Now that seems to be what I was looking for! Since a few weeks I’m thinking about getting a new mobile device. I excluded notebooks from the very beginning because of their size, even sub-notebooks I considered as too big. The device should be small and lightweighted enough to easily fit in my bag, even better in my pocket, like a PDA. But at the same time I wanted all the advantages of a notebook: comfortably read & edit documents with a fair screen resolution and uncomplicated text-input, put programs on it as I like without too many restrictions (e.g. searching for special “portable” program versions). Neither notebooks nor any available PDA or smart phone fit my needs. I never would’ve thought that it’ll be so hard to find such a small and usable mobile device.
I think there is a good chance that I’ll get one of those new Ultra-Mobile PCs, if the pricing will be ok, approx. EUR 800,- seems quite reasonable to me. As far as I know, only after reading a few reports on various IT news sites, it seems to be possible to edit documents (e.g. notes, presentations, emails, etc.) in a convenient Tablet-PC like way or using this nifty thumb-based text input system. Microsoft already renamed their Origami thing into Ultra-Mobile PC and offer a modified Tablet-PC-Edition of Windows XP as operating system. Of course I would prefer something like a Mac OS X running them, but one can’t have everything.
An essential feature is that I can install my GIS software (ok, confession, since I’m using ESRI ArcGIS it wouldn’t be possible on Mac OS X), which I constantly need, on those devices. Having those applications and geodata with me would be sometimes very usefull in meetings. Even more exciting is that some of the new devices from Asus come with GPS on-board. So I can put my maps on it, let me guide to my desired locations and track all the way within my GIS. Seriously, I see portable navigation as a very prospering market. So IMHO they’re heading into the right direction by adding GPS to those devices.
I doubt that I’m the only one looking for such a device. Without pretending to be an IT market specialist I expect the new Ultra-Mobile PC devices to be a great success. Beside usefull tasks like editing documents, etc. one can put music, videos and other entertaining stuff on it. The screen seems to be capable of displaying videos in a certain quality, so add a good portion of entertainment to the buying reasons.
Update #1:
Watch some CeBit action videos of this gadget at You Tube.
0 Responses to “Smart Ultra-Mobile PC”