This is already old news in tech circles and the tech section of the blogosphere. Once referred to as “Origami”, Samsung, Asus, Founder, and others showed off their now-named Ultra Mobile PCs at CeBit early last week. It turns out that these UMPCs are little more than WinXP Tablet-based notebooks in a small form factor.
Rather than reiterate what others have said about it, I’ll link you to Engadget’s coverage of the devices and instead talk about what I think.
Most of the comments on various sites and blogs, as well as the opinions of most of my friends, state that these UMPCs will be utterly useless. Without a real market to sell them to, it is destined for failure. PDAs are more portable as are portable media centers and digital audio players, and they all offer better battery life. The UMPCs are not that much smaller than today’s ultraportable notebooks and tablets. For each function a UMPC could serve, there is another device that accomplishes that one task better.
While I too have a very hard time seeing who the UMPC is for, I would certainly be able to make use of it. Watching videos on the bus, surfing the web on the couch, updating the blog in bed, IMing on the can, and more. Although there are a number of devices that can accomplish any one of these very same tasks more effectively, a UMPC wraps up all this functionality into a pretty small package. It also eliminates the need for syncing or dealing with specialized software. For example, I wouldn’t have to sync my Outlook contacts to my PDA anymore, nor would I need to deal with the anemic Microsoft Money for Pocket PC anymore.
I’m also excited about the lack of keyboard and mouse. The various input methods that work with a UMPC, including a stylus, the neat software keyboard, and my index finger, should be more than enough to replace the standard input devices.
There are several more reasons that I could list here, but this entry could easily expand to three pages worth of text. I’ve added the UMPC to my wishlist. I like the Samsung and Asus ones. Hopefully, they’ll up that awful battery life (2.5 hours, yuck) and launch it at a decent price point ($500-$700). I must admit that I’m really doubting a price that low. A more realistic price would be around $1200, which is a little too high for me.
Here are a few videos of UMPCs in action:
