View Full Version : Intel abandons UMPCs?
Tom seems to think so...
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31899/118/
This isn't so surprising, really. Any hardware platform, no matter how cool or gadgety or chock-full-of-possibilities, can't be sold to the general public on its hardware merits alone. It's the software that makes it or breaks it.
Selling a UMPC with Windows-XP-Tablet-PC-Plus-Goodies-Edition isn't enough to sell UMPC. In general, computers are really hard to use for average everyday mortals. Windows XP can be confusing on the desktop PC, let alone on a small platform. Simply taking desktop concepts and shrinking them for a UMPC isn't enough. Take a simple concept like menus. When tied to the right mouse button, menus are still confusing for some users. Without a mouse, what chance do they have? Perhaps a new paradigm was in order...
There's a lesson here for Internet tablets... Is IT2007 friendly/usable/powerful enough?
-F
There's a lesson here for Internet tablets... Is IT2007 friendly/usable/powerful enough?
-F
um... almost.
"When tied to the right mouse button, menus are still confusing for some users. Without a mouse, what chance do they have? Perhaps a new paradigm was in order..."
I've been daydreaming about a cricket-clicker on the bottom or side of my N800. When you click one part of it, it's like a mouse left-click, the other part is like a mouse right-click. Why not? I would like some mouselike creature on my N800.
Karel Jansens
2007-05-04, 15:39
"When tied to the right mouse button, menus are still confusing for some users. Without a mouse, what chance do they have? Perhaps a new paradigm was in order..."
I've been daydreaming about a cricket-clicker on the bottom or side of my N800. When you click one part of it, it's like a mouse left-click, the other part is like a mouse right-click. Why not? I would like some mouselike creature on my N800.
Wouldn't it be simpler to make a user interface that doesn't need pointer buttons? The Newton (yes, again!) had one (as in: 1!) hardware button: the on/off switch. Nobody ever asked for more buttons, because its user interface was designed for the pen.
My boss at Quarterdeck for awhile was Gaston Bastaens, who ran my company into the ground after being in charge of the Newton at Apple, so I have never understand how it could have such a good reputation when he was associated with it. But you are right again.
Karel Jansens
2007-05-04, 16:15
My boss at Quarterdeck for awhile was Gaston Bastaens, who ran my company into the ground after being in charge of the Newton at Apple, so I have never understand how it could have such a good reputation when he was associated with it. But you are right again.
There is a difference between the design of Newton/MessagePad, which -- certainly in its latter day incarnations -- was simply brilliant, and its management, which was -- er -- not.
Bastaens BTW certainly deserves his own circle in Hell. :rolleyes:
Milhouse
2007-05-04, 17:20
The UMPC didn't hit any of the sweet spots for me. It was too heavy, too large, too expensive - you could get a cheap, lightweight laptop for the same price and it would only be marginally bigger/heavier, and it would be more powerful than the UMPC!
Saddling the UMPC with Windows XP didn't help either - wrong OS for the job. Intel are flogging a dead horse by continuing the current UMPC form factor, I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped it - reduce the size of some laptops by a fraction and you've got the current UMPC, it's just not needed as a seperate product category.
Intel will fair much better with the UMPC mk2 - smaller, lighter, cheaper (no Windows licence for a start!).
The UMPC certainly has a niche use in inventory management and auditing. But then, I'm trying to accomplish the same thing with the N800... ;)
The UMPC certainly has a niche use in inventory management and auditing. But then, I'm trying to accomplish the same thing with the N800... ;)
Do you do this via intranet? Is there open source software for this you want ported?
Re: UMPCs - agree with what's been said. Too expensive price. Too expansive goals. Too expletive an OS.
What I pray for is that companies looking to linux as an alternative realize the need for compatibility and interoperability and community. -- If they each start cooking-up their own flavour of linux, they run the risk of splitting the developer community into too-small camps. An open-source developer community needs a critical mass to get the ball rolling. While the tendency for groups and individuals to bake their own flavor of linux cake works fairly well on the desktop, it should be resisted in the tablet/pda market, simply because the sales figures aren't high enough to guarantee a robust, productive community around each flavor of linux.
