Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Friday 3/3/2006

Origami. The teaser campaign has all the subtlety of Holbein's portrait of Anne of Cleves, which persuaded King Henry VIII to marry her without actually meeting the woman. When he did — too late to back out — the horrified royal could barely contain his disgust. It's unlikely that Origami will incur the wrath of any particular crowned head of Europe, but it'll have to work hard to get over the feeling that's already rampant in the industry: it's a scaled-down Tablet PC that will have a hard time replicating the rip-roaring success of the original.

For future reference, here's how not to completely blow a teaser campaign.

Do not include the real description of the product in the source of your teaser Web site Do not have your major partner announce the product family two days before you do Do not tell The New York Times  that the first generation's going to be rubbish. "They will be hefty, at about two pounds, and have a limited battery life of three hours or so between charges, the Microsoft consultant said. A new generation of low-power chips, extending battery life to six hours, will come next year. Later models, he added, will come with screens of four inches or so." That's really selling version one point nought.

I've already described my initial reaction to the UMPC — the Ultramobile PC, as Intel calls the Origami family — when I was given an enthusiastic briefing on it during a trip to Intel Israel late last year. It's too small to be productive, too big to be really portable, the operating system is far too fat, slow and complicated for the task and the hardware burden required will stymie any attempt to slim things down. It's a bigger PDA with the clunkiness of a laptop.

Who wants one, and what will they use it for? OQO's already in the market: although it hasn't been setting any sales records, the company's just announced a tablet version of its original handheld XP device. It's also just got another $20m injection of cash, which may come in handy if it's suddenly got to compete with Samsung and the other brothers. But I've never met anyone who's got one, nor anyone who's wanted one for more than pure curiosity value.

Still, let nobody say I'm prejudging the issue. I'll be at the Intel Developer Forum next week to see what crawls out of the dry ice, and if I'm completely wrong on all points I'll be delighted to take my lumps. Now, has anyone got a monastery I can dissolve?