Comments on: 2008: Is the UMPC a wave to ride?

By: Banibrata Dutta

Banibrata Dutta — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:23:27 +0000

Just a small point about Krish’s comment. UMPC’s are not SmartPhone / PDA replacements. PDA’s are more or less dead anyway, the only competition could be from SmartPhones.

Couple of things about SmartPhones, that make UMPC attractive are:
1) video-out port for your presentations. UMPC’s are becoming reduced-footprint general-purpose Laptops. Weighing roughly half or less of typical laptops, their portability is improved. There are still a lot of Projectors that don’t hv USB/WiFi/Bluetooth for video-share.
2) there is a limit to the kind of applications you run on SmartPhones or PDA, largely due to screen-size, and to some extent due to computing power, memory size, UI mechanisms. UMPC’s capabilities are quite close to usual laptops, if not same, unless of course, we start talkign about gaming, CAD etc. But Gamers and CAD designers use 21″, Quad-cores+4GB, dual-Radeon w/SLI etc., not your regular Laptop.

Couple of things about UMPC’s that still works against it’s attractiveness:
1) Price difference with regular Laptops is very marginal, or sometime at par. So, there are many people, who’d be willing to lug-around some more weight, for lot more functionality/performance & better ergonomics. I know a buddy, who travels quite a lot, and his laptop has roughly 100 full-length movies, to entertain him during his trips to desolate boring wastelands. Try doing that with a UMPC (yeah, maybe in couple of years). The typical 7″ screen though is generally good enough for personal movie watching.

2) Of course, they don’t fit into your shirt/pant pocket and indeed, cannot be used with one hand, but they are still the size of your samll-sized Eagle-diary, and can be carried easily. Another very good point you make is about “power”. Most of the UMPC’s standard battery lasts for max 4hrs under ideal conditions… that’s again, unlike SmartPhones/PDAPhones or PDAs, and we all know that Battery technology hasn’t evolved as fast as rest of the computing h/w technology has.

By: Banibrata Dutta

Banibrata Dutta — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:01:39 +0000

UMPC term itself, I think is older than a year, and prior to the M$ design, IMHO there were several other initiatives that could very well fall under the UMPC category. I remember stopping over at Hong Kong more than 2 years back, and seeing some Taiwanese UMPCs on display at the duty-free shops. They featured some ultra-low-power processor, which ran a certain custom flavour of a Linux distro. However, I guess, it’s just started gathering some critical mass. The “ultra-portables”, which CEO’s and VP’s used to tote-around… are getting shrunk a bit more, being stripped-down a bit, and prices are coming in the “commodity computing” range. Also the thing that is changing, is that more and more of these UMPC’s hv started running the usual Linux distros, and M$ Windows etc., and with the ability to install / run, pretty much any kind of software, as-long-as they are not too resource heavy. They are becoming more and more “usable” and “useful” (many of the earlier UMPC didn’t hv a video-out, for e.g.). The keyboard dimensions are stabilizing to acceptable sizes and other ergonomics are improving. So, I guess you are right, the market might warm-up to these.

People are beginning to have a city-commute car, and a out-doors-long-drive-offroader for weekends. So for 15grands, many people might find a small tote-along UMPC for PPT presentations, emails & internet on the go, with a usable screen-size and keyboard size. I know a lot of ppl who hate the stylus.

By: Krish

Krish — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:34:56 +0000

UMPC is an attempt to create a new market. But it is not an empty market. It is occupied at one end by notebook PCs, and at the other by smartphones and PDAs. Where will it fit in? Where is the need?

Weighing around 850g, UMPCs are too heavy to be held one handed for more than a few minutes. Holding the device in two hands, however, greatly reduces the effectiveness of the touch screen, because you can’t reach most of it. (If you’re here from a smartphone and used to single thumb navigation, this will likely drive you nuts).

You have the ultimate pointing device here: a touch screen. It’s the only input device that lets you simply point at what you want. Until we have USB ports on the back of our heads, things won’t get any simpler than this.

Unless you want to lug around a brick, the chances are you’re recharging it daily. Enable WiFi, BlueTooth, WWAN and whatever else, we need AAA-size disposable fission reactors to keep these guzzlers awake.

Most miniature devices have high TCO. Check out punishing telco WiFi and data plans. The device may cost under Rs.20,000 ($500), but you’re in it for a good 2x or even 3x to run with it.