The old software was cool-looking, centralized, and had a lot of big buttons, while this one is bold, filled with extra information widgets, and lots of coolness, enough to make me jealous of UMPC owners. While the old stuff was about usability, the new goodness is about the centralized dashboard and great-looking touch computing.

Read more at the Origami Project’s blog.

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Based on what we see in the video, Microsoft has done a great job with version 2 of the UMPC, with a cool looking, versatile, feature-rich and simple application, making it a hell of a lot easier to do stuff on a UMPC.

In fact, the interface should remind you of something you’d expect from another company, one known for its cool Mac OS and iPhone interfaces.

Microsoft is doing a lot of the same things Apple is doing with the iPhone, including the idea that everything should work without a stylus, just a tap of the finger.

If someone can release a UMPC for the same price as the iPhone, coupled with this amazing new interface, I won’t be crushing on that iPhone any more.

As usual, my biggest problem will be looking at the UMPC. Last year, I wanted, badly, to see what the UMPC experience was like.

Naturally, I couldn’t find one anywhere, making the purchasing decision a hell of a lot harder than necessary.

In fact, the first UMPC I found in the wild was in a duty-free shop in London.

Worse, I have yet to find a standard Tablet PC in a single store that I could demo; all the display units in New York are apparently cracked and have their stylus stolen.

Microsoft needs to open a store, in order that people can see their products as they were meant to.

The fact that I’ve had such a hard time is a travesty, and has got to be hurting Microsoft in the fight against Apple.

Who do I have to bribe to demo a frickin’ Tablet?

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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In some ways the Haikus are what the UMPC was supposed to be, and are still being targetted at a $500-700 price point and with all-day batteries, but in a smaller package with smaller screens.

It almost seems like Microsoft is readying an new form factor to accelerate the work to actually make the UMPC what it was always supposed to do. The Origami sacrificed battery life and pricing to keep to Microsoft’s form factor specifications, when they would have been better off sacrificing screen size and some features to keep pricing and battery life at reasonable levels (which they certainly were not). Maybe Microsoft hopes that the Haiku will force them to actually get it right the second time around.

The article at InfoWorld reveals some of the backstory.

“We’d like to see them out in the $500 to $700 range. The closer to $500 the better,” said Otto Berkes, general manager of Microsoft’s Ultra Mobile PC operations, on the sidelines of a conference in Taipei on Wednesday.

The Haiku device he showed off at the Via Technology Forum was basically a display screen about the size of a paperback book.

The original Haiku device was shown off by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates during WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference) last year. At the time, the company projected it might ship in 2007.

But this year’s launch of the ultra-mobile PC, code-named Origami, prompted speculation that Origami was the portable PC of choice for Microsoft, and it might drop other such projects. That’s not the case, according to Berkes.

“We don’t think [the Haiku] is feasible today, but we’re very excited about the roadmap [Via Technologies] shared that will make this possible in a few years,” he said.

More coverage at:
MobileCrunch
Ars Technica
Loren Heiny (who suggest the form factor could make a killer digital camera, rather than a mini-PC)

Engadget has Haiku haikus:

When was the last time
Microsoft got something right
Don’t believe the hype

big and expensive,
origami disappoints.
now wait for haiku

Don’t like this version?
We’ll do better the next time!
Just wait a few years

Don’t you buy this thing
Something better will come out
Surely in a year

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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The Smart Caddie UMPC comes from Japanese firm PBJ, and is powered by a one gigahertz Via C7M processor. The rest of its features are similar to those of the other UMPCs (BlueTooth, Wifi), although there are two things that are disheartening:

• Two and half hour battery life (compared to four hours for the Samsung)
• $1190 price (ouch!)

As you can see in the picture at Gizmodo, the Smart Caddie, while whitish, is the same one from the leaked photos and Microsoft emulator program. Which means it has the same looks we didn’t like in the first place.

Some other details from PBJ’s website (PDF, in Japanese, help!):

• Runs Windows XP Tablet
• Via VN800 S3 Graphics Unichrome Pro IGP
• 800480 TFT
• Dimension: 228146×25.1 mm
• Weight: 860 grams

There are also more details on the Founder MiniNote UMPC at paperbackpc.com:

