Microsoft Origami Unfolds 469
College Student writes "Microsoft has officially unveiled 'Origami', a paperback-book sized portable hybrid (laptop & PDA). From article: 'The new machines will connect wirelessly to the Internet and carry full-sized hard drives, but they are not intended to replace current PCs....The new PCs are expected to sell for between $599 to $999, but Microsoft said it is possible to sell one for $500 if the manufacturer selects components carefully.'" More details at the official Microsoft site, and via Channel 9 a look at the system with the UMPC general manager.
Nokia 770 (Score:4, Insightful)
Only more expensive...
Tablet PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Not this again (Score:5, Insightful)
Hype (Score:4, Insightful)
more pics etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
another MS hardware failure, to be sure
not Microsoft hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)
Origami with (Score:5, Insightful)
no particular use
no particular target client
no particular chance of success
origami (ôr'-gä'm) pronunciation
n., pl. -mis.
2. A decorative object made by folding paper.
a decorative object...ohhh..i get it now..
A lot of hype for nothing (Score:1, Insightful)
Its targeted towards the business market. When was the last time you saw someone from Wall Street being addicted to Halo?.
And take a look at the price. With that price, i would rather buy a MotoRazor and supplement it with a Palm LifeDrive.
Re:A few questions: (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt he would too since this thing runs Windows XP [microsoft.com]
Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Operating system : Windows XP.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A few questions: (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, they indicated that it will slot in between cell-phones and notebooks, and be easier to pop into a purse or backpack. The real question is: Does that slot exist?
In additon to the obvious music and movie applicatons, I also wonder how many companies will port their games to it. Could this also be MS's entry into the "Game Boy" market?
You want intelligent design here, not evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
"Microsoft hopes the computer makers will make great UMPCs for the market." - B. Gates
"Let the market drive the design of these devices" - B. Gates
Do you see the evolution here? Let the market drive the improvements. Hands off the suppliers of these devices. Let them follow whatever pattern works. (Maybe they will get lucky...)
But it is the customer who suffers, right? People buy the newest things running Windows. What do they get? Beta devices. Buggy. Feature poor. Scant battery life. Rotten interface. Such a great way to build a world-class device that everyone desires, isn't it?
Now look at Intelligent Design in consumer computing. Look at anything made by Apple.
Most likely, you will find that any product made by Apple is of excellent design right out of the box. There is no throwing of the standards out to the market and hoping something intelligent immerges. Apple takes control of the hardware design themselves, and it is not released to the consumer until it is perfect, and with an intuitive human interface that work flawlessly. And what the consumer gets are jewel-like Nanos, glittering iPods, and awesome, elegant iMacs, MacBook Pros and Towers. Things anyone would be pleased to carry or place in their homes of offices.
Besides this, there is no hopeful evolution of Apple's software either. Instead, the software adds real value to the excellent hardware, and most of it is absolutely free. And if it is not free, it is well worth investing in, for the small amount that it costs. Nobody has software like Apple's software - Tiger OS X, iLife,
Apple computers and iPods reflect intelligence in their design of both the hardware and software.
Let's just say, that in comparison to all the Windows devices out there, it is like the difference between a man and a monkey.
So, why choose chancy evolution in your computing over intelligent design?
Don't monkey around. Get a Mac. It is the intelligent choice.
Regards,
Roger Born
"Sorry. No Refunds"
Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you live in Sudan or somewhere else fun like that, for you the answer is "never."
Re:Tablet PC (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A few questions: (Score:5, Insightful)
-It's basically a big PDA at a time when the PDA market is on it's death bead [zdnet.com.au]: check
-It's not a phone at a time when the smartphone market is growing rapidly [instat.com]: check
Either Microsoft knows something nobody else does, they're just playing a niche for incrimental revenue, or, well, I don't know. I don't get it.
TW
Agree 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, this may serve a neiche of people who want something smalelr and cheaper than a laptop but more powerful than a PDA, but how large is that neiche? PDAs and smartphones are getting better all the time, and like the parent said, if it is bigger than a PDA it might as well be a small laptop.
Re:Video? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't this just an Oqo? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in (Score:5, Insightful)
This is something I just can't wrap my head around. The more they sell, the cheaper they are to make. There are thousands of rural/poor school districts in the U.S. that would LOVE to get their hands on semi-rugged, simple, cheap laptops and give one to each student. I guess because we don't live in Africa the fact that we don't have the money to provide technology to our students doesn't matter.
