UMPC’ing
When I started this blog, I was much more interested in the concept of Ultra Mobile Personal Computing than Ultra Mobile Personal Computers. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the current UMPC hardware options, but I know we are only beginning to see what is possible here! More than the hardware, I am super excited about the possibilities of mobile computing moving forward.
I think the industry is getting hung up on definitions at this point and I fear that it may stand in the way of the progress of the concept. I personally consider smart phones, iPhones, PDA’s, MID’s, UMPC’s, and even subnotebooks to be ultra mobile computing platforms. They all have their merits and their drawbacks and each has their place in the market. My concern is that people who are not as geeky as me may get confused with all of these categories and delay their adoption.
All they know is that they want to be able to be productive while they are in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. Do they care what segment it falls into? I don’t think so. I think the whole industry needs to focus more on computing in general than on specific hardware verticals. That’s my two cents, you want to throw in yours?
February 6th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
You have no idea. Remind me to tell you about the meetings I’ve been having recently. UMPC vs MID vs Whatever else. So confusing, and so pointless!
March 24th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Josh,
We both have different interests for UMPC but to me the problem is two basic flaws which prevent them from being adopted. One is the lack of a touch type keyboard. Mainstream users use and prefer that input type. All full windows OS uses that as the primary input. While geeks may think it cool to learn to write a new way with a pen or get corpal tunnel syndrome inputing with their thumbs most will not buy that type of device.
Secondly we want it small enough to fit into a large jacket pocket which would limit it to about 7.3″ x 4.25″ and as this as possible. Mainstream users do not think it socially acceptable to carry a “man purse” to carry a UMPC. Since you either do that or carry it in a briefcase etc. most would opt for a full blown laptop.
I do not care how you want to define it but the problem is they are all the wrong form factor and input. Geeks no negative bashing do focus on the internal specifications and while UMPC’s are not the fastest they are still ok but the size and lack of touch type keyboard kill them.
It is like you said about cars, you geeks are great at inventing the motor and the tech part of the car but geeks are not the right people to design the form factor of the car, color, interior, etc. that will attract people to buy it.