Out of nowhere, I’ve found myself hooked on reading blogs about Ultramobile PC’s (UMPC’s) and tablets-PC.  I’m addicted to reading about the lives these people lead, constantly receiving, buying, using and reviewing Tablet PC and UMPC’s as well!  I’m not sure where they get the money? I mean, they can’t seem to get enough of them!  More annoyingly… neither can I stop reading about whole thing. 

We all (myself and them) are feeding off the same thing I guess, except (since I don’t actually own a UMPC or tablet) I feel like I’m a bit more objective about the ‘apples of their eyes’.  For me, I find TabletPC’s and UMPC interesting more because they come so agonisingly close to something which will be so perfect, one of those things you’ll wonder “how did we cope before we had these?”  And like anything so close… so almost right, they can be so wrong!   That’s the other reason why I’m addicted.   

Admittedly, I have to separate my thoughts on UMPC’s from those on Tablet PC’s.  Personally, I think a Tablet PC will replace my laptop one day soon, and I’ll never look back.  Not so, for the current crop of UMPC’s, which seemingly have grown out of the Tablet PC scene.  I guess the two are related, UMPC’s do tend to use touch screens, so…

Anyway, the topic for this post has been developing in my head over the last month or so, my view from a distance has lead me to a number of conclusions about why these people are in such a frenzy over these things and why they are to talk about them at length for 100 minutes at a time.  And when you can talk about something for so long (it even remains vaguely interesting) whatever you’re discussing probably has more than just a few issues with it! 

So what’s this about?  It’s about how and why UMPC’s come so close to being right, but I think they have gone down a dead end road which finishes in no-mans-land!

I’ll explain.  To my mind, there a bunch of practical design issues that were been left behind in the… rush?  maybe? to produce gadgets that hook into the hype of ‘a new thing’.  The new thing being pushed by MS and Intel, you know the origami concept?  I don’t have a problem with companies trying to introduce new concepts for products, but they must have hoped that the manufactures would have given a little more thought to what they would create?  I mean is this a case of getting the horse upside down or something?  They’ve been busy developing a market for origami, a device they say we ought to need; but did anyone think to wonder what it is we actually need?

So ask yourself… what is it you actually need?  Then ask yourself what can provide that?  Or what will provide that?

When I ask that, I end up with something different, a warm bath?  Well yes, but also a useful little gadget, but the problem is it doesn’t really exist right now.  Why it doesn’t exist now brings me back to the practical issues I think they’ve missed.  This really goes hand in hand with the ‘what I need?’ question.

1. What I need is a way to have access to the internet as I know it (on a PC screen) when I’m out and about.  So what do I mean ‘out and about’?  Do I mean Walking?  In a shop, in the car, at a friend’s place - getting lunch, in the park, standing up?…  Sitting down?  I would say all of the above. 
2. I also need a phone… got that! Nothing new there, and lets not try to reinvent the phone. 
3. Finally, productivity away from the office or home – out and about… umm?  All the time?   So that’s 100% productive… all the time?  Sure, I could aim for 100%, but how often do I have to be 100% productive when I’m ‘out and about’?  Probably worth asking that question for yourself, and also this one… wouldn’t I keep on working at my desk even though I could be working beside a flip’n lake or something? 

I appreciate that is different for people working on the road… but even then, don’t many people on the road simply save doing intensive work for when they’re back at base?  Having said all that, I guess if I could have access to good levels of productivity, then that’s all-the-better. 

4.  (Yeah I know 3 was suppose to be the last)… anyway, same goes for GPS navigation, maybe not essential, but nice. 

So that’s a rundown on the everyday practical use I could see in my life for one of these. 

The next practical question I ask is - how I want it? 
Ideally, I want it in the form of something that goes in my pocket, where I forget I have it until I need it. 
Next I want it to be big enough to read and see sensibly.  I don’t want to peer!  For example if I read a magazine I’m not peering at it.  If I’m looking at the address list in my phone I’m peering. 

For me that means when I access the internet on the go I want to see it at fairly normal size.  For me I would say 12in diagonal semi-widescreen would be a comfortable viewing size.  Maybe a little smaller, 10in to 12 inches, it’s hard to say for sure.