They could sell tens of millions of those in the U.S. and make the units even more affordable in places like Sudan (mark them up to $150 here if you want, then it only costs $50 to put on in the hands of an African student).
Watch me be a hypocrite (Score:5, Insightful)
Here goes: This thing is going to flop.
Here are the reasons why:
(1) It fits into the space between laptops and phones, the same place PDAs are struggling in. They will have to to steal market share from a declining market segment.
(2) Portable => form factor is critical && the form factor == Newton && Newton == marketing flop.
(3) The lowest conceivable selling price is equal to the highest conceivable buying price.
(4) Challenge the iPod? With something this big? Are they nuts?
I am a well known non-believer in convergence as a user concept, but as a marketing concept it's a winner. We'll probably end up with converged devices and laptops pincering any product category in between to death.
What this means is that if there are markets for intermediate form factors such as PDAs and small tablets, they will have to be cheap and as non-converged as can be -- they'll have to be built around a "killer app" for a some market segment. That probably means shirt pocket organizers in the sub $50 range, hand held gaming in the sub $100 range. These may accrete certain PDA like functions as a kind of "freebie", the way even rudimentary non-converged phones have calendars and alarms, but they aren't going to be the deal closers for the buyers.
Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the main lessons you learn in industrial design. It really doesn't matter how much functionality you can pack into a widget, or even how cheap (for some reasonable value of cheap) you can make the widget, if your target user base can't make proper use of it.
Many in the technology industry just don't "get it". Apple is starting down the right track, but even some of their stuff is mind-bogglingly unintuitive. And attitudes like yours is so very prevalent among the engineering divisions. "We have 2x the feature set they do at 80 percent of their price! Why isn't our product selling?"
It is really time that human interface design gets a bit more attention.
Re:more pics etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently I use a pencil and paper, but I like to archive any documents related to customer service and change requests, so I end up either A) typing up my notes, or B) scanning in pencil drawings. Neither is much fun. I've toyed with OneNote, but it's an application looking for a home. I think this device will be it.
I could buy a tablet PC, but they're all large-ish, expensive, and get pretty hot. I need something smaller, with instant on, and decent battery life. I have a DC/AC inverter in my car that's always plugged in, so charging on the go isn't really a problem. I just need a device that fits these criteria.
Anyone else out there in my position?
PS - I'm also hoping that this has the option to run in portrait mode, as well as landscape. Any word on that?
Re:This is new? Remember QQO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nokia 770 (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes another dismal failure. (Score:2, Insightful)
My advice to the backers of this concept is to focus companies into putting research dollars in more efficient processors and longer lasting batteries on the hardware side. On the software side, APPLICATION developers must be provided with UI standards to reflect pen-based input. I just wished people inside the company listened.
Re:Tablet PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it, after every product release, someone says "is this it? I thought it would be more considering the hype".
What, do you actually fall for the corporate hype?
No product lives up to the hype, hence the word HYPE.
I'm not sure exactly what product you are waiting for but I have bad news - it's never coming. Except for the beer fetching robot, that really is coming.
Re:You want intelligent design here, not evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
The apple powerbook was the second. Apple came out wiht multimedia systems yeras before pc's did and its laptops came up with innovative things like touchpads and trackballs first.
Apple computers are designed for people and not high end users. Today I feel they are real artsy and designed to look cool but its all show. THe Ipod was a great idea too but mp3 players were on the market before. They just never really took off.
I purchased my ipod mini mainly because of Itunes. It had the largest collection of music around. MusicMatch and others are catching up with the amount of titles carried so its kind of mute today.
WIndows no longer is the piece of crap it was. Its expensive and proprietary but so is apple now.
I think Apple deserves credit for its past acomplishments but I would liek to see something innovative and new again. Not something artistic and nice to look at.
It's a Newton! (Score:5, Insightful)
- Wireless, etc. (just like Newton 2100 these days)
- Does everything a PC does (Newton surfed web, did email, ran webserver, word processing, spreadsheets, databases)
The device looks almost like a Newton sitting in the lady's hands, if you take a step back. Folks, this is the 2006 version of the 1996 Newton 2100 that everyone makes fun of Apple for. Of course, it won't be as good, because part of what made the Newton amazing was Newton OS, which is still one of the best OSes I've ever had the pleasure of using.
