“Microsoft’s Origami Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) is looking like the company’s biggest flop since Windows ME. Fortunately for Microsoft, it’s not paying for this mistake, you are, if you buy one now. I tried out three of the UMPCs that Taiwan’s manufacturers were showing at Computex in Taipei, and talked to some of the people who worked on them and are now trying to sell them,” Simon Burns writes for The Inquirer.
“My impression of each of these mobile tablet PCs was the same: they’re a bundle of compromises. They try to fill a lot of different roles, but are second best at all of them. The manufacturers have made a valiant first effort, but Microsoft’s UMPC blueprint is not ready to be turned into a viable product,” Burns writes.
Full article detailing how UMPCs are crippled by severe problems with both hardware and software here.
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Related articles:
‘Origami’ Stumps CEOs in failed Jobs-style presentation – April 17, 2006
Origami: another Microsoft product in search of a market – April 04, 2006
I HOPE IT FAILS. FIRST?
oh yeah baby, i was first. yowza
Who would have thought that a product without any real definition or purpose would have failed miserably? If you’re gonna do something like that you need to design the hardware and tailor the OS to the purpose, not shoe-horn bigger products into smaller crappy ones.
Didn’t see this coming. Nope, I thought it was going to be the next great thing!
/sarcasm
I messed around with the Samsung UMPC at my local electronics store, and it was not hard to see that the concept would fail. The biggest problem: As “big” as the screen is, it’s simply too small to function as a computer. For watching movies or playing games it was great, but for getting any work done… naah. Forget about it.
MS, when they ‘proposed’ the product, knew it would fail. So in 5 years time when there really are such devices they’ll be able to say ‘we were first – at something’.
Their top blogger quit this weekend.
Their top engineers are leaving to go to Google and others.
Many of their top sales people are leaving to go to IBM and other places.
Mac Fervor – make it into action. Pounce now.
We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”
-Steve Jobs, MacWorld Expo, August 6, 1997
Moving on –
You’re absolutely right.
However, while Microsoft is down, there is no better time to take advantage of the situation.
Apple Bumaya!
Windows Vista. Microsoft’s biggest flop since Origami ultra-mobile PCs.
The Origami “concept” was nothing more than a “cool” Flash presentation.
The devices I looked at were Asustek’s R2, ECS’s H70, and AMtek’s T700.
Good to see that the rest of the world is learning Apple’s marketing lesson of choosing catchy names for your products!
like no one saw that coming… if they did not they are ignorant
Microsoft named them UMPC’s because a more accurately descriptive name would of got them in trouble with the USDA department of manure transportation.
I absolutely hate Microsoft, but when I heard about the Origami I thought they might have actually done something right. No, evidently not. Typical Microsoft.
Why would anybody want a MacBook when you could have one of these fine MS-powered Ultra Mobile Pieces of Crap.
And what will the early adopters do when MicroShaft stops supporting the UMPC-OS?
Will there be a UMPC version of Vista? Mmmmmm, that’s gonna be a good one……NOT!
“.. not shoe-horn bigger products into smaller crappy ones.”
Its more inline with trying to shove more MS shit into a smaller container.
Microsoft itself is the biggest flop of the millennium.
I am sure Apple engineers are looking carefully at the results of MS’s little failing experiment.
I am particularly interested in hearing if the “fingerprints messing up the screen” issue that many in March ’06 were lambasting the as-yet-nonexistant video iPod and Mac Tablet projects for has really been a problem for these UMPCs.
UI engineers and programmers need to write >a new OS< that is as easy to use as OS X, is compatible with OS X, but is more graphic oriented and easier to command in a small 800×600 space given few physical buttons.
Using the iPod scroll wheel and rolling menus idea is one step in that direction.
So while you are all poking fun at MS for making their mistakes, we must thank them for testing the market/user waters for us.
I took one look at the “ultra-mobiles” and knew they were going to be as successful as Portable Media Centers. Once a product is too big to fit in your pocket, you might as well make it a fully fledged notebook.
drmacnut, did you hear about that Apple patent that magnifies the area of screen that your finger passes over, to make selection easier? Sounds like a similar concept to Dock magnification.
You don’t know the history of colossal flops. I do.
schadenfreude
live it, love it
You gotta laugh if you read the whole article. One of the pictures showing off the screen has the all-too-familiar Windows Security popup saying: “Your Computer may be at risk. Please update your virus definitions. Click here to find out how.”
So basically, the form factor is wrong, the weight is wrong, the input mechanism is wrong and the operating system is wrong…