So I want it in my pocket and I want it to be viewable…. um… that doesn’t exist right now.  hmmm.  Pockets are not that big and screens don’t fold. 

Don’t panic!  That just means we’re going to be looking at a trade-off with those 2 things.  I mean, this is practical stuff!  Do I want viewable screen or… small size?  I’m picking viewable screen, maybe you like to peer at things?  But I don’t.  (and …And! trying to achieve both things with today’s technology is the dead end I’m talking about,  but anyway I’ve moved on from there… ) 

That’s a big step forward:  This thing, whatever it is - it will not be going in my pocket!  Soooo…. I have to carry it.  Nooooo, not in my hand all day, it will have to go into a bag.  So for me this all comes down to what size bag am I likely to carry around?  If I answer that, then I’ll be in the right place to decide what sort and size of internet access UMPC type of thing is right for me. 

Just looking around at the bags available, I would go so far as to say that a computer company planning on making the perfect mobile computer, should also be making the perfect bag for it. 

(There are some nice bags out there, but bag making people still only think of a ‘bag’ like something you put things in… I feel it could be more than that, buy maybe I’ll go into that in another post.)

In my case, I’ve looked around and a leather portfolio or a small over the shoulder bag, or small backpack would be fine.  So what can I fit in there?  Satchel bags will take an A4 notepad and a few other things… over the shoulder will take a few books and notepads and backpack will take the same.  I see the satchel bag as the smallest out of those.  Hence this thing will have to be thin, but can be up to the size of an A4 page… easy.  Well sort of, since the other aspect is its weight.  It would be really nice to be able to hold this thing in one hand without it ripping your shoulder off!  But I leave that thought alone for the moment.

In light of that, lets go back to my list of want’s… there was the question of productivity… now that we know this thing doesn’t go in a pocket, maybe some level of productivity is possible?  And let everyone face facts!  There’s a certain small size, below which, productivity really falls off.  However, I’ve decided that my screen should be around 10in to 12in diagonal… maybe adding some productivity credentials is more of an option now?  Trading off small size for view-ability flowed right on to potentially better productivity. 

As I think about this, I keep coming back to the fact that these devices are never going to fit in your pocket - they will always be carried in a bag, so why on earth do they have to so small?  Maybe there’s a belief that ‘small’ must be ‘light’, but unfortunately the little UMPC’s that are reasonably powerful are heavy (by all accounts I haven’t picked one up myself.)  I’m trying to think of where this might be important, and the only time I can think of is when you’re using this thing standing up, maybe on a street corner walking somewhere on a job site… or on a train or bus.  In which case, sure it has to be light, smallish but most importantly comfortable to hold with one hand!  I don’t think it means it has to be almost small enough to fit in a pocket… but not quite?

Hence, I think this is where the argument stops, let PDA’s or smart-phones be at one end and small Tablet PC’s at the other – thin, convertible, with a screen size 10 – 12in.  And the middle ground… serves no real purpose at all!  I’m sure the UMPC lovers would argue – “Not so!”.  I don’t know, maybe they like the fact it’s almost right.   (ok… that sounds a little too harsh)

There’s a concept in air-conditioning and ventilation design that talks of ‘hunting’ or ‘fan hunting’.  It happens where the system as a whole is not in balance a vicious circle is set up where the fan speed will ‘hunt’ up and down, but never finding a steady resting place.  I think the same thing is happening in the UMPC scene.  Back and forth they go – ‘productivity!’, ‘can’t pocket’, ‘too big’, ‘screen too small’, ‘no productivity’, ‘not mobile’, ‘too big’, ‘hard to read’, ‘no keyboard’, ‘too heavy’, ‘lacking features’.  Get the idea?  Actually, I don’t mind the fact they’re stuck in that spin cycle, it’s fun watching the whole thing go round and round.

This all points to a conclusion I came to in my very first post here – at the end of the day, in an effort to make UMPC’s a ‘gap filler’ between PDA’s and laptops they have ended up creating a compromise of those 2 things, but in the process the compromises made, fail the end product.  They end up not being particularly good at anything.  Well… for me anyway.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 5:13 pm and is filed under My thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.