Why all the hype over the massively underwhelming Origami thing, when OQO did it first, and better it seems, and no one seemed to care much. Maybe some other people beat OQO to it too, when I wasn’t paying attention, I don’t know.

Hmm…

- JonYo

Also, the Pocket PC platform runs special purpose optimized software, including things like a frequency analyzer, metronome, chord dictionary, stereo CD quality recorder, VNC, simple sequencers, etc. The major limitation of the PPC is the lack of floating point operations. These low power UMPCs are much more advanced than the PPC.

A UMPC won’t run NI Komplete, but with optimized software built for low power chips and a touchable user interface, it could be a really useful tool. I point this out because even with VNC, a UMPC will be more efficient of the main sequencer program has an optimized touchscreen interface.

I’m interested in the UMPC for work related reasons, but one of the first things I’m going to do with one is load ASIO4ALL and see how it does with simple programs like Adobe Audition.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/03/09/handsonq1/index.php?lsrc=mwrss

And yes, it is creating a stir among Mac users. Note, though, the price: US$1199? That’s even higher than expected. Sure, prices may come down, but recall that releasing the original tablet PC before it was ready killed what could have been some great buzz.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1936138,00.asp

The key component seems to be not size, but interface, and Origami doesn’t go far enough. The touchscreen is what could seal the deal. If you think about it, the success of the Treo/Blackberry category is rethinking the phone with thumb-friendly keyboards. Yes, it looks like a QWERTY, but what it’s fundamentally about is a one-fingered interface. If someone can land the touchscreen interface, they can own this market — and not just in Asia.

This is an incredibly difficult time to *add* a product category, with tablets, laptops, desktops, mini-desktops, home entertainment desktops, cell phones, media phones, music phones, smart phones, GPS phones, PDAs, smart PDAs, PDA phones, PDA music phones, portable gaming systems, slightly smaller portable gaming systems . . . I’ll stop. I’m not holding up Apple as an example of how to do everything. If anything, Apple’s history has been marked with making the mistake of trying to lay “stakes in the ground” before the market and product was ready — Newton and the business problems with the original Macintosh come to mind. But I think the ball is in Microsoft’s and Apple’s courts to create a more compelling interface in the software itself. That’s what will drive a new platform. We’ve got lots of fantastic, really cool form factors, this being one of them. If you can innovate in software, you really could change the way people use mobile tech.

Thanks for the terrific feedback and debate here; this does really make me think about these problems differently. And it’s particularly cool that a device starts lively discussion and disagreement! (Thanks for letting me think through this out loud, and get challenged on my own sometimes limited perspective!)

I think it helps to think of Origami/UMPC as a sort of like the stakes they pound in the ground before they build a house.

That the initial products may not meet actually fit within those stakes is not that important. They’ve set those parameters up as an objective. It’s also not that important that those stakes in the ground don’t very well match what you or I want from a tablet. The point that’s important is that they are defining broader objectives for Tablet computers.

Those objectives now include consumers, they include increased portability, they include lower price points. Those are all good. Hopefully you’ll see the market embrace some set of those objectives to drive the development of UMPCs and Tablets in directions that overlap our needs for MIDI sequencing etc.

Some of those markets may not be here in the US. The primary driving market for ultralight laptops has been Japan. Most ultralight models are not even sold in the US. Likewise, it’s very likely UMPC will take off in China or elsewhere among a completely different demographic. But all that contributes to the engine that drives the technology forward, reduces costs and improves efficiency and performance.

Price is just one of those objectives, and it’s just gauged by cost. Prices come down. Tablet PCs were $3000 when they were introduced a couple years ago. Models at a similar point within a company’s product line are now $2000. (eg Toshiba Portege-line tablet)

For any kind of heavyweight creativity app, such as 3D, photoshop, multitrack recording, etc. I’d stick with a power box. Think of your UMPC as an extension of these devices though - perhaps a remote control/monitoring device rather than the actual brains behind the processing.

I did recently see an article that intel will release WiFi+WiMax chips soon, so that’ll bring the pervasive wireless access onto the UMPC next year (I’m guessing). We’ll see who rolls it out as far as broadband carriers, but I bet you won’t be limited to using cellphone companies for your mobile provider anymore - you’ll have options like using Skype or other VOIP apps on your Pocket PC or UMPC.

