with you. This thing doesn't, so if you need a briefcase, you'll have your laptop anyway. And they say battery life is a whole 3 hours. Do they think commuters are going to start carrying one of these to watch stuff on a train? Do they think plane travelers are going to watch a movie on this instead of their laptops? If you're going to listen to music why carry one of these instead of a tiny iPod that has 4 times the battery life? With laptops having 15 inch screens who wants to use a spreadsheet on a tiny 7 inch screen? Dumb.
6 comments:
works for me - I'd like something bigger than a PDA that would fit in my purse.
As someone who works this looks good to me for a tool I can take to meetings for notes and use a a very light weight laptop. I would not commute every day with it until it ways under 1.25 pounds. It also looks great to vacation with. After taking pictures with my Digital SLR, it would be great to review them on a bigger screen. Since it is a PC it could even be used to control my camera for certain shots.
Remember this is the first generation of the product. My first PDA sucked compared to my current one.
Another interesting thing is you could by a couple of these things for your kids in the car and it would be cheaper then buying a factory installed DVD player.
Assuming you have a laptop in your office, I'm not sure I see bringing this to a meeting instead of the laptop or a pen and paper. I could take light notes on my palm but anything more was too slow. it wasn't a palm problem as much as speed and accuracy with a stylus, typing or writing was just much faster. The failure of tablet sales leads me to believe that hasn't changed yet.
I agree it would be good for downloading photos without a laptop. Particularly if you could connect it to a TV screen.
It's still more expensive then buying them each a portable DVD player and a PSP. And more likely to crash.
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/03/origami_or_micr.html
I think Jack Bauer would disagree with you, Howard. After having to view images of bad guys' hideouts on his Palm, and having to have conversations on his cell phone while it's in the middle of rebooting, those imaginary tablet PCs that his coworkers back at CTU get to carry around finally exist, so he can requisition one from his boss and be as cool as Chloe.
If this thing could do something equivalent to keeping a conversation going through a reboot, I'll buy one :)
FYI you never want to evalute photos on a regular TV
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