Alex, are you Primaz???

Woadan

UMPC’s are the wrong form factor plain and simple for a mainstream computer that runs full windows. That technology could be mainstream if they used the old handheld form factors like the Psion 5mx which enabled easy touch type input in a coat sized computer. Adding the full windows and now you have for the first time a true pocket laptop.

You say Japan has been making small notebooks but none have ever been jacket size so they are not really small enough to be mobile.

Maybe there’s still hope with the R50A from Asus. No QWERTY keyboard! http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2007/11/asus-r50a-umpc-official-info.html

Ketih,

WinCE : PDAs :: Slates : Tablets

Might as well ask for the GI Joe with the kung-fu grip and fuzzy hair back.

Woadan

Ketih,

WinCE : PDAs :: Slates : Tablets

Might as well ask for the GI Joe with the kung-fu grip and fuzzy hair back.

Woadan

Considering all the time I’ve spent touch-typing notes on HPCs like the Compaq C140 and HP Jornada 720. Both are (admittedly bulky) pocketable devices, so I don’t believe for a second that a convertible UMPC’s keyboard can’t do just as well.

PS do any other Windows Mobile users dearly miss Outline formatting in Word and curse loudly with every new WM release that leaves it out? WinCE supported it from the get go, made for the perfect note taking device in high school history classes, why o why did they take it out?!

Edgar, I do not believe that it is accurate to say that a UMPC “is not intended to ba a productive pc”.

If you want to do some light web-surfing, or email, it is a very productive device. The Q1s, which have the embedded media player, are also very productive media players. (I don’t see too many users trading in their iPods for a Q1, however.)

I know of some photographers who have an interest in UMPCs as transfer devices for their craft. Once a digital roll of film is full, transfer its contents to the UMPC.

I know Frank Garcia uses his UMPCs to program using Visual Studio.

I could go on, but I think the point that UMPCs can be and are useful has been made. And thankfully so, as their price would be ridiculous if they were only glorified iPods or Zunes.

Woadan

Keith, how useful is a keyboard when the screen size is 7″ diagonal?

I’m not against there being both convertibles and slates in the UMPC market. I in fact embrace the thought.

However, I worry that small keyboards will be looked down upon by Average Joe User and UMPC convertibles will suffer just as slates have.

The user experience needs to be improved all around.

Woadan

a umpc is not intended to ba a productive pc
people allways say i can’t be productive in it. you don’t need to. there are already computers excellent doing that. what is missing is a really portable pc. i don’t believe it can be pocketable cause the screen would be too small and for small screens you have pda, and now you read ppl complaining about the small screens of these new umpc. how can you have a good web experience in such small screens?
and you don’t need the keyboard, at least a real one cause it’s not meant for you to write a lot, want to write a lot? use a bt kb.
a umpc is halfway beetween a pc and a pda and that is the problem ppl want it to be a true pc and a true pda, it’s not, it’s half it’s the missing machine beetween your not that portable computer and the too tiny phone/pda screen.

with a new type of machine you need a new type of software. even for buyers to understand that it’s not a true pc and it’s not a phone/pda.

I’ll say again if apple come to the umpc market it will be a slate, and it will be wonderfull.

Add to that an expensive price in the eyes of a consumer especially when they don’t also see a DVD/CD drive and yes, the keyboard thry are use to. There is no compelling reason that is made obvious to them not to have a keyboard, plus most of them have not really dropped down to a comfortable purchase price.

Biggest problem I see though is the initial out of the box experience. In most cases the OS is not optimized or drivers working properly; desktop & software not prepared & arranged efficiently where the new consumer can easily jump into the UMPC experience, even the software provided does not work well in the UMPC’s environment such as screen resolution or performance. The latest Origami Experience shell for Vista crashes if you rotate the screen.

Despite some of us having the patience or tenacity to be able to tweak these gems, the common consumer should not have to go through that.

