OQO CEO Moore- we’re not announcing Atom deployment
Fans of the pocket-sized OQO UMPC have been understandably excited with the appearance of an OQO at IDF running the Atom processor. It’s a natural fit (pun intended) and reaction in the OQO community has been as expected. Company CEO Dennis Moore has posted a comment at OQOTalk that points out that the single unit displayed by Intel at the IDF is just a technology preview and they are not announcing a model so equipped:
Folks –
Yes, indeed, that is an OQO prototype shown with anIntel(r) Atom(r) processor. Intel is showcasing the OQO prototype in acouple of their keynotes and elsewhere at IDF because we have achievedby far the best performance with their processor in our technologydemonstration.
Note that this is not a product launch orannouncement, but is a demonstration of what we think an Intel Atomprocessor should do in a product targeting users who need the ultimatein mobile productivity, and demonstrates all the areas where OQO hasled the market for years — performance, battery life, thermals,usability, design, and form factor. While there are other small andlight devices using Intel’s Atom processor, none of them comes close tothe performance and productivity we are showing with this technologydemonstration.
Intel selected OQO to collaborate on developingtechnologies that will further enhance the productivity of enterprisemobile workers and individual mobile professionals, and did so due toOQO’s longstanding leadership in ultra-mobile computing. OQO isparticipating in this technology demonstration to showcase leading-edgeadvances in ultra-mobile computing and to reinforce OQO’s leadershipposition in this growing market.
I hope this helps explain today’s news — a technology showcase, not an impending product announcement.
Thanks for being our customers!
– Dennis Moore, OQO
(photo courtesy of UMPC Portal)
That’s a weird announcement. ‘Here’s a significant improvement we could make, but we won’t.’
Hi There,
Any reports of MIDinux anywhere on these devices?
Thanks!
It’s actually a very carefully written announcement. He doesn’t say that Atom is a significant improvement over what they currently have. He says that OQO is showing the Atom off at its best. Those two are not the same thing. (e.g., he makes no statement, one way or the other, about how good the Atom at its best actually is.)
Also, there’s a difference between having a prototype and having a design ready for mass production. Even if that’s the way they will go, they may not be ready to go that way yet. I don’t think an early announcement is any big deal. For example, Apple announced the PowerPC to Intel transition very early and it didn’t seem to hurt them. However, OQO may feel differently about this, if they are even changing processor companies at all.
For now, we don’t know for sure whether there will be a new OQO model or, if there is, what will be in it. In that sense, things haven’t changed very much from last week.
Yeah, they tease us a little so we can get our hopes up, wait a few months for nothing, and suddenly the next thing we see is an OQO on sale with the dual-core hyperthreading Atom.
The parts are out there already. Consumers want to buy it. We know that it works. So just build the damn thing.
Obviously, OQO will release it, but they do not want to hurt sales for now. I guess by November-October should be on sale. But that is not what we want. What we want is something like that or the current OQO, but with Mac OS X inside. And I mean the official Apple thing. Then we will buy thousands for our Unviversity. What is Apple waiting for?
Well, I was right after all. Only two months later!!!