Monday, May 15, 2006

The Media has UMPC on their mind

So the CeBIT Australia Fair has come and gone; a grand event that attracted thousands of attendees. The one flow-on effect that I love most is PR. There has been so much good publicity come from the event and it has generated more enthusiasm than I expected.

I wanted to take the opportunity to point you to some articles, good and bad, and allow you to express your own thoughts. Enjoy.





Some Examples are:

CeBIT show descends on Sydney
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
By Louisa Hearn
May 8, 2006

snipping -

Another small product to make its debut at CeBIT is eo, which is one of the first of the Ultra Mobile PCs to hit the shelves in Australia. Developed by TabletKiosk, the eo sits somewhere between a tablet PC and PDA.

Built around the Microsoft XP tablet PC operating system, it allows users to take handwritten notes, surf the internet, exchange instant messages, listen to music, watch movies and play games. It is being distributed locally by Tegatech.

Best bits
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
May 13, 2006

[I love the title as it relates to the CeBIT Show, and UMPC is the highlighted product]

snipping -

Among the stars of the show was the ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC) - between a tablet PC and a personal digital assistant (PDA) - with full PC capabilities at half of the price of a tablet. The new $1650 EO from TabletKiosk is 50 per cent bigger than the average PDA, runs Windows XP and ditches Pocket PC applications in favour of full Windows software versions.


Hugo Ortega, the principal of Tegatech Australia (http://www.tegatech.com.au), distributors of the EO, says demand has already outstripped initial estimates, with 250 units sold in the first two hours of orders opening. It arrives in June.

[Surely the 250 is use of Journalistic license, as I never said that! Sounds like she's talking about a Rolling Stones concert, not a Tablet...]

CeBIT Australia shuts up shop
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
By Louisa Hearn
May 12, 2006 - 9:46AM

snipping -

Although Microsoft was absent at this year's CeBIT, its spirit was kept alive through the EO Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). Based on the Origami concept first devised by Microsoft, the EO sits somewhere between a tablet PC and PDA and allows users to take handwritten notes, surf the internet, exchange instant messages, listen to music, watch movies and play games.

[Related post: Origami unfolds at CeBIT, again! ]

The question remains - why?
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
By David Pogue
May 9, 2006

snipping -

WHERE: Since it's so hard to enter text, few will try to do email, programming, word processing or spreadsheet work on this computer. Good for boardroom presentations.

[Too funny; talk about missing the point (boardroom presentations, please.) David, mate! If you run Microsoft Infopath or if you bothered ink-enabling any enterprise applications then you'd see that the repercussions on increased productivity are massive. Just ask XXXXX (big credit card merchant) who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for hand-recognition software that can read a filled out application form. What if XXXXXX used UMPC's to input the data straight into handwriting, therefore converting it to text on-the fly? Wouldn't that alone increase productivity, and render the UMPC useful? This Merchant cannot do this at the moment because PDA screens are too small and under processed for this task!!! It's beginning to sound oh too familiar; PDA's too small for many tasks, and Laptop’s too big. All we need is for UMPC battery life to improve for more enterprise solutions to be developed.

I've said it before and will say it again: UMPC is a "workhorse." The expectations on a workhorse are that a given task, namely one, is conducted in the most effeciect manner. You wouldn't axpect a workhorse to multi-task, and I wouldn't expect my UMPC to either. As generation 2 and 3 are released I'm sure that the UMPC's multi-tasking abilities will improve; for now however I'm sticking to my arguement that UMPC is a great workhorse.

It's so funny when Journalists miss the point; it's like handing a Monkey a gun sometimes!]

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