Dustin, from the Microsoft Origami project team
answers some questions about the Origami ultra mobile PC platform.
Some exerpts (
I've edited the questions for clarity):
Q: Does the origami have instant on?
A: Since these devices are XP based, there is nothing special that increases the boot sequence speed for them, but the resume from standby is quite good and fast. Most of us have begun setting our untis up to default into standby mode which allows you to save battery life when not in use without having to go through the entire XP boot sequence everytime...
Q: Does Origami have Voice Recognition?
A: The XP Tablet PC Edition does have speech recognition built in and the Samsung I know has an array microphone that should work pretty well, honestly I haven't tried it on the Samsung devices yet.
Q: No one will look twice at a device that has a life of 3 hours.
A: Battery life has a long way to go before it meets the holly grail of lasting all day, but I think you'll find you have power available enough places, enough times of the day to find the product really fun and functional even with 3 hours of battery life. Using it at home you'll have power near by if you need a charge and the car solutions like Samsung showed at CeBIT have a power cord built into it. I'm not saying all day battery life isn't ideal, but the units are still super useful and most people will use it on and off throughout the day not all day long, nonstop.
Q: Where is the good old keyboard?
A: A lot of interesting work continues to be been done to offer multiple text input methods. While a traditional keyboard is ideal when sitting down typing it's a pretty lously solution when standing up, or using one hand. This is where our explorations in things such as Dialkeys, handwriting recognition and others come into play. Companies such as T9 have proven that there is more than one way to skin the text input cat, thumb based qwerty keyboards like those on Smartphones are another example. The real question is what is the best text input alternative for the UMPC form factor when you're most mobile. I love Dialkeys, so I think it has a lot of possibilities but we'll continue to look into many other alternatives as well. Also, partners wil be offering a range of keyboard for those on the go such as the Eleksen fabric keyboard prototype that was shown at CeBIT to Bluetooth keyboards that fold up.
Q: Will Vista run well on the UPMC?
A: The Vista requirements aren't out yet, but realistically if the units have the hardware specifications that Vista requires they should be able to run it. My group will be doing a fair amount of testing to see how Vista runs on the various devices over the upcoming months.
Be sure to check out the rest of the article for the full Q&A, and check previous posts for a history of Origami (including how it started from a concept called "Haiku.")