“UMPC sales haven’t made a blip on the industry radar screen. ‘We are talking a fraction of a percent of the total PC market. Noise,’ says analyst Leslie Fiering of Gartner.” – BusinessWeek.
The TeleRead take: The additional power needed to run XP is one of the problems with the UMPC. At least the Linux-based Foleo (PR photo via Mobile Gazette story) avoids those hassles. Meanwhile here are some thoughts from Carol Jurd, source of the above link:
“I guess we have well and truly scooped them as we have been discussing UMPCs for some months. I wonder how long it will take for these journalists to see that a UMPC would make an ideal device for reading all those pages of reports that the average business person, lawyer or accountant has to wade through, along with two dozen law journals, newspapers and so on. And maybe even a few e-books to liven up the long plane trip after examining the case law of Grunch V Grunch 1987! Having the whole lot weigh in at less than your shaving/make-up bag is also a big plus.
“Back in the days of vinyl records I have no doubt there were people out there saying CDs would never take off because they were too small.”
Weren’t the E Ink devices supposed to be the ideal vehicle for this?
But, via eReader, people will have a much wider selection of books than via the Sony Reader. Of course, there’s the forthcoming Amazon device, which will work with Mobipocket, but still have the screen contrast problem,which the LCD-based Foleo avoids. – David