Almost There:  The Handbag Computer 

by Pat Meier-Johnson

It’s a close call every time I try to get work done on a plane on my laptop.  The guy in front of me gets a sudden urge to snooze.  Back goes his seat, threatening to catch the top my laptop in the tray well and snap it off into oblivion.  So when I saw two slim, small devices that run Windows XP, one from TabletKiosk and the other from Samsung,  I thought, now well there’s a nice size…5.5” high as opposed to my 10.5” laptop height, and 9” wide, but can I get any work done on it?

Meet the Ultra Mobile PC, a size and format alternative to the PC that looks like a small tablet (imagine a mini Etch a Sketch) that Microsoft has been trying to get off the ground for some years.

Still fraught with a slow start in the market, as it has no keyboard, no mouse (though you can add these) the UMPC is part business, part entertainment in a size that fits into a handbag.

I recently took a look at two UMPC devices: 

The TabletKiosk eo comes in glossy white or black and has a distinctive Braun-style euroappliance look to it.  The 1.7 lb. Samsung Q1b is thinner and has an edgier feel.

Each has a decent display area, and lends itself very well to playing DVD movies.  But you’ll have to download your movies, photos, and other entertainment from an external source because there’s no built-in DVD drive.  You can connect a mouse, keyboard and other things like cameras and external drives through the built-in USB ports, and listen to some very nice quality audio on earphones connected to the audio jack, though you’ll likely get only split monaural sound. 

These UMPC devices have wireless connectivity built-in, so I imagine I could do some serious surfing and Instant Messaging where there’s wireless.  Using the stylus for input right on the screen I discovered some decent handwriting recognition software, which is good because the on-screen virtual keyboards are a waste of time. But there are very good collapsible keyboards that connect via USB or Bluetooth that could make the UMPC a viable option for work on the road. 

Any application that runs on my desktop PC will run on these devices, so the usual Microsoft Office applications run as one would expect—still I need a keyboard and probably a mouse to make this a replacement for my laptop.  Photos, e-mail, Instant Messaging, entertainment, lots of games, even VoIP for Internet-based phone calls all work without a hitch.  Heck, I could even see using this in the kitchen for recipes.  The TabletKiosk version would go well with my coffeemaker.  With the touchscreen and stylus, I won’t be brushing crumbs out from between the keys.

There’s plenty of storage on the UMPC.  Hard drives range from 30 – 60GB like many decent laptops, and someday may be replaced by a flash drive (think of the card that’s in your camera or PDA—solid state, no moving parts) that could double the price, but hey, it’ll be twice as fast.  The price of these drives will come down in time, so better wait.

But at the end of the day, the UMPC is particularly nice for watching movies and it looks cool--almost as good as a puppy on a leash for getting comments from total strangers.  The screen display orientation can switch 90 degrees so I could read a book or documents on it vertically.  While the typical battery life has been around 2- 2.5 hours, the newest Samsung Q1b is rated at over four and a half hours so I could download and watch at least one if not two flicks.  And the multimedia Instant On feature conserves battery life and gets me to my movie faster without going through the Windows boot up hassle.

Entertainment, really, is the best use of the UMPC. The bright display on the Samsung Q1b won me over for watching movies, but as a working device for a business person on the road, the UMPC is too small.  My laptop still is my trusty workhorse.  I’ll just have to watch out for Bubba in the airplane seat in front of me.