• Intel ULV Celeron 900MHz or Intel ULV Pentium 1GHz
• Operating system Pre-installed legal copy Microsoft WindowsXP family version
• Chip group Intel 915 GMS chip group
• Memory 256MB/512MB DDRII memory
• Display monitor 7 “W
• Hard disk 30G
• I/O port 1 power source connection
• 1 microphone jack
• 1 telephone jack
• 2 USB 2.0 connections
• Port duplication connection
• Wireless accesses the net In sets at the blue tooth module and the 802.11b/g non- wire card, may through clear the GPRS function the blue tooth handset or the wireless local area network realizes the Internet visit
• Keyboard Folds
• 1.3 million picture elements
• Battery 3 cores intelligences lithium ion battery
• Bestows Joylink software
• Size 225.5mm x 144mm x 23/25mm (8.85″x5.66″x0.9″)
• Weight Approximately 830g

(via Gizmodo)

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As with most Microsoft products, the short, easy-to-remember project name, in this case Origami, has yielded to the inscrutable ways of Microsoft’s product naming schemes. Thus, the Origami has an official name now of Ultra-Mobile PC, or UMPC, which sounds more like a college cheer than a well-hyped piece of hardware.

(Speaking of college cheers, did you know Dick Vitale’s favorite cheer is the one for Austin Peay? “Let’s Go Peay, Let’s Go Peay!” Yes, it’s college basketball’s big time of year.)

The Trusted Reviews website listed the must-haves vendors need to include with the UMPCs they produce:

There probably won’t be too much surprise at the operating system requirement. Once more of these devices enter the market, we expect to see the headline “Linux Installed On UMPC” all over Digg and Slashdot shortly thereafter.

The article also listed other items on Microsoft’s wish list for the UMPC platform:

Samsung debuted its version of the UMPC first, at the CeBIT show in Germany; the Smasung model includes WiFi and Bluetooth support. Asus and Founder, both located in Asia, will produce versions of this super-lightweight tablet computer.

Tablet computing has found acceptance in some vertical markets, like health care and finance. The consumer market has been mostly lukewarm to their prospects, and Microsoft would like to change that perception. More tablet users means more tablet OS revenue for the company.

They will have to overcome skepticism in the industry. FoxNews cited one analyst who thinks the UMPC needs some time to gain traction in the market:

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And, hype-wise, it certainly is. Microsoft admits the hype spiraled out of control, and kind of turned the announcement into a bit of a disaster, basically.

However, none of that really matters. All that counts in the real world is if the products are good. Are they?

Yes and no.

The fact is, you can’t buy these and just hand them to someone, not in the first generation. With two and a half hours of battery life, they’re unusable as portables. You can’t use them as an MP3 player or a movie player (and video will likely cut battery life in half). You can’t take them to school and type notes. You can’t use it at work.

The only way the initial devices are useful as portables is if you can keep charging them. That means, when you leave the house, you’d have to bring the power adapter with you, and at that point, you might as well be carrying a laptop around. Right now, you can use it sporadically, or around the house (as long as you don’t use it for too long).

None of the uses in the original video work without the battery life. I can’t take it with me while taking pictures, I can’t use it in an airport, I can’t listen to music while riding a scooter, because, unless I want to barely use it, the battery is going to die on me. The only use that works is keeping it docked next to a PC and grabbing it for when I want to work outside.

Still, the Origami seems like a great start. Minus the battery issue, its an excellent platform, and will work for everything promised, and more, once battery life tops 12 hours (and, bare minimum four hours of video). You’ve got a Windows Vista capable tablet PC, a small but usable form factor and programs that make Windows work on the small screen.

I like it. The product itself seems solid, and to have a great future (although a crippled present). I will probably buy one, although I’ll probably wait for version 2 and five hours of battery life. The price point is excellent. At $599, to get a slate tablet PC with 30 gigs of space is a good deal in my mind. Compare it to an iPod at half the price.

$599 UMPC – 30 gigs of space, runs Windows Vista, touch screen, video (formats: WMV, AVI, QT, MP4, Real, DivX, XviD), music (formats: MP3, WMA, AAC [including DRM iPod music], OGG), programs like Internet Explorer, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, Bit Torrent, runs any game that only needs 900 MHz and DirectX 8, like Doom, Quake, The Sims, Half-Life, can plug in USB accessories like GPS receiver, Bluetooth keyboard, camera, external hard drive, universal memory reader, FM or TV tuners, has VGA output

$299 iPod – 30 gigs of space, runs proprietary menu system, click wheel, video (formats: QT, MP4), audio (formats: MP3, AAC [including DRM iPod music]), runs mini-apps like Wikipedia, run mini-games like solitaire, can plug in proprietary accessories like FM tuner, no VGA output

So, you pay the cost of two 30-gig iPods, and you get a larger, but not too large, full Windows PC, that can do everything the iPod can do (including the one thing non-iPod players can’t do: play protected AAC) and a hell of a lot more. I call that a good deal.

