Samsung Q1 UMPC to go on sale May 7th for $1,100

At a San Francisco press briefing and product demonstration that hopefully went better than its disastrous Korean counterpart last month, executives from Samsung, Microsoft, and Intel jointly announced pricing and availability details for the official U.S. release of the Q1 UMPC. Starting on May 7th, early-adopters will be able to pick up a Q1 -- along with all the high-profit-margin accessories -- at Best Buy's e-tail location for $1,100, with an in-store rollout planned for "later this summer." As you're probably already aware, the Q1, along with models from Asus, Founder, and TabletKiosk, is among the first generation of so-called Ultra Mobile PCs designed to enhance your on-the-go lifestyle, and sports a 7-inch touchscreen, Celeron M ULV processor, 40GB hard drive, 512MB RAM, 802.11b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0.

[kevin @ May 1st 2006 3:16PM]

And the world responds:

"yawn..."

[12:32pm @ May 1st 2006 3:16PM]

I hit the pricing, right to the dollar.

[The1 @ May 1st 2006 3:34PM]

This would have been a cheaper product if MS decided not to use an Intel proscessor.

[Ben @ May 1st 2006 3:39PM]

I'll settle for my Palm V

[Korey @ May 1st 2006 3:39PM]

Where are the ones we were supposed to get my fave which i havent heard anything of was the one in the trailer with the girl that was dope

[Aaron @ May 1st 2006 3:53PM]

Korey,

Go back to school. Please.

[jr @ May 1st 2006 4:04PM]

yes that was extremely "dope" Korey.

[TIMMAH! @ May 1st 2006 4:12PM]

Overpriced and underpowered... I predict flop.

[calc.exe @ May 1st 2006 4:18PM]

Drop to $800 and include GPS please.

Hopefully 2nd gen UMPCs aren't too far off.

[JeffNLA @ May 1st 2006 4:24PM]

Does ANYONE think this device will sell? $1100 for this? Who did the marketing studies for Samsung?

uugghh!

[Brink @ May 1st 2006 4:28PM]

Whatever happened to the ~600$ price point? For this price I'll buy a tablet pc for another couple hundred thank you. Not that I'm honestly going to do that either...but you get my point already.

[BobbyW @ May 1st 2006 4:33PM]

How many people will be fired over this debacle? I have zero interest in this bulky pos. Maybe if I carried a purse I'd take it with me - but I don't.

I can't believe MS thought people would get excited about this thing. What a blunder.

[Matt @ May 1st 2006 4:44PM]

I cant believe it is going to be that expensive. For that price I rather spend extra $700 and get the OQO.

[skeet @ May 1st 2006 5:13PM]

"This would have been a cheaper product if MS decided not to use an Intel proscessor."

Good point except Microsoft isn't the one deciding on the hardware, Samsung is.

[Bard @ May 1st 2006 5:14PM]

Funny...I JUST bought a "UMPC" JUST like that one...comes with microsoft office, media player, WiFi, bluetooth, handwriting recognition and it's even LIGHTER!

OH WAIT! I'm sorry....I thought samsung was making a Palm Tungsten E2.

Like others have said: Why bother when I just bought the same device (granted with less storage space..only 1 gig) for $220. AND I don't need a manpurse to lug it around anywhere. With more cities going WiFi, I think palm's got the UMPC thing beat before it even hits the gates. It seems now they're including free WiFi cards with all their devices that didn't come included with it.

*yawn* @ Microsoft...again.

[Armen @ May 1st 2006 7:15PM]

The powerful thing about this handheld device is that it runs full version of XP (tablet edition?) and not some sort of CE so you won't have much of a problem with software titles (I assume) you already have or used to. Not comparable with any Palm or PocketPC handheld, you can run softwares you run on your laptop on this device. This device is really cool but far too expensive for me. I always wanted some sort of eBook reader. But the XP operating system on this device makes it apart from the rest. One of my main concerns about eBook readers were that how well the software were written for them, and how many useful titles would be available for them and so on. With Windows xp on this device that cocern is solved. I hope they keep making UMPCs so the price will drop by time. Oh and i have another concern, they need to think something about screen protection, the ones used for PDAs blur the screen (specially after a while being used) and difficult to apply, without screen protection I guess you'll end up having a lot of scratches on that beautiful screen which will bother you later while reading things.
Being able to run software written for Windows XP on this device is just amazing. It means zillion titles of software, and among them the best titles in their class. If only it was $500 :P ... no other choice than to wait ... :)

[daniel @ May 2nd 2006 1:38AM]

$1,100? what genius economist/marketer came up with this pricing scheme? i was expecting maybe $700 - $800 ad thought this to be high... roughly double a solid PVP or PMP/DVR combo... and roughly half of a decent lower end laptop. That range I may have made some sacrifices to afford it... $1,100 is a lot of dough for some inflated bells and whistles w/ mediocre performance specs.

[Dan @ May 2nd 2006 2:59PM]

Come on, you can buy a gateway convertible tablet for $100 cheaper than this. Supposedly Samsung has a model in the works using a Via chip and a price point around $800, which is a bit more reasonable, and Tablet Kiosk is going to be selling their models starting at ~$900 this month.

Anyways, these guys are going to have to get the price down if they want the UMPCs to take off. Get it down to $500 or $600 and they'll be going like hot cakes.

[Armen @ May 3rd 2006 10:30AM]

Weight matters here. These devices are meant to be held in your hands while using them, reading things, or even one hand holding the device while the other tapping and dragginig etc. I glanced the specs of some TabletPCs including Gateway convertables which ranged from 6.2 to 6.8 lbs I have an HP nx7010 and it weights 6.5 lbs and I'm sure that I wouldn't like holding such a weight in my hands while reading ebooks. Even IBM Lenovo (which looked cool!!) is 4.5lbs (not including a DVD). This device is only 1.7 lbs which sounds a practical weight, of course one can't tell until giving it a try.

Suring the web, reading news, ebooks, emails while sitting in a couch or at the breakfast table having a cup of coffee sounds really really cool, we should see how the experience in real life is like.

I see the applications from my point of view, an ordinary computer user. Engineers can take these devices to contrstruction sites while having *full-version* of AutoCad running. But for my applications this device is something in addition to my main PC, adding to the experice not replacing it. I won't have a serious problem not reading ebooks while sitting in a couch or at the breakfast table. So price should be justifiable for my usage ($500! :)

Really, computer manufacturers and specially designers are facing a tough challenge. It's really interesting to see what solutions they'll come up with. It is really interesting to see how the UMPC will develope.

In my (imaginary) applications I won't have much of a text entry on a UMPC because I'll do the main work on a PC, but text entry is an issue that we should see how they'll deal with it. People are used to keyboards and its tough finding a good rival for ease of use and speed of a keyboard.

I'm really impatient to see some thorough hands on reviews with these devices.

[Joe Strout @ May 3rd 2006 11:35PM]

I agree text input is important, but it's also something that can be solved -- see http://www.strout.net/info/ideas/hexinput.html for example.

In fact, if somebody buys me one of these, I'll write a HexInput input method and release it as open source! :)

As to the price, yes, it's higher than I hoped, but it's normal for the first models of a new class to be higher priced, and aimed at the price-insensitive early adopters (business users etc.), not cheap guys like us. It'll come down in time.

[Joe Strout @ May 3rd 2006 11:39PM]

Any ideas how well this thing will run Linux?

I wish we could buy one without having to pay for Windows... that's the only part of it that sticks in my craw. If we could get it for $800 with Linux pre-installed, that'd be ideal.

[Henry-5 @ May 4th 2006 12:14AM]

I hope Sony will develop something as exciting based on their existing PSP. Meeting the $500 pricing target I'm sure is not something that Sony will have problem about.

$1,000 for Samsung Q1 device is definitely way way too expensive.

Other alternative: I hope someone will add "book reading" & "text editing software" into iPod, and companies like Stoaway start making portable keyboard for iPod, then ... we will have something very interesting: An ultraportable Mac based on iPod technology. :-)

[Coolty @ May 7th 2006 5:09PM]

If you want the ultra portability of a linux desktop, go buy the nokia 770 and say "F*ck M$!"

[Tom @ May 8th 2006 3:54AM]

Hey, read my lips:

It