OQO Introduces Ultra-Personal Computer

The OQO Ultra-Personal Computer

When all the marketing pictures of the funky new palm-top OQO only show it in the off state something in the back of my head wonders if the manufacturers have actually moved past the prototype stage, or not. In the past we have seen AutoCAD renderings of servers which never made it into the market, so it seems only fair that we should be shown a functional, and working OQO device before vesting too much interest in it, and its' ability to alter the portable market place.

The small device is the product of the design team which collaborated with Apple on the Titanium notebook (which got quite hot apparently) so it is not surprising to see the metal theme carried through. This time around we have a Transmeta TM5800 Crusoe processor running at a projected speed of 1GHz. Since the 0.13micron process TM5800 chips are currently working away at 867MHz I guess this answeres our questions about prototype status. In any regard, the OQO sports a 10GB ATA100 hard drive, 256MB of memory and a 4" high-res XGA LCD display with Syanptics touchscreen. Battery life is being quoted at two hours during "movie applications" and 8 hours for general use.

The device which measures just 4.9"x2.9"x0.9" and weighs 9oz, or 250 grams also packs in Firewire, USB, audio-out, 802.11 wireless lan, Bluetooth, and an "OQO-Link" docking connector. Quite a lot for a device so small isn't it?

On first glance the OQO resembles a glorified HDD-MP3 player which has been grafted to a plam-top notebook, and since there are no other comparable products on the market it is hard to see how useful something like this will ultimately be as it competes directly against the Palm and enhanced PDA-phone markets. That competition is not direct as Jory Bell and Joe Betts-Lacroix the makers see it, but given the formfactor of the OQO, comparisons are apt to be made. The units are expected to be available in the second half of 2002, come pre loaded with Windows XP, and retail for less than that of a full-feature notebook. The company mentions on their website that the OQO may even support GPRS and CDMA2000 along with the standard 802.11b and Bluetooth.

It will be interesting to see how the OQO develops, and if consumers will ultimately embrace it. At the very least, we'd like to see a working model before we get too excited about what could potentially be a very cool little device. :)

Contents of Article: OQO
Pg 1. — OQO Introduces Ultra-Personal Computer Pg 2. Full Press Release

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