After spending a few days reading the blogs and news feeds, I can say that the world is over the Origami hype. For a short time, I was caught up in the daily guessing game we played with Microsoft and their blogging expert, Robert Scoble over what Origami was going to look like and what Origami was about to blow out of the digital water. I have to commend Microsoft for finally understanding how to work the online community into a PR feeding frenzy. Steve Jobs has been doing it for years at Apple and it took this long for the Redmond PR steam engine to hit full speed.
After the curtains were raised and the world saw and heard the Origami presentations, they all exhaled and went back to work. It seems Robert Scoble was correct, it’s not an iPod killer, PSP killer, Nokia N90 killer, or Treo killer, or Palm killer. The only thing it really resembles is the OQO. To this point the Origami is still in development stage and has a battery life between 15 minutes and 3 hours, costs close to $1000.00, and according to CNET, the bloggers are disappointed and “if Microsoft is working toward a device like this, it’s taking baby steps to get there.”
In fact the final line in the CNET story says, “There’s already a cry for Steve Jobs and Co. to give a device like this the Apple design touch” I, for one, do not think Apple has a tablet computer in their immediate plans, but if they did, I am certain it would blow our socks off!
This think could be almost as commercially successful as the Newton.
Boring… that’s what I have to say. I’ve used a LOT of mobile devices and all I can say is that M$ hyped it up but even before they released it, I was bored. Microsoft is terrible with marketing and certainly at innovation. There is nothing insipiring about their products. Sure this thing is cheap (at leas they say so) but we’ve had these mini tablets for a while. OQO, Sony had one too, and I think Fujitsu had one or two. All I have to say it…. Zzzz….ZZzzzz.