Origami

Will Origami Introduce The Era Of UMPC?

March 9, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Microsoft Geeks (yes, they do exist) are salivating over the official release of Origami. As we told you last week it’s not an iPod killer at all. Instead it’s a UMPC.

What’s a UMPC you ask? Seriously, you’ve never heard of UMPC? Ok, we’ll tell you, but just this once, so please take notes. UMPC = Ultra Mobile PC.

In case you’re still confused I’ll spell this out further. As far as Microsoft is concerned an Ultra Mobile computer is 6 by 8 inches with a 2.5 hour battery life. In other words, it’s too big to fit in your pocket, and you can’t go very far before you need to charge your UMPC. I said UMPC, not Pocket PC.

Origamis will be folded by a number of different manufacturers. As with standard PC’s each will presumably offer their own unique configuration and pricing. In general, though, you can expect these new devices to cost in the $600 to $1,000 range.

Oh, it’ll run some variant of WinXP, ensuring that Microsoft enthusiasts everywhere will enjoy the full blue screen experience on buses and in restaurants.

So, where do you want to go today?

Origami Photos

March 8, 2006 by Jim Connelly

A PC World blog has published photos of a pair of Origami devices — including the Samsung Q1 — on display at the CeBIT electronics show in Germany. It’s really hard to tell much from the photographs, which look like they were taken surreptitiously with a cellphone, and kinda have same perspective as pictures from Mars: is that rock 3ft tall or 300ft tall.

In any event, an accompanying article explains the following:

It’s a handheld, measuring 6″x8″
They are calling it an “ultramobile device”
It runs a “special” edition of XP
It will support WLAN; bluetooth & 802.11
It will have an XP independent multimedia player
It will have camera, GPS & gaming functionality

What the article didn’t explain, and I guess is up to Microsoft’s marketing department, is exactly why I might need one.Ã‚ However, that didn’t stop Microsoft’s stock from going up after the announcement.

Origami “Debuts” – Exclusive Video On Google

March 2, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

The blogosphere is buzzing today about Microsoft’s delayed announcement of the “mysterious” Origami product. The Origami Project website has been updated with a March 9 launch date. Apparently today was never intended to be a launch date — or was it?

A lengthy video of the product has turned up on Google. I’m assuming that today’s date was intended to be the official “leak date” of this new product video. How clever of Microsoft to use Google to promote their latest product.

Based on a PC World report, it’s now not clear whether or not the product will be released anytime soon. Apparently Microsoft is new at this viral marketing thing and isn’t quite clear on the part where it’s also important to manage expectations.

A few observations after watching the video:

As anticipated the product is a portable tablet-like device that does just about everything.
It’s clear from the action scenarios that Bluetooth and WiFi will play a big part in all of Origami’s magic.
This is clearly not an iPod killer.
Man this thing is big. They call that a portable?

This, apparently, concludes Microsoft’s first attempts at product secrecy and viral marketing

Watch the video:

Microsoft Origami Trailer

Pre-Blogging the Microsoft Origami Announcement

March 1, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

What’s better than live blogging Microsoft’s unveiling of the mysterious Origami project? Pre-blogging the Origami announcement, of course.

Earlier this week I tried live-blogging the live blogging of the Apple product announcements. To be honest, it was all just a bit too meta — even for me. Instead, I’ll take this opportunity to do one last round-up the various rumors surrounding Origami:

It’s a portable media device that plays music, video games, and performs handwriting recognition. In other words it’s a portable game machine that you can also use as a tablet PC. Or maybe it’s a tablet PC that you can also use as a portable game machine.
It’s larger than Sony’s PSP and may cost more than $300. Or maybe it’ll cost more than $500. No one really knows. And really, how could they, what with the legendary ultra-secrecy of the Microsoft Marketing Machine.
The device will come in either black or a truly weird shade of lime green that has a certain glow-in-the-dark plastic look about it.
Early suspicions that the Origami might be a Roomba killer may have been greatly exaggerated. There’s no reason to believe the Origami will have the ability to crawl through plush shag carpeting sucking up cat hair.

Regardless of what Origami turns out to be, it’s unlikely to make a serious dent in the lead Apple has taken in the digital convergence race. Unless Microsoft announces a new online media store and partnerships with several major film studios, they’ve got a lot of catching up to do. A single device is only the first step if Microsoft hopes to compete. It’s a new millennium and Microsoft is now the underdog. The sad thing is I usually root for the underdog.