In the time between Microsoft’s Origami announcement back at this year’s CeBIT convention and now, we’ve had quite a few letdowns about the capabilities and features contained inside these devices. As time wears on, the appeal of this new technology lessens as prices go up, features go down, and features that are needed for the devices to be truly mobile are nowhere to be found. With the majority of UMPCs hovering on or above the $999 price line, do these devices have a chance of being truly successful?

Microsoft initially promised us a $499-$999 device that could run all day on one charge, run an Intel Pentium M, Celeron M, or VIA C7-M processor clocked at 1 GHz, 256 MB of RAM, 30 to 60 GB hard drives, a 7″ (minimum) touch screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, and Microsoft’s Windows XP Tablet Edition with special Touch Pack software allowing users to utilize a special on-screen keyboard called DialKeys. However, since that time, the actual devices themselves are quite a bit less magnificent that originally envisioned. A lot of UMPCs, like the Samsung Q1, only have a 900 MHz Celeron M processor, yet still cost upwards of the $999 bound that Microsoft envisioned. For the price of a Q1 ($1,200 approximately), one could head over to Dell and grab an Inspiron 710m 12.1″ notebook. So, justifying the price vs. power component of the UMPCs is rather difficult.

UMPC

So can these machines still succeed? Yes, if they can carve out a niche that no other computer is capable of accomplishing (or capable of accomplishing as-easily). So far, UMPCs have shown that they can play videos and browse the internet on the go, but they haven’t shown any truly unique capabilities so far. Sure, it’s nice to have a GPS system or music player in your car, but devices to do those things already exist. While it’s nice to have a large touch screen to use for input, that’s really nothing new either. If UMPCs are going to survive past their first generation, they will have to find some use that other computers can’t do as-easily. If they can’t then the machines will end up falling by the wayside, and will become forgotten. We’ll need to wait and see what happens as time passes; there have been several interesting pieces of software already unveiled for the new devices, and there are bound to be more in the future. But again, unless the devices can find a unique place in the computing world, I don’t expect to see a second or third generation of UMPCs.