I meant that you pay a premium for performance, and hit a lower overall performance window relative to laptops, somewhat similar to laptops vs. desktops (though nowhere near as pronounced.)

No, my point is, I love the tablets . . . and this diminishes the tablets’ new-found laptop-class performance. At $500, or even $600, that’s totally forgivable. Closer to $1000, I’d hold onto my money until prices come down or just get a full-fledged tablet. It seems worth an extra pound or a few inches for the bigger machine . . . especially when some full-sized tablets have gotten below 3 lbs. and the extra inches give you display space.

I do hope one of the readers here gets one of these things and uses it for music, because I’d love to see that application. I’m just skeptical for the mass-market. This looks like a niche machine to me, just wedged between markets.

The tablets in general, however, I think will pick up for all the great reasons you mention here. And frankly, Richard, I’m jealous of your tablet. ;-)

Oh, and one more thing! (Sorry, I shoudn’t be blabbering on like this; the comments space is for you!) I AM really interested in the X/Y controller space. Imagine designing a custom 3D interface in Jitter. It won’t be multi-touch like the Lemur, or pressure sensitive like a Wacom, but it can also be whatever you want. Both the Samsung and Asus tablets have Ethernet out jacks, so you could transmit that data as OSC, as well, keeping your laptop for the heavy lifting.

Damnit, have my latest attempts to NOT empty my wallet failed again? (I said that the mass market might resist, not me neccessarily!)

Peter

Any portable device represents a trade off between performance, battery life, weight and features such as screen size and resolution and integrated keyboards and drives.

I welcome this “platform” as broadening the definition of the underrated and underexploited Windows Tablet PC. (You quickly dismiss the Tablet PC’s as underpowered for music applications in your article, but don’t forget that the typical Tablet PC is just as fast or faster than most PowerBooks that musicians have been loving for years. Obviously people can compensate for lack of performance if a device delivers other things they want.) With a couple of exceptions such as the smaller Motion Computing and Fujitsu models, the available TabletPCs have mostly fallen into a couple of limited configurations. Origami hopefully will widen the range of available options and open up the platform for more uses in creative and media applications.

Do not overlook that since these devices are running the full version of Windows XP TPCE they can run just about any standard Windows software and peripherals. That’s a huge advantage compared to other PDAs and handheld devices. (Compare the sequencers that are available for Windows with those that are available for Palm or PocketPC.) These devices will have card slots and ports for expansion using standard devices.

The promoters of these devices admit that they are not perfect. But they point out that as more targetted development is done over the next few years they should become considerably more efficient and powerful. That development will progress faster if there’s a market.

I’ve been using a Toshiba Tablet PC for a couple of years now. I run Ableton Live on it and do multitrack recording using a Firewire I/O device to an external hard drive. I also run Alias Sketchbook Pro and even some light 3D applications. My next laptop will also probably be a tablet because even though it’s not as fast as the latest traditional laptops it is a more direct and subtile interface for interactive applications.

Well, I should add, as well, there’s a USB and FireWire port on both the Asus and Samsung machines, so you could plug in a keyboard controller for notation or some simple soft synth playback, which is pretty cool. And again, obviously that’s not what the product makers were thinking, but that’s the advantage of having standard PC I/O, which you don’t have on a cell phone or PDA, so there must be zillions of other potential applications.

I’ll also say, at $500 (especially with that VGA port) I’m going to happily swallow my words and think about running out and buying one.

But then, rather than market this as something entirely new, maybe this is best understood as the “any size you want” philosophy of the Windows / PC platform. This for me, and I suspect, for many other people, is simply not going to provide enough portability in exchange for the tradeoffs in power. Now, in a year, maybe these are all $500, and have built-in 3G networking, at which point you can take everything I said and forget it.

BUT . . . if you have PDAs, mini-tablets (which is really what these are), tablets, laptops, and desktop machines, you definitely have the choice to pick what you want, rather than what someone else (me, Microsoft, product vendors, Apple) thinks you want. And that’s a very good thing.

I’m especially interested to see what happens with the existing tablet line with this tech. If you take the existing tablets and make the cheaper, faster, and lighter, the same product category that’s been lukewarm for the past few years could heat up fast.

And I do hope Apple will enter this category, too, though I don’t know if we will. Ironically, it might make people on the PC side start to see the utility of different sized devices and tablet input.