Package & market the slate UMPC properly, and it will flourish.

I never said I think slates should be abandoned, I just don’t think they’ll ever have the marketshare that some people think they deserve. As James said, it’s a niche within a niche.

The difference in weight and thickness between slates and convertibles of similar size and specifications is minimal, I don’t see any great gain in mobility from that. You’re still carrying device large that will need it’s own case/bag but light enough to not be a nuisance.

If a slate is what you want for your own personal use, and that’s all you want, more power to you! I hope there are always great ones out there for you. But don’t be surprised when convertible PCs vastly outsell them, and don’t blame it solely on UIs that don’t take full advantage of the inking possibility. Convertibles are light enough, thin enough, and are quite simply better at more usage scenarios because they are more adaptable than a normal laptop or slate.

Keith, do you mean other than an inherently heavier and thicker device? Isn’t the whole discussion centered around mobility?

If somebody tried inking, as in gave it a chance, then concluded that having a keyboard was the way to go, then I’d give their belief some credence.

However, most of the people who have insisted that a keyboard be present are rejecting the slate concept because it has no keyboard, not because they tried inking and found it to be lacking. In other words, the paradigm shift the lack of keyboard represented is what was rejected, not inking itself.

As for what “slate supporters” are avoiding: I think we are simply avoiding keyboards. If in doing so we are annoying to those who can’t or won’t step away from a keyboard, well, that’s their affair.

The issue isn’t one of choices or limits. If you think having a keyboard gives you choices, then so be it. I think not having a keyboard is freedom of a sort, and as such, is less limiting than having one is.

See? It’s all a matter of perspective.

We may both agree that inking as an experience is in need of improvement. The difference is, I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Woadan

Woadan-
What is the difference between a slate PC and a convertible tablet flipped to slate form other than a little bit of thickness and weight?

The discussion of which is better, inking or typing, is up to the individual user (I type faster and more accurately than I write, and much more legibly, making reliable OCR near impossible; I’m sure the opposite is true for some others), but how is being limited to one or the other better than having a choice? That is the question that the slate supporters continue to avoid.

I’m a car fanatic as well as a tech fanatic, so the picture that keeps coming to mind is of a convertible with a retractable top vs a car that has no roof at all.

Opus, I think you and I might be saying the same thing, just using different words. (A friend of mine would say we’re circling the wagons with our discussion.)

I keep hoping that when I comment about these things that someone will point out some obscure menu I have yet to discover, after which I will be in the land of milk and honey. But alas, it doesn’t appear that I am unblissfully ignorant of some functionality.

I don’t mind the auto-completions when I’m not entering a username, password, or URL. It is because they have to be letter perfect, including spaces (or more to the point, the lack thereof), that the inking experience is less than positive.

Woadan

The auto stuff in TIP actually works well for me once I realized I could always rewrite or select from the other “guesses”. Using TIP to ink text into text input fields is a nice integration with non ink applications but it is like trying to talk to a pretty woman through an interpreter.

It would be nice for text fields using common Windows GUI controls including web pages to polymorphism text entry into pen input when the screen senses it, using some of the TIP input characteristics in the process.

That would make inking more human natural. I still have not taken the time to learn pen gestures for screen manipulation but if it is not naturally intuative without traing, it is not really that intuative, but still I need to learn because I know it will help with the tablet experience.

In the end I’d like to have more human interaction that tablets including UMPC’s promote well, but the OS & software needs to blend it in better in behaviour & auto intelligence.

James.

We’re in a period at the end of the year and where focus is on sales and development is going on in the background. There are two UMPC platforms on the way out and three new platforms on the way in. A lot of OEMs have skipped McCaslin to wait for Menlow/Mobile-ITX/AMD and we’ve already heard that there are a lot of OEMs building UMPCs. (remember the list given at IDF?)

Wait until CES, CeBIT, Computex. You’ll see more than you can blog about!!!

Regards
Steve.