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When will US companies learn that they are the only country in the world to use m/d/y numeric format - please Mr. Scobliezer, King of Communication give someone a big kick where their spine ends and get them to use Alpha numeric dates.
Even with all the rumors swirling about tomorrow's Apple announcement, no one really feels like they know, so Apple gets excitement created without a lot of work on their part. Just saying "We're announcing something on Feb. 28th creates a storm of excitement".
That's something MS has little of.
If the device is good enough, people will buy it regardless of what we know about it NOW.
The market know(or will know)- more about the product, then the company that makes it. Yes, the market is interconnected and will talk-may it be bad or good- they will still talk. What matters is that the product speaks for itself in the marketplace!!
Yes-under promise over deliver
if it's a true convergent device, It might be something that I've been longing for...for years...
hmmm...I'm willing to bet that it's got something to do with Transmeta's secret MS project and the m-systems system-on-chip deal made 2 years back...
Farooq: if it takes until December to buy one then I agree that it is doomed. But, I still haven't heard yet when the average person will be able to buy one.
Looking at the target market, I'd say that if they don't have the channel stuffed with a ton by May that they'll be missing a big opportunity (the back to school market, which arrives in June/July).
Good !! Now tell that to Edgeio :)-
Speaking of history...
A History Lesson
Well letsee, Bill Gates and Paul Otellini talk about the Haiku and Ruby ultra-mobile prototypes, Softies talk about it forever, Evan hints and teases, more Microsoft blogger hints from from Tablet Team outsiders, that Tablet Team has a new product coming out soon, but given a vague date ranges of 2007ish, then Bert on Channel 9 talking "Smartphones" and "Tablets" and other read between the lines stuff, rumors leak to press, lots of chatter that it's hitting (all shrug tho), Intel UMPC news all over Asian press (Samsung presenting at CEBIT), with Samsung, LGE, Acer, Averatec and ASUS UMPC news all over Asian Press, Tablet PC Partner Conference where it's shown around, and word leaks out, more rumors, with MVP sorts yapping it up (nudge nuddge, "off-the-record" yet "on-the-record"), and ArtRage fans spreading rumors, and then a 'secret site' that you somehow missed? And now an agency video that leaked was detailing what everyone thought anyways. And now, when everyone knows, they still aren't pulling off the curtains just yet? And then you are miffed you weren't informed? While I agree they should get key spokespeople in line, you sure had to be asleep at the wheel to miss this one. Just going to Digitimes daily coulda seen it coming a ten miles away.
But really old news after the Evan post...
http://blogs.msdn.com/evanf/archive/2005/04/03/...
"In other news, the moment of truth came and went...I was part of a small group of people who had a concept presented at the Executive Retreat a couple of weeks ago. The feedback that we got from the execs was to go ahead and build it. So this upcoming week a few people will be shopping around the concept to the OEMs and if one of them (or more decides to build it) we've got a new and interesting product to put together."
--------
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/02/06/intel_umpc/
"Intel is gearing up for the release of its handtop computer platform later in this quarter: The first "Ultra Mobile PCs" (UMPCs) will arrive with a standby time of a week and include WWAN and GPS capability. A second batch of UMPCs will follow in the second half of this year and come with Windows Vista preinstalled, TG Daily has learned."
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2006/02/...
"Rob Bushway is attending the Partner briefing hosted by Microsoft, a meeting where MS is sharing information about upcoming products in the Mobile PC (and Tablet PC) arena with OEM partners and developers. There is exciting news coming out of this meeting about "Mobile Lifestyle PCs" that will be pen enabled, have long battery life, and cost around $500."
Final thought: For the life of me I still can't figure out why HP killed the TC line.
So now, a 'second batch' that will come with Vista later. So pay not much attention to the first one then. Well something for Gates to chat up at the next CES, which is about when it will be in volume. Speaking of hardware glitches, geesh I am STILL unable to get a Xbox 360 anywhere retail, I guess just wait another 2-4 weeks, right? Least the UMPC tossed to OEMs.
But it's doomed if the Tablet PC team is doing the Marketing and OEMs are doing bare min. I predict a similar trajectory, gadget freaks will have 'origasms', but the mainstream will find the UMPC still too big, and will find their needs met in Treo. And limited vertical use, more consumer, but the fan sites and MVP folk should start regging the domains now.
"Microsoft discussed the Ultra-mobile Lifestyle PC with partners last week and hinted that an announcement might be forthcoming from OEMs very soon." - Yeah, I was tapping you too (email overload?), but I think you were in some Swiss WiFi Hot Tub then. :)
But here's what's already out there...
Cost - around $500, well under Tablet PC $2,000 ranges.
CPU - ULV Pentium M
Avail: Dec 2006 to Jan. 2007
OEMs - Samsung, LGE, Acer, Founder, Averatec and ASUS (to start). Toshiba and Sony already flirted off per past attempts? (But Tosh's M400 a dream).
Breakthrough Period - mid-2007-2008 timeframes.
Battery Life - around 8 hours.