The remark about fragmentation is very true Armin, but unfortunately I don't think it's in the "risk" stage anymore, it's a reality today. There is Qtopia for the Sharp Zaurus and Archos PMA lines and some phone-like devices, Maemo for the Nokia ITs, another Linux coming for Palms, etc. And that's only the corporate efforts, but the various communities are perfectly capable of fragmenting themselves too : look at the sheer number of competing (and mutually incompatible) distros for a popular but confidential platform like the Sharp Zaurus, you'll probably need the fingers of both hands :-)
I think Nokia hit it out of the park with the physical form factor of the N800 itself and I do believe THAT was what Microsoft was trying to get across to the various hardware manufacturers but something got lost "in translation" obviously.
Hardware wise...well, Nokia used what works at the moment I guess.
Right now the N800 is perfect for my needs. Web browsing, occasional email checks, once-in-a-while video/audio use, and the occasional game. For the most part when I travel the laptop stays in its bag until I feel I need a "heavy-hitter" to do something.
I NEVER liked the UMPC specs or lineup at all. Honestly, asking desktop/laptop manufacturers to make something small and powerful usually winds up an abomination (Windows CE v1 devices anyone?) while the small consumer electronics and cell phone manufacturers have the physical format pretty much down pat (Sharp, Nokia, and for the most part Palm and RIM).
Microsoft pitched their Origami idea to the wrong damn crowd. They should have pitched it to the cell phone and consumer electronics companies exclusively and told the big PC manufacturers to take a friggin' hike on this one.
Do you do this via intranet? Is there open source software for this you want ported?
Yeah, I intend to host my applications on a corporate intranet site using active server pages (ASP). I'll be coding most of it and using canned stuff (especially the functionality in SQL server 2005) where I can. I've got it partially working.
The main hold up for now is VPN. We have some guys developing a tool for internal use and it isn't quite 100%. Our corporate solution relies on SecureId cards so if an oss application was developed that worked with our system that would be ideal. The main problem I'm having now is resolving short server names into fully qualified domain names (fqdn)... I can't seem to get the VPN development team to understand how important that is to some commercial apps (they tell me *I* should always use fqdn, duh, but try telling every third party developer).
Yeah, I intend to host my applications on a corporate intranet site using active server pages (ASP). I'll be coding most of it and using canned stuff (especially the functionality in SQL server 2005) where I can. I've got it partially working.
The main hold up for now is VPN. We have some guys developing a tool for internal use and it isn't quite 100%. Our corporate solution relies on SecureId cards so if an oss application was developed that worked with our system that would be ideal. The main problem I'm having now is resolving short server names into fully qualified domain names (fqdn)... I can't seem to get the development team to udnerstand how important that is to some commercial apps (they tell me *I* should always use fqdn, duh, but try telling every third party developer).
Sounds to me like something my "employer" has been doing for years now.
On our smartcards are our embedded PKI certificates and each card has a 10-digit number on it in front of @our-domain-name.
In Active Directory all of our accounts are mapped to this 10-digit code so we can login just using our smartcard PIN codes (PIN != 10-digit on card).
Microsoft did develop some hella-useful software that integrates all of this at our bequest, but I just don't see the same ease-of-use and deployment in any OSS offerings at the moment.
Problem is, using a hardware-based token for this - as well as via our Cisco 3000 VPN Concentrators scattered all over the planet - means we can't use small devices like the Nokia N800 tablet or Nokia N80i/N95 cell phones unless we somehow obtain a software token to use with the same.
Which my employer says isn't going to happen. Ever.
But lately the only thing we're using ASP and SQL 2005 for is with Sharepoint 2007.
For everything else we tend to use PHP and MySQL running on Server 2003.
I would suggest you start programming for that as it makes the code itself a lot more portable between varying server operating systems and hardware upgrades.
Add to that the capability for almost every single portable and non-portable web browsing machine out there to work with it versus ASP's more advanced functions generally only working well with IE 6/7.
Yeah, I'm pretty much stuck with the tools I have and know (and lucky to have them...lol). As a developer/analyst/dba I force the issue as much as I am able but it's hard budging a monolithic corporation... :/
Anyway, anything I develop is for internal use only so portability isn't that much of an issue.
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