Bill Gates Shows New Device
May 1st, 2005Bill Gates showed a prototype of a small hand-held computer last week and discussed the specs he hopes it will offer.
The full speech is available on-line here. It it is quite long. The part on what Gates called “an ultra-mobile 2007″ occurs at about minute 56. It only last a minute and a half. I see no clear evidence the prototype was functional in any sense, and the specs Gates talked about seem to be aspirations rather than currently-feasible build instructions. He wants the UM-PC to offer the following features:
The main problem delivering such a device in the form factor described (ultra-thin and ultra-light) would seem to be battery life. An all-day battery currently means a heavy battery, which undercuts the size aspirations. Also, I found my Sony U tended to run hot, and it had an Intel M chip and included a cooling fan. Thus it seems chips will have to run cooler before a full-blown PC can be as thin as the UM-PC prototype.
I am also skeptical about the appeal of an all-in one device. On the drawing board all-in-one devices seem attractive, but in the marketplace more focused devices like an iPod, Blackberry or Palm Pilot seem to do better in terms of initial adoption. As small as the UM-PC is, will people want a device that big to replace a tiny phone or a tiny camera? Maybe they will for video conferencing. But to me it looks too big to be attractive as a camera or phone per se.
On the other hand, as a PC small enough to take with you virtually everywhere, I think it is promising, particularly at the described price. I would certainly pay $800 for one.
I really like the handwriting recognition available in the current Tablet PC version of Windows and am willing to pay a good bit for something highly portable with that capability available. Still, I found in my experiment with the Sony U that I prefer having a keyboard for substantial text input. So I think Gates as right to describe this as an “Nth PC,” meaning the second or third (or more) PC that someone will have, not a primary device.
James Kendrick, whose JK on the Run blog is one of my favorites, has compared the UMPC to the existing Sony U here. I completely agree with him that the device should be a full-blown PC, not some anemic, crippled version of one.
A couple of other pictures of the device are here.
The device was shown at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) held in Seattle. The Gates speech was on April 27.