The crux of the iPhone argument is the price/feature trade off. At that price, the current buyers are businesses. They have the cash. But businesses want Blackberry/Treo functionality for their high prices, not pretty. I think that this is the disconnect for most people. The market segment that Apple is targeting has no track record of spending that much for a phone. It breaks new ground in the interface but it doesn’t let a user do anything that they can’t do today with 20 or 30 different available phones.

To me, the UMPC has more potential than people are giving it credit for. And Yes, I use an original Q1 everyday as my main PC. Like the original iPod, very few people NEEDED an MP3 player. But it let them take more content to places they never would have before. Want to jog with 400 songs? Go for it.

Many people don’t NEED a UMPC, but it lets me take everything into places I wouldn’t bring a normal laptop. It opens doors for a PC to walk through that can’t be opened with a laptop. If I’m talking to someone and they have a question, I can lookup the answer, and often email it to them, while we’re standing there talking. If the unit was bigger, I wouldn’t even have it with me. That’s really been key for me. 1 set of data, in 1 place, always with me. No syncing, no worries about compatibility, the same data in the same place, no matter where I’m working.

But yes MS blew it with marketing and expectations. They should have kept the Origami name. It would have removed some of the UMPC device confusion.

Mark

But to carry your toaster analogy further (and to the point): I would agree that the reviewer above is silly to expect a toaster to make cookies, unless the toaster in question is priced higher than any toaster oven available.

In the case of the iPhone, it will be the highest priced phone currently sold in the USA with a two year commitment. What will the early adopters be saying when the iPhone Model II (or iPhone Nano) appears and they can’t buy one since they are locked into their Cingular (aka AT&T) contract for another 18 months? It’s a different market for Apple, and while the technology demonstrated is really cool, there are other factors involved that will make it interesting in the year ahead.

I can tell you that I review a lot of software and hardware that I would not personally use. Not because I don’t like it, but it doesn’t fit my needs.

When this occurs, I often try to consider not just my needs but more globally, the needs that this software or hardware was trying to fill. And I look at whether it accomplished that task. For example, I do not tend to use RSS readers on my PPC. I just tend to do this from my laptop. So, if I was going to review NewsBreak, I would not say this program is lousy because I do not need it (which isn’t true anyway). Instead, I would look at the purpose of RSS readers and the goals that they were trying to accomplish (namely making all of your news accessible for viewing on and off line). Does Newsbreak accomplish this in a reasonable manner? What are the benefits of Newsbreak over other programs that are similar? What features does Newsbreak have that stand out? That is how I look at a review.

When it came to reviewing the UMPC, which I spent over a month evaluating, I simply could not answer the initial question of what market was this trying to appeal to? What need was this trying to fill? That was my problem with it. Not just that I didn’t like it or wouldn’t use it, but that I could not figure out a good use for it.

Doug

I use an alphasmart dana for a lot of work (great with listpro), and I would be the first to say that it is overpriced and underpowered with a poor screen. However, for all that it can turn on type and save text, or update a list quicker than other machine I know, yet it will usually be dismissed as old technology and disregarded without even considering the benefits that it may bring.
To keep on thread, I can say that I could see a solid state UMPC fill the tasks of dana (if it has ‘instant on’ functionality) as it should allow quick input (if its one with a keyboard) and yet be easy to throw in a bag.

Take a look at the studentmate:-
http://www.one2onemate.com
This is on ugly sonofa, but I like the idea of an instant on device that can run common applications and last all day on a charge. This will be disregarded by most tech reviewers but could fulfill many user needs if they asked around (or may not, – it is the fact that a reviewers bias tends to prohibit them asking in the first place that I dislike). Is this a UMPC or is a PC nowadays only a computer that uses MS bloated code?

I had the exact same reaction when I got my review unit of the UMPC. It looks great. I had all kinds of expectations for what I wanted it to do, but in the end, while it was a neat toy,I really couldn’t find much of a practical use for it. Especially since the layout of the hardware made no sense.

In my opinion, another one of their big mistakes was running Win XP tablet edition instead of making a new hybrid operating system. Anyway, I am excited to hopefully have a chance to look at the new OQO 2.0 soon. Maybe that will fix some of these problems.

Doug

As to “what is it for?” Well I think I may have found my next blog post! Maybe it will help others to decide just what sort of “toast” it is meant to make!

So, if the UMPC is not designed to knock of the Pocket PC or the laptop, then it must be designed to fit somewhere in the middle. I had a hard time figuring out what the role of a device between the two would be.

Later UMPC’s (such as the OQO 2.0) seem to do a better job with this, but I am not even sure the UMPC makes toast right now.

Just my two cents.

Doug