OQO Ultra-Portable Impresses At CES

carpoolio writes "One of the most-talked about gadgets at CES last week was the OQO ultra personal computer (uPC). TechTV gave it a Best Mobile Device award, and deservedly so. It's a fully functional PC that fits in your pocket. Running on a 1 GHz Transmeta Crusoe processor, the uPC packs a 20 GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM, and has a color screen that slides up to reveal the keyboard. The price? Sub-$2,000. Photos available on OQO's Web site. Similar devices have come and gone in recent years, but this one really looks nice." OQO seems to be slowly migrating from vaporware to a release date - a CNET News article notes that "OQO said Thursday that it will begin selling the device in the second half of 2004."

The website is slashdotted...

[subk]

...And only two or three replies. This has got to be some kind of record.

uPC at PocketThings

[romper]

Here [pocketthings.com] is another site which shows the uPC -- with pics.

Soon to be Slashdotted too, I'm sure. :)

Vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

It's vaporware. Oqo has announced previous versions of this product several times, none have ever made it to market. I'd love to have one of them, and many people have been waiting for it, but at this point I'm not holding my breath. I'll believe it when I see it.

It made /. in 2002 for best vaporware:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/ 12/22/022821 7&mode=thread&tid=126

Slashdot should not be promoting hype from any vendor that has a history like OQO until it's actually released.

Didn't win Best of show

[mallocme]

Actually this didn't win best of show from techtv. The Denon/Mediabolic networked PVR won that award, this won in its category (mobile computing) http://www.techtv.com/news/ces2004/story/0,24195,3 591383,00.html ------ Got Wang? http://www.battlewang.com

Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

CNet has a picture of the device:
http://www.cnet.com/4520-7912_1-5116369-1.html?tag =top [cnet.com]

Re:Didn't win Best of show

[mallocme]

Here's a direct link:
Link to TechTV [techtv.com]

Re:Nice but..

[Wuss912]

thats what the docking station is for

Re:The website is slashdotted...

[tealwarrior]

You can still get pictures of it from google image search [google.com].

profit!!!

[74nova]

i think the lameness filter should now catch this "1. 2. 3.profit!!" bidness

and to stay on topic, i would really like one of these, but sub $2k isnt sub-enough for me. might even be worth it, but thats hefty for a college student. oh well, pdas get bigger/better, and laptops get better/cheaper. someday ill have the $ to get some neat tech toys...

Re:Vaporware

[howlatthemoon]

I agree. In a previous thread in last year's vaporware awards Nominations for 2003 Vaporware Awards [slashdot.org] I suggested OQO for 2003, before finding that they won for 2002. They even cited that 2002 award as part of their press package. While I was seriously interested at the $1K price point, 2K is getting a little steep, and that is making the big assumption they ever release one, I am not getting my hopes up and will stick with my clie NX70v

Uhm... Sony PCG-U1, PCG-U3, PCG-101???

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use one of these instead? The pricing on the OQO doesn't make it that much less of a bargain...

http://www.dynamism.com/u101/full/compare.jpg (Side by side U101 with older U1/U3 model)
http://www.dynamism.com/u101/full/dress.jp g
(In some lady's hand)

Re:That's weird

[BigDish]

No it's not an RS232 port. It's a propritary port. The unit comes with a cable that's about 3 feet long that breaks it out into other ports such as Ethernet, USB, VGA (and some others, I don't remember the details)
This thing is AWSOME! I saw it at CES and I'm seriously thinking of getting one when they come out. It is truely amazing. The only thing I'm not sure of is the screen seemed prone to getting damaged. They also claimed they had it running off the same battery at CES all day and it was still running (so several hour battery life)
Not sure if the pictures on this site show it (it's slashdotted) as none of the other pictures I've seen show this, but the screen slides up about 1/2 way to reveal a little QWERTY keyboard.

Re:I checked this out a couple days ago...

[BigDish]

I asked the rep about Linux on this and he told me that all their engineers run Linux and they actually had Linux running on it before Windows. That said, they won't officially support Linux, BUT they will provide any necessary drivers to run Linux on it.

No they didn't

[Groo Wanderer]

I played with one at CES, and I must say you are dead wrong here. Try building a mini-ITX box with the size that this thing has, not to mention the sheer slickness of the device. Oh yeah, there is that 5 hour battery life also.

Look at the size of the thing:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
I spent a lot of time talking to the OQO guys, this is done right. I have not played with the cappuccino, so I can't comment there, but OQO is slick as shit.

-Charlie

Re:iPod killer

[kyoko21]

This is the iPod killer. For pretty much the same price, it plays mp3s and it also plays divx, xvid, and it has its own screen to play it on. And it's only twice the thickness. (Did I mention it was almost the same price as a 20 gig ipod?)

ARchos [archos.com]

The skinny

[tooz]

OK, first of all, it might be later than expected, but it's not vapor. I've held it in my hands and played with it; it's a pretty damned sweet piece of hardware.

Second of all, it runs linux just fine. The designers have tested it with Red Hat 9 with no problems. They haven't tested BSD, but don't see any reason why that wouldn't work as well; there's some discussion of testing Darwin on it.

Third, I just asked one of the designers about ports. The reponse:
"We've got USB, FW (4 pin), Audio (stereo with "extra" feature lines), 2 docking ports, external 802.11 antenna port and Power. USB is 1.1, FW is 400Mb. On the docking connector, we've got: VGA, LVDS (for digital interface to LCD), Serial PCI (for external PCI chassis/devices), same FW, 2 USB lines, Audio, Power. On the docking cable, we've got a USB -> Ethernet converter with RJ-45 plug, male and female VGA connectors (for flexibility of plugging into devices without additional cables), and so on." There is no serial port on the device.

Fourth, the theory behind the device is to have a box that will convert from a PDA to a desktop machine and back again. You use it in the office, undock it, use it on the train, and redock it to use it again once you get home. No syncing required. It's not really meant just be a turbo-charged PDA.

Re:Windows Only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you forgotten who has a hand in this device? Linus - the man himself. It is almost a given that linux will run on it.

Years to reverse engineer? What do you think those guys developing linux for PDA's do? (www.handhelds.org).

Hmm... I see linux in the near future.

Re:Upgrade.

[sympatico]

> The only real change I noticed from the
> original spec was a 20Gb HD, vs 10Gb in the first.

maybe that is all *you* noticed but i noticed that that new one is *thinner* than the original. *wider* than the original. has a *higher resolution screen* than the original. and, more important, has a keyboard under the screen. version 1.0 had *no* keyboard.