You may have already seen the News.com story. I have read the story and a lot of the comments on the story on other websites over and over again to make sense. Whole page says two things: Probably new UMPCs will “unfold” with Windows Vista and Microsoft wanted lower prices with first generation. OK, so what? Will new UMPCs with Vista be cheaper? Will they have different hardware? Anything different other than Vista? Story doesn’t say anything.
About the “Microsoft wants lower priced UMPCs” thing. Everybody wants lower priced UMPCs. But everybody wants to go to the moon too : It may be easily done in the next century, but not yet. This is true for UMPCs too. (Not for a century of course) Look at Tabletkiosk eo : Even with Via processors, chipset and only 256 MB RAM, (and defective parts :D) they can sell at only 900$. Yes, they must be profiting, but i don’t think it will be profitable at 700$ - maybe even at 800$.
And about the UMPCs with Vista : All reviewers say the recent UMPCs are not very speedy. UMPCs with C7 processors even slower. And 900$ eo’s have only 256 MB RAM, and others have mostly 512 MB. Vista Beta testers don’t like Vista on 512 MB RAM PCs. Kevin Tofel installed Beta 2 on Samsung Q1 and says XP is faster. Yes, newer drivers and last version will be faster, but not as fast as XP. And already most say UMPCs are not fast.
Vistagami’s will come mostly with 1 GB RAM - another price bump. And to be able to get good speeds, you need a faster processor: But hey, there is no such a thing! Core Solo is not much different from Pentium M. (and they are more expensive) If you go Core Duo, you will need a gas tank for energy.
And for publicity, do you think Vistagami’s will make enough buzz in the shadow of a new, very good OS: long-waited Vista if they will debut together?
Don’t hesistate to comment or discuss, i want to get other perspectives on these.