Of course, it isn’t a good deal so long as the iPod gets 14 hours of audio and two hours of video. When Origami devices can do that, they’re ready.

I might buy a UMPC immediately. I’ll check em out, see what they’re like, and see if they’re worth it as a supplemental system. More likely, I’ll buy one with double the battery and pre-loaded with Vista. But Microsoft has gotten a great start, and we need to give them the benefit of patience.

The PC wasn’t built in a day, and neither will the UMPC. Wait for it to get better, and Microsoft, you sure as hell better keep developing the Origami-variant OS. If a year from now, nothing has changed with the programs launcher, and I’m drawing comparisons to the 18-month old PMC OS that has become decrepit over time, then you will be failing us, and killing your product. Continued development and improvement is a requirement for this to succeed.

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Origami! Introduced at CeBIT, the new mobile PC form factor, formerly codenamed “Origami,” provides full Windows functionality with an enhanced touch screen, pen and keyboard input. This explanation of the technology comes from Microsoft’s Bill Mitchell, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Platforms Division… UMPCs are a new category of mobile PCs designed to support our increasing mobile lifestyles. They support mobile-tuned user interface features such as touch, pen and dedicated buttons as well as keyboards for convenient access to Windows-based applications on-the-go.

The extremely mobile nature of these devices, together with the richness of Windows PC technology, combine to create a powerful platform for mobile communications, entertainment, gaming and new scenarios such as location-based services as well. The “Origami” project is really our first step toward achieving a big vision. We believe that UMPCs will eventually become as indispensable and ubiquitous as mobile phones are today. We are working toward that goal with a sequence of advances in hardware and software.

Our next step along the roadmap will take place in the Windows Vista release timeframe. But today’s UMPCs are a great choice for all those situations when you’re on the go, but need to keep informed, entertained and connected via the full functionality of a Windows PC – HEre’s an image that will give you a better ide of where the cmpany is heading with this.

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I hear I should be able to post that video at about 3 a.m. Pacific Time on Thursday morning. We’ll have a MUCH more in depth look at Origami (there isn’t just one, by the way, CNBC has different one than Channel 9 will show off).

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It isn’t an Origami, but:

can run full versions of desktop operating systems including the Windows XP variant being used for Origami.

Well, that is interesting. So, basically Origami refers to the operating system, a version of Windows XP, presumably redesigned to run on 7-inch screens (and run Windows apps properly on those screens), while UMPC is the type of device. All of these devices are UMPCs, but not all run Origami. Some will even come with regular XP, presumably, and Intel says they run Linux as well.

The initial UMPCs are beyond dissapointing. If you were to buy one right now, you’d get 15 minutes of battery life. This is because Intel has planned the prototypes based on their predicted technology curve, relying on future low-power hardware to base the eventual products on. Hype, don’t deliver.

Generation one UMPCs will get 3-hours of battery life as targeted, and Intel hopes batteries will be able to last all day “probably next year or later”. Don’t expect that anytime soon. If we’re lucky, they’ll get it up to five or six hours in 18 months, my prediction. Intel also hopes to get the price down to $500 in that same time frame, which is closer to realistic than the battery claim.

The key feature of the new devices, Graff said, is the ability to get the full Internet, with plug-ins and other advanced Web features. Entertainment-including music, movies and TV-is probably the second biggest selling point, he said.

“It was something we didn’t expect,” Graff said.

The UMPC pictured is running Yahoo Go TV and has nine face buttons. It isn’t slick or sleek by any stretch of the imagination, but if the functionality is there, that’s what matters most. There’s another device pictured, one that hides a keyboard and “navigation panel” that slides out.

Karen Said says CNBC was showing exclusive prototypes of Origami devices today.

The mobile PCs were about the size of a paperback book. One had a keyboard hidden behind the display, and another had a swiveling screen.

Whatisnew has a transcript of the report and some photos.

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Now, experience with iPod hype (and this is about at about 80% of typical iPod hype) says that these are almost always Photoshops, but at least the pretty pictures let us dream and imagine what the final devices may look like.

This version features a media browser called “Alexandria” (probably a reference to the great library) that lets you browse your media library and download new content. The actual device itself has only one round pad (as opposed to the two pads in the original video), as well as nine buttons on its face. It doesn’t look quite “iPod slick” as I’d like, more like Portable Media Center bulky. However, the UI follows Windows Vista guidelines, which could hint to some very interesting things for the OS.

I assume this is a Photoshop, but if it isn’t, it isn’t running Windows XP, but some sort of custom Windows version that looks like a cross between Vista and Windows Mobile. Vista Embedded, perhaps?

(via Engadget)

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