Connectivity - WiFi, EVDO, HSDPA, GPS
Touchscreen, no Active-Digitizer
All the announcements are gonna be at CeBit.
if it’s not available until December then it’s already dead.
Nah, it won't break-thru until 1Q 2008 with Vista anayways. Most will sit out the first round, only early adopters, geek folk and MVP wantabe's will clamor first hit, funding the beta testing. Still if got good battery life, and a good sync story, could get some hit's. But 'tweeners' never gain much ground.
But I think some OEMs should flag this up as the new corporate NEC Mobile Pro, and include an attached keyboard. Get corporates and verticals on board, and then hit consumer. Tablet tried that but wasn't able to break into consumer.
But one of these suckers with Vista and OneNote 2 and good connectivity story? I could see it. But then I could see Tablet too, and look what happened there. But the beyond PDA market is ripe, so timing on their side.
It depends on real world vetting. Still think it's a hard sell to mainstream, work on verticals and coporates too.
this issue really illustrates just how bad the loss of focus is at Microsoft. it's not even a "right hand doesn't know what the left one is doing" anymore, that would actually be an improvement.
Now it's "The right index finger doesn't know what the right thumb is doing"
The lack of internal communication I see on a regular basis from MS is really quite shocking.
So what? They'll be announcements that several different OEMs have expensively mangled this design spec into several different products of varying desireability. They'll be announcements that there will be availability at some future date. Even your silly announcement in a few days is not an announcement; as PT and others have mentioned, you announced this concept over two years ago and had actually had a few attempts at the smaller form even years before that.
How could you say they were shipping if you didn't know. I don't care whether they should have told you or not. But I do care that you will stand guarantee for something that you don't even know.
You should have subscribed to their mailing list maybe :) if you wanted to be in the loop.
I'm glad to see that MSFT is getting more skilled in trying to generate buzz for an upcoming product launch.
The bigboy bloggers have really fallen for this strategy...what lemmings. It is amazing to watch these Old world PR teams adapt to manipulating/shifting perception within the blogosphere.
Leaking pictured, videos, and mysterious flash websites are a great start..... now all you guys need is a hardware product that doesn't suck. Apple has mastered the 'launch'...everyone anticipates what they're about to launch.
I mean how much did MSFT have to spend to hype XBOX 360? You guys are about equal to Sony...maybe a little worse, I'm sorry to say.
I'm a big fan of your blog, but it would be better if the MSFT PR machine didn't have to approve your various postings in advance.... that's sort a buzz kill. It would definately make things more interesting, but I suppose it would open legal liability.
Best regards,
-E. David Zotter
Are they?
This will be MS talking about a spec. A Month later 2 or 3 OEMs will show a prototype. At the earliest a device will not arrive until Vista's launch. We don't know if OEMs will remain consistent or if they will be able to get all the features in at a reasonable cost or if they will be expensive. From there, we don't really know if having a 4x6 or 5x8 version of a notebook or tablet is really worth it--does it make a good media/personal device? does it make a good laptop?
Personally, All I see is a vaporous hype machine similar to the Hailstorm campaign, the Athens prototype campaign, the PMP/iPod-killer campaign, the SPOT campaign, the XBox2 campaign, etc...
OK, its got color, and bluetooth (wifi?) but its pretty much a Newton. Which is not surprising, since MS hired the original Newton architect several years ago.
Which makes me wonder, what took so long?
And why will this succeed where Newton failed ("failure" is actually debatable - I know half a dozen people with 3-4 newtons each stockpiled away for the future so they'll have replacements)?
Given that I can have a whole computer in a similar sized package these days (looks about the size of a small ibook), I don't see the market for it.
"The danger of not letting your bloggers know… (more Origamisms)"
Couldn't it equally have been:
THE DANGER OF BLOGGING (HYPING) SOMETHING YOU KNOW SHIT ABOUT
Hey, will this thing have the sideshow stuff on it ?
1. It will have some kind of Sideshow-lite built in to allow playback of WMA and MP3 without having to fully wake the device.
2. It will have 2 upgrade types: USB 2.0 and FireWire. There will be no PCMCIA.
3. It will have Radeon 92xx-class graphics
4. The .NET 2.0 framework will be preinstalled.
5. It will not have built-in DVD or CDROM. EtherNet/WiFi/USB only.
6. It will be a PlaysForSure compatible
7. Its battery life will be surprisingly long. Maybe 5 hours.
Christopher: Otto says you're wrong. Shipping a lot sooner than end of the year.
Met: I never said they would be shipping on the 3rd. Please go back and read carefully.
Unless MS is making the hardware too, what this is going to depend on is OEMs buying into MS's hype, or MS just flinging money at them to offset the startup costs. If MS is just showing off yet another damned demo, like the light tables that require some bizarre future world without children or sick people, and where there are maids following everyone around and cleaning up after them.
I'm just not seeing any sign of focus out of MS when Windows is involved.
Because I've gotten to know you pretty well. Thus far, I know that I knew exactly, if not more than, what you have posted over the last few days, and I consider my information to be "shit". We all knew an "ultraportable" platform was being worked on.
