Those of you who read 37 Signals may have already seen these two articles but, for as much as I liked my Newton MessagePad 2100 and preach for a MessagePad 5000, I couldn’t pass them up:
Price, Interface Dampen ‘Origami’ Debut
‘Origami’ Stumps CEO’s in Jobs-style Presentation
My thoughts, after the jump.
When I saw the original stories a couple months back, I was optimistic. Color screen, about the size of a mass-market paperback, regular computer OS, handwriting recognition. Original price estimates were in the $500-$700 range.
Now that it’s been released, the price has jumped to $1200. Why would I buy one when I can get a full-size laptop for half that? This alone is enough to kill it dead. But even the manufacturers are downplaying the devices.
I like the idea of the on-screen keyboard done as an arc under the thumbs. Nice touch. The manufacturers downplay this as well, saying “The most skilled developer in our team could type just 100 characters per minute. Some people can type more than 500 characters on their cell phones.”
Umm. 100 characters per minute, divided by 5 (average word length in English), gives us 20 word per minute. Not horrible, if you ask me. Sure it could be faster, but how many people can really type that fast? It’s not the interface slowing them down.
And in the second story, they had CEOs demonstrating the product. Can you think of a person less equipped to demonstrate a tech product. Other than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, most CEOs have someone to do their technical work for them.
The mistakes mentioned in the article are all typical presentation blunders — including running out of battery.
They even go so far as to beef the thing for only having a couple hours battery life. I don’t know about you guys, but my laptop only gets about 2-3 hours unplugged on a full charge. If I’m running the DVD, it gets barely 2 hours. That’s long enough for an airplane ride, even without an iGo with air adapter and the appropriate tip.
Still, I think these buggers have promise, but the price will kill them. If I can find one for around $500, and it has built-in WiFi, Bluetooth, and handwriting recognition, I would be tempted to buy it.