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mos6507's Blog - Origami


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I thought I'd comment on the Origami hype from Microsoft and Intel.

 

There are people out there who just don't "get" the UMPC. That doesn't mean these things won't sell. They just won't sell to them. Nevertheless, they love to talk like they know what's best for us.

 

I read Slashdot a lot and ironically a lot of people there, as technologically savvy as they may be, when it comes to talking about mobile devices, start waxing lyrical about their old B&W Palms with no wireless capability. Or they say they like carrying a dozen dedicated devices in every pocket vs. a multipurpose device. I have a hard time relating....

 

I've been waiting for a device like this to come around for a long time. I was once given a laptop by my employers and I wound up returning it. Why? Because it was bulky and heavy. It wasn't something I wanted to casually carry around unless I knew for a fact I had to get some work done. If you are able to make a laptop small enough, then you can justify carrying it around everywhere. However, if you make it the size of a PDA or smaller, then the screen is no longer useable. So I think the form-factor of the UMPC is an okay compromise.

 

Nevertheless, people will whine and complain. It's too big, it's too small, whatever.

 

Why has it taken this long? Technology is part of it, but also misguided business sense.

 

History is littered with computer hardware makers chasing niche markets. With a niche market, your corporate clients, you can charge whatever you want because real people aren't paying. But your volume isn't there. Traditionally, PDAs and, more recently, tablets, have been positioned exclusively for these niche markets rather than the mainstream consumer.

 

Wasn't it a couple years back that Jobs said that it was the "year of the laptop"?? He didn't just mean vertical markets. He meant mainstream.

 

Laptops are a hotter hardware segment than desktops.

 

Meanwhile, there are TOO MANY different portable devices that have almost arbitrarily limited functionality. Take a GPS device. It's really a WINCE box, but with certain features disabled. Same deal with PMPs or game machines (like the PSP or even GP2X).

 

In order for a PMP to be able to render video effectively it pretty much has to have enough CPU muscle to run a decent OS anyway, but when you plunk down your $500 all you get is a video player and that's it.

 

I know a lot of people like to talk about how if you make something that just does one thing, it's going to automatically be better. I don't buy it, otherwise nobody would use general purpose computers to begin with. Every software application we want to run would require its own single-purpose computer. That would be a step back in the desktop domain, and there is no reason to think differently with mobile computing.

 

So I think the UMPC does in fact represent the singularity-point of mobile computing.

 

For those who think the UMPC won't be an iPod killer, remember, a full XP install can just run full-blown Itunes, which has a lot more fuctionality than the iPod interface. No more DRM compatibility issues. No more syncing either if you want to just use that box as your main music library. And no more video transcoding. You can run the full MPEG4 codecs. No requirement that it be a particular resolution or "Simple Profile".

 

The trick here is execution, and that's where things are lagging.

 

I think that some changes may need to take place within XP or Vista to make it scale down to portable devices better. I also think that more flash memory should be used as a substitute for hard drives, and the software should do a better job of deciding when to buffer and when to spin up the drive. MP3 players do a pretty good job of this. All media players on Windows should also.

 

Processors must be chosen which are powerful enough for media playing but no more. There is a sweet spot to hit after which you are just sucking battery life for no real gain. There may be ways to offload certain tasks to custom hardware so that the CPU can run slower. I just don't think it's been completely optimized yet.

 

And then there is Apple. With OSX on Intel now, they can get into the game too. They filed patents for multi-touch technology. With Apple, sometimes they innovate, and other times they seem to wait around and wait around forever before they enter the ring only after being dragged kicking and screaming (like video on the iPod or the "headless mac").

 

An OSX UMPC could be the endgame of the iPod evolution if Jobs wants to play it that way. Jobs has been hoping for this "halo effect" of iPod users becoming OSX users and I don't think it's happening fast enough, despite the Mac Mini. Slowly abandoning the iPod OS in favor of an OSX UMPC "iPod" would be the perfect way to convert every iPod user into a MAC user. Is it an iPod at that point or a shrunken iBook with a touchscreen? Does it matter?

 

Of course, the problem, especially for Apple, is pricepoint.

 

Quality laptops cost big money. And the smaller the device, usually the more expensive it is.

 

Apple has been reluctant to charge mainstream prices for its hardware. If the UMPC eventually breaks the $500 barrier, I wouldn't expect an offering from Apple to be any less than $750 or $800. A $500 device might still be considered a consumer electronics gadget. But beyond that, it's considered a laptop, something to be coddled, something a little less than casual. Not as much of an impulse buy.

 

And that's why the status quo is what it is. That's why when you pick up a $500 dell laptop you get something bulky and underpowered, and the Fujitsu P1510 starts at $1,400 and the OQO is around $2,000.

 

Intel has been focusing on packing more and more silicon into their CPUs with little regard for power consumption for too long. My PIV is 2.4ghz and about two years old. Clockspeeds aren't getting much faster than they already are. That's why they are going dual-core. What Intel now has to do is focus on taking new fabrication methods and applying it to deliberately simplified CPUs that don't have to be bleeding edge but are merely "good enough" for these UMPCs. By good enough I mean being able to do reasonably good video conferencing and no stuttering on h.264 playback of full res video. But it doesn't have to run the latest games at a slick framerate. Unfortunately, with x86, a lot of legacy has to be there for backwards compatibility vs. something like an ARM architecture, but there is no getting around that.

 

So I'm pretty impatient because I want to see a device like this come out that is $500 and with an 8-hour battery life. It looks like it might be a couple years before that's even a possibility.

 

 

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...&showentry=1334

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