This post is clearly about the issue of: what happens when the hype exceeds the reality. You said they would be announcing a "device"; they are not, Microsoft is not going to release a device; they are going to release a spec that they hope other OEMs produce devices modeled off of.
With Apple, the hype can exceed the announcements but Jobs will sell it like it's the best, cutting-edge product out there. Balmer (aka Monkey Boy) unfortunately can't pull that off. So will this be bigger than Apple's announcement? Apple is set to announce:
a) iPod Boom Box - will it have extra harddrive capacity? a video screen? Who knows, but it will be touted as the best and sell like crazy.
b) Mac Mini - will it have DVR capabilities for $500? A built-in iPod dock? Front Row 2.0 and an iPod remote? It will certainly sync with the iPod Video so if it comes with this it will be a lock for media centers everywhere and blow the MS media center out of the water.
c) iTunes to sell movies - this just secures the rest of these items. Huge for the industry.
d) True Video iPod - as the current iPod video is only a hold over until the real release of the Video iPod, this thing could be a killer product. Speculated to have a full screen on the front of the iPod (touch screen) and come with HiFi, this thing could be a winner. (Origami may unseat it in the business market - if there is one for the Origami) but otherwise the bulk of 12-45 year olds will purchase the iPod Video. It has even been rumored to have DVR capabilities right from the iPod but I don't think that will materialize yet.
e) Possible replacement for the iBook laptop with the MacBook laptop with built-in video camera. (I don't think that this will come out either as Apple still has a bunch of iBooks in stock and usually replace items when inventory is out or very low)
f) iPhone - again, I do not believe this will come out at this point.
So while some of these items will (may?) come out, or other items are released, it is usually a big announcement when Jobs and company invite media to their own turf (to keep the announcement even MORE secretive).
Will MS be able to pull that off? Maybe if they incorporate xBox games in the Origami, include a music player as good or easier than the iPod, a better version of iTunes, etc.. If this flops, the media will not be as nice for their next announcement.
MS should have come out and said what it CAN do by now. Not some rumors on what it could do.
Anything that MS can say now will surprise anyone.
Remember that was the argument I had yesterday.
After seeing the video Im not really impressed because the video made it seem like it was easy to carry and to be honest it doesnt look like it will. If the item isnt small around the size of an Ipod and thin not thick its going to be like one of those fat PocketPC phones that people tend not to buy becuase they aren't portable enough.
It wasn't me, it was Intel and an OEM source. I don't make up my own information, I just pick from the chatter and try to weave together seemingly disparate threads into a cohesive whole. But shipping dates aren't fixed. So no biggie. Otto knows more than I do. But I am not sure that holds for all OEMs, least not from what I am hearing. I was just saying what's out there and what I have heard, and what the press chatter is. But it's not gospel. But even if shipping that soon, I'd hold till second Vista round.
I would kinda like one of these things, Handheld Pro 2000, I always liked. And big fan of Psion Revo's, if had instant-on would be perfect.
But then I do agree with the "vaporous hype machine" tagging and agree with Gobbels. And been down the 4 year tar-pitted Tablet road.
Hopeful, but wary.
PS - You miss InkGestures? Loren actually 1.0'ed something. ;) And not something freewareish MathPracticeish.
Waiting for the launch...I LOVE MS
Irony abounds. Who outside of a few Tablet PC Partner Conferences attendee's and press chatter people like me knew, before that link? Still even I am surprised by the acclerated schedule (even tho saw it coming), I thought UltraMobile would only be in the Vista timeframe, they must want to beta-test the public the first round. Always risky imho.
Look at the success of the Nokia 770 -- which, although being smaller, lighter, Linux-based and apparently with a slower CPU -- has the same carryaround appeal.
The 770 was designed to fit in a pocket (but still display an 800-pixel-wide webpage for satisfactory surfing). I carry mine around in my hip bag all day. Yet sometimes I would prefer a slightly larger screen, and I'd settle for carrying it around in my backpack.
Main point for me? I use it all the time as soon as I step away from the desktop.
that box is large and ugly. the keyboard 'add-on' is uglier. the part where they magnify and go 100x into the 'wi-fi zone' sign is the ugliest.
1 GHz
512 MB RAM
6" screen
12 hour battery life
Well, evidently...we are coming out with a new version of Windows. That's right. Heard it here first. I can't divulge a lot right now (the walls have ears), but rumor is that it is going to be called Vista. Yeah...I know...I was as surprised as you are. Now the notworthy part is that Vista will be available in a Boom Box form factor and WILL work with Intel chips.
I am also going to go out on a limb here and start the hype machine rolling...but I heard we are thinking about the possibility of another Halo game. Yeah. Cool.
Finally, as I was leaving I saw one key executive talk to another...I tried to get close and all I heard was this...you read into it what you will...but one guy said, "Hey...You hear anything about that other thing?" And the woman replied, "Yes...The tall man walks with a limp by the breakwall."
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.
http://blogs.opml.org/marty/2006/03/02
-- a guy who worked on design of teeny tablets -- that I'm going to love it. I'm thinking the size is going to make ALL the difference.
They should have a huge memory and battery life. This is unlikely from a product on an Intel chip.