UMPC Site

Layne Heiny of UMPC Buzz wrote a good and entertaining article about pockets. (:D) (it is a bit related to UMPCs too)

…When did I miss that UMPCs were supposed to be pocketable? Who raised that expectation? Yeah.. Let me repeat that: Who originated the idea that the UMPC systems were pocketable? Does this matter? Maybe the real question is: Do you put things in your pocket anyway?…

UMPC means “carriable” and “carriable” means to “pocketable” to most. But i believe people won’t mind carrying little bags etc. for UMPCs. People buying UMPCs will have already thought about it and will carry them. UMPCs are an option to carrying (not pocket-ing) big,bulky laptops, not an alternative to cell phones.

New software called Origamicar has been in development. It is a front end based on Windows Media Player. It has a nice interface and very nice for UMPC’s etc., but softwares like this are around for years , like Frodoplayer , Centrafuse, Road Runner and lots of others. The other site editors seemed to be a little exaggerating.

FCC Approved Samsung Q1. This means it will be in US. And two good manuals for it have surfaced.(They are very good written, worth looking (part1 and part2)

(via Engadget)

Tabletkiosk officially announced eo UMPC V7110 in two colors and two configurations for each. 899$ - with 256 MB RAM 30 GB HDD and 999$ - with 512 MB RAM 40 GB HDD. They are in preorder now with optional desk stand, 6-cell extended battery 4-hours (standard 3-cell 2.5 hours) and an airplane / car charger. They begin shipping in the last week of April 2006.

Press Release Preorder

After Japanese models, Korean Daewoo Lucoms announced a new UMPC based on Founder’s.

As you may have read about lots of places (like this: UMPC will destroy PSP) UMPC is thought to be an obvious Psp killer. I believe neither Microsoft or Intel or manufacturers think that. Yes, you can play Much more better games and there is much much more games on UMPC, and PSP’s other “major” futures like multimedia, browsing etc. are much better on UMPC, but that is not the point. They are different catagories. We all have computers and computers have the best games comparing to the consoles (not including Halo 2 :D) but faster and better computers didn’t stop PS1 and PS2 selling. PS2 can play movies, browse the internet too but they are not its major selling points. Sure UMPC will make people say “why i’m torturing myself with this small-displayed, hardly multimedia and browsing capable thing with movies only play on it and have no hard disk drive instead of a nice UMPC?” and a lot of people will buy UMPC instead of PSP, but again people bought PS2 (for lots of reasons) and UMPC will not be able to “kill” PSP, but it sure will injure it badly. (and although PSP can’t fit a pocket, it is much more smaller)
And same thing of course applies to iPod too.

Founder UMPC Video
Samsung Q1 is in Pre-Order now for £799.99 (~1400$)
Fuss about Toshiba’s non-exisiting UMPC goes on (like they are discovering everything all over agaiin)
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Steven “fyiguy” Hughes had an opportunity to get some questions answered from Otto Berkes, general manager of the Mobile Platforms Division at Microsoft Corp.

Steve : Who is the target user? Many people are confused at what the market target is. Will the UMPC be replacing the Portable Media Center, Tablet PC, Windows Media Center, Windows Mobile device, etc or will it be a compliment to those devices?
Otto : While we feel that UMPCs will eventually be of great use to a number of different audiences, we anticipate the strongest interest off the bat from media and technology enthusiasts and early technology adopters. UMPCs do not compete with either Tablet PCs or Windows Mobile devices. The UMPC is part of Microsoft’s vision of expanding its mobile Windows PC offerings while incorporating mature features from Tablet PCs in a broader range of PCs. In addition, the UMPC is a great complement to Windows Mobile phones, which can be used as Bluetooth modems to enable a wireless wide area network (WWAN) scenario for constant Internet connectivity. The UMPC is also a great complement to other Windows PCs, such as Tablet PCs or Media Center PCs. Files can be easily synchronized using USB drives or products such as Microsoft FolderShare.

Read the Entire Interview

The mysterious Origami project was unfolded earlier this month, but what about all the time it was developing?

There is a series of blog posts at Origami Project Team Blog that detail the history:
History of Origami by Otto - Part 1
History of Origami by Otto - Part 2
History of Origami by Otto - Part 3
History of Origami by Otto - Part 4
History of Origami by Otto - Part 5

UMPC Buzz has three good UMPC photos (yeah, just three)
Otto Berkes (general manager of the Mobile Platforms Division at Microsoft) answered some questions about UMPC (i would like to meet this guy)
Steve Jobs sells Apple stock (to buy UMPCs? but they are not that pricey :D)
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