Re:Tablet PC (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Sure, they didn't take over the laptop world, but the product is still out there and a lot of people are still buying them and using them. That's a far cry from failure.
Re:Nokia 770 (Score:5, Insightful)
* It runs a real operating system
* It has a processor that is faster by at least five times
* It has a real display
* It has a lot of software freely available
This, as a portable computer, is far more capable than a Newton. As a PDA, the Newton wins. By a hair.
Re:It's a Newton! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nokia 770 (Score:3, Insightful)
There's at least one MAJOR difference Origami is running some Windows version and Nokia 770 is running (Debian based) Maemo! Open source
Yup.
In other words, the average chap wouldn't have to learn a new UI with Origami.
Also more existing software would work on it.
Re:Tablet PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it, after every product release, someone says "is this it? I thought it would be more considering the hype". What, do you actually fall for the corporate hype? No product lives up to the hype, hence the word HYPE.Why is it, after every product release, someone says "is this it? I thought it would be more considering the hype". What, do you actually fall for the corporate hype? No product lives up to the hype, hence the word HYPE.
You can be disappointed without being gullible. I saw the initial "commercial" for the Origami back a few weeks ago, and what THAT showed was actually pretty cool. This, however, is very different from what was shown there but also pretty uninteresting.
I like technology, so even though I have next to no respect for Microsoft I nonetheless was interested. I'm also disappointed that this thing has turned out to be so banal. It has nothing to do with gullibility.
2-3 Hours? (Score:2, Insightful)
Post new information when someone develops an OS+interface that may actually be efficient on UMPC. Until then, I'm not interested
Re:A few questions: (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, for me the advantage of Linux-based devices is that I don't have to shell out $$$ for software, as I can port / adapt / write my own where necessary.
Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tablet PC (Score:1, Insightful)
And then I woke up and it was all a dream.
A couple of million units shipped is nothing. No one wanted them. The Tablet PC has effectivly failed in the market. The Tablet PC and the Itaniuam share some common bonds; they have found a small niche of users, the people behind them will spend millions telling you how great they are, but they never lived up to the original market hype and sales projections.
Tablet PC: failure.
[1]: Actually, they have small handheld devices like the Tortoise 7500 if they have anything at all.
[2]: Actually, they're also using small handheld devices like the Tortoise.
this is not the device you are looking for (Score:3, Insightful)
from the article: the new devices, which will have battery life of about three hours
This is not your father's Palm Pilot (or Newton). It won't have "instant on", because it has a 3 hour battery life, and when you turn it on, you will have to wait for it to boot Windows.
In other news, "New" is not necessarily the same as "Improved".
Doug Moen
Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in (Score:3, Insightful)
To an extent, since volume does drive down price but there is a hard wall at which prices are not going to go below on things like display, battery, CPU and RAM. I imagine the touchscreen costs quite a bit more than a simple LCD and keyboard.
What you are looking for is really Negorponte's $100 laptop. If it survives and gets rolling, which is still a big if, I'm sure they can sell it to low income American's not just Africans and Asians. They aren't targeting Americans because even poor rural American's are less in need than the extremely poor, isolated and at risk children in Africa and parts of Asia.
Negroponte designed their machine from the ground up to achieve the lowest cost possible. Microsoft and its partners did not on this. This device is designed for road warriors with a lot of money to burn. I wish them luck, well not really, but has been already belabored here, this thing is hitting an already known bad bad market niche, its too big, too little and too expensive all at the same time. I really hope they hardened the screen so it doesn't get scratched trashed by carrying it around without a cover.
Uncle Bill also wants his cut out of this and that alone pushes the price out of the range you are looking for, which is why Negroponte didn't use Windows on his $100 laptop.
Two friggin' pounds? (Score:3, Insightful)
This thing weighs two pounds, is absolutely huge, and apparently doesn't have the day-long battery life people were hyping (nor, obviously, the ONE pound weight).
I bet this could make a dent in the retail sector, replacing tablet PCs (Woo woo! Cheaper devices, less profit!); but there's no way anyone but a few dedicated MS fans will be lugging these around. MS is totally targeting the wrong sector.
Re:A few questions: (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly an Origami device extends the functionality of the products that are hot (bluetooth cellphones with internet capability). Who the hell wants to surf the internet on a phone? Who the hell thinks it is ideal to show their friends their digital photo album on a tiny iPod screen? Who wants to lug around a big laptop bag with them everywhere they go?
This device is a perfect addition to somebody who doesn't need to do much more than surf the Internet and check email. But it is also perfect for anybody who already has a main computer but needs something that is the size of a small tablet and has full XP functionality that they can easily and comfortably take with them to a coffee shop, meetings or on an airplane.
I've been wanting a device in exactly this form factor for years. I can't wait till they hit the stores!!!
Re:Nokia 770 (Score:1, Insightful)
What you want is a laptop. The 770 on the other hand is perfect for browsing your email at your local coffee shop.
Re:A few questions: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The nokia 770 runs linux though! (Score:2, Insightful)
On the plus side, it's a USB host, so you can get a thumb drive or a battery powered USB hub and a 1.8" USB hard drive, but it's a little less portable with all that random stuff handing off it.
Re:A few questions: (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, if you look on MSDN the whole Windows Mobile SDK is available for download, all you have to do is some reserach to learn how to write WM applications. It's almost identical to writing desktop applications but not all of the desktop features are supported. Seriously, think about it, if Windows CE/Windows Mobile supported all of the same desktop features, wouldn't it be Windows XP? These devices have 200-300mhz processors, 32-64meg of ram, and no hard disk, there's only so much space to work with.
Origami looks cool, it would be nice to have a full desktop system readily available. But, i still can't imagine myself carrying around a paperback book all the time, it's still too big for me. My Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition is actually a little bigger than i honestly like becuase it doesn't quite fit in my pocket comfortably. I had a Windows Mobile smartphone and with it syncing over the air to my exchange box i found i couldn't live without it, and it was still small enough to fit in my pocket comfortably.
the real problem is battery life (Score:5, Insightful)
Until they can get all-day battery life it's just not interesting to me. By "all day" I mean 8-hours with moderate use as a BARE minimum, and I'd really want something more like 12-16. It should be as portable battery-wise as cell phones were when they took off or portable players are when they took off. Otherwise it's just not genuinely portable.
-stormin
Re:more pics etc. (Score:4, Insightful)
This new Tablet PC device is uncomfortably sized between a small PDA and a small laptop, so it will be compared with both. If I want portable computing, I'll take a MacBook Pro. If I want ultramobile computing, I'll get a Blackberry. There's not much here to make Origami devices stand out from those two extremes.
Why Microsoft is doing this (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay now, it should be pretty obvious to everybody that this is fundamentally a defensive move by Microsoft.
- They've got the anticipatory buzz from the $100 laptop project hemming them in on one side, with early adopters (including me) saying "I've got to get me one of those and I'll gladly pay twice or three times the hundred dollar price".
- On the other hand they've got existing smart phones and increasingly funtional "super"mp3players like the newest iPods that are becoming more multifunction by the year and are now, effectively, PDAs.
- And internet access all over the place now, including devices integrated into seatbacks of high end air carriers along with web-based storage and more and more enterprise apps running on web-based apps anyway.
- Not to mention the tripling or quadrupling of the percentage of hardcore coders and sysadmins who now carry Mac OS laptops. Used to be that maybe one in twenty true geeks at, say, a UNIX conference had Mac OS devices. Now it's what, twenty percent? Twenty-five?
- And, the eight hundred pound gorilla here, all the game platforms BUT MICROSOFT now have mobile devices that are kicking ass and taking names, not to mention companies like Zodiac doing explicitly multipurpose gaming/pda devices.
So what does this add up to for Microsoft? It means high end business users, teens, early adopters, and damn near every highly desirable market is full of people asking themselves the question: "why should I carry my windows box with me?"
And even harsher, some are asking "Do i need a Windows box at all?"
So MS needs an answer to that question. Of course they've been coming out with some mobile platform model every two years or so for almost twenty years, most of which are flat out vaporware or simply garbage. And if this were about effective mobile devices that professionals are demanding, well, hell, there were excellent solutions available for that in 1993 [slashdot.org].
Of course, history is full of people doing the right thing for the wrong reason and maybe it doesn't matter why MS has brought this about (and make no mistake, this is their baby) if the results are good.
Except that it doesn't work that way in the computer world. If the driver is going the wrong way it doesn't matter how admirable the bus is. MS has long since been shown to retain iron control over their projects and if this is simply yet another round of a semi-vaporware (notice the paucity of shipping devices) meant primarily to make people less certain that they should buy nonMS devices, then MS will, as always, run this as a cynical bit of theatre, with cool anouncements vastly overshadowing actual shipping devices and quiet sabotage of any project that threatans it.
Despite his statements to the contrary, Otto Burkes was chosen to run this project, at least in part, precisely because his credentials would assist in FUD. Mark my words, eventually internal MS documents will come out that reveal that MS higher-ups were very concerned about the viability of this device in reality and as perceived as a counter to the mobile game platforms.
In every sense, Microsoft is trying to game us. After thirty years of deception and documented sabotage, we should know better than to fall for it.
And lastly, is anybody but me noticing the absurd factor that the ONLY reason this device is so heavy/clunky/expensive/battery-hogging is because MS apps and OSes are such resource hogs? Psions and other such devices have done just fine at all of the business tasks needed with a batttery life measured in days, not hours. For that matter, in terms of the features actually used, MS Office itself, circa, say, 1995 should be able to work just fine on a low power ARM or equivalent. I love that the interviewer asks "can you run Photoshop?" I run Photoshop all the time on a 300MHz machine with 198 Mgs of RAM w
Re:Sell if for $100 and I'm in (Score:4, Insightful)
They could sell tens of millions of those in the U.S. and make the units even more affordable in places like Sudan (mark them up to $150 here if you want, then it only costs $50 to put on in the hands of an African student).
When I was in Kenya in the summer of 1990 building a medical clinic in the town of Shiru (2-3 hrs East on the Kinshaha Hwy from Kisumu) I had the opportunity to meet many of the people in the area naturally.
They were all smart, and as well educated as you might expect people in that area to be, in fact, I was quite impressed with their level of education. However, in the area where I was, power was not common. There was a grand total of 3 light fixtures in the two medical clinic buildings. Everything else was done with dirty kerosene home made lamps (made out of garbage, very impressive improvisation).
The children there generally owned one set of clothes (often their Scouting uniform - which had no badges or any other "bling" of any kind). They had no pens, no pencils, and certanly no paper. In fact, I understand that being able to give most third world children pens or pencils is often a wonderful gift.
Nobody owned shoes, although running is a popular pastime. The kids played soccer, and since they could not even afford a soccer ball (I really wish we had brought some, if you go to Kenya, bring some balls *AND* a pump for the children, they will love you for it) they made their soccer balls out of woven strands of some kind of grass or reeds. Very well done, I know I could not do it.
There was no source of clean water, in fact, we did not have filtration for ourselves and had to boil everything, even then we did get some contaminated water, and nearly every North American in the group fell sick for over a week. These people drink water that is contaminated with human waste and many parasites because they have no other options.
The nearest phone was in Kisumu. (That may have changed now...)
And this tea plantation/village was right on the Kinsasha highway.
If these children got laptops/pdas/newtons for "education" they would sell them (or more likely have them stolen) and buy their families things - like better food, medicine for diseases, clothes, improvements on their houses, or even pens pencils and paper for schoolwork.
People have been getting along without laptops in school for a very long time, they are not required for education. In fact, they are not really required for any NEED that I know of. People in third world countries have needs that need to be met before they can begin to rely on "Toys" like laptops.
They could use more pens and paper first, and clean water, better homes, clothes and medical care first IMO.
Re:A few questions: (Score:2, Insightful)
"Why would anybody want that thing?"
"It's such a terrible size! It's too big to fit in your pocket, and if I really wanted to make a call, I could just go to one of a billion phone booths."
"Once again, they've created a product that looks like ass."
"Please... change my life? It's just a phone, talk about over hyped."
"The quality is so much worse than a land line."
"The battery life is terrible!"
"Maybe it if it was a lot cheaper, but at that price range, come on."
"The interface is terrible."
"Looks like it'll only really appeal to a niche market."
"Anyone who has used buttons will know that you'll be constantly breaking that keypad."
"Just another example of a company trying to jump in and create a need that doesn't exist."
This is still front lines, cutting edge gadgetry here, which is going to create a whole new market, not just exploit an existing one. PDAs failed because they were a whole new paradigm
"I can't use my normal applications? What applications can I use?"
This is, your normal computer, that sits on your desk, now sitting in your hand. Everything you do day in and day out is possible on this thing. But not just, anything is possible, everything you already do on your pc is possible on this thing. Only now it's finally a size that can be whipped out and put away quickly. Something that even tablet PCs are fighting, they're still trouble to take out and put away. Imagine your desktop, in your hand, on the street, available at a moments notice. Sign me up... for version 2.0