Origami?

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Origami?  Let’s see….what does it say here:

“It could play music, games, send photos, help navigate and generally act as an all-round digital helper.” (from BBC)

So, it’s a smaller PC running the tablet OS and can play music, games, work with graphic files, and serve as a replacement to your mp3 player, PDA, and smart phone.  Hmmm….Didn’t I review one of these?  Oh, no, wait, that was my LS800 tablet.  I’m not sure I truly see a difference here yet.  I did hear that the Samsung unit that is shown at Cebit will be able to run the multi-media player for video and audio without running the OS.  Hmmm, okay, well, that’s kind of cool, but not anything that will make me drop my tablet and run to buy one of these devices.  Let’s take a closer look:

  • 3 hour battery life….sounds about like what I get from my tablet. 
  • About the size of a paperback….okay, well the LS800 is about the size of a hardback book (a thin one), but I’m not sure I’d want to go much smaller in screen size if they actually want me to replace a laptop with it.
  • Play audio, games and video…well, it’s a computer.  I’ve often referred to my LS800 as the worlds most expensive MP3 player.
  • Supports a card that will allow for wireless telephony.  Okay, my tablet can’t directly do this, but there is Skype if I wanted to, and the fact that I carry a mobile phone (soon to have a new one).  I can’t see people ditching their mobile phones for this thing.  It’s just too big for that.  You’re not going to take it with you on a night on the town.  I could see people getting data plans for wireless internet access though, so the feature isn’t a complete waste.
  • It has a touch screen and 40 GB hard drive.  Okay, the tablet has a digitizer and a 60 gb hard drive (or at least mine does).  So, that will store about 2-3 movies (if you really compress them) or a healthy amount of audio files.  I’m not sure I like the idea of the touch screen on a device of this size.  It’s okay on a PDA, but I don’t think I’d be happy with a touch screen on my tablet (though with Vista they are supposed to support touch screens with tablets).
  • It has wi-fi and bluetooth.  Hmm, tablet….yes, check and check.

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s vision for these devices are.  They are supposed to be providing more information later on at Cebit.  The price tag on these things are a bit high (about £699, which translates to roughly $1,400).  As the BBC points out, you can get a fully functional laptop for that.  Of course, the LS800 costs more than that.

I can see a market for this device for students in college.  It’s cheaper than a tablet, very portable and is running the tablet OS, so they can load things like OneNote on it for classes, but have all their music and some video with it.  It will be interesting to see how well the touch screen actually works when taking notes on it (come to think of it, I didn’t see mention of a stylus…).

Do you have any thoughts on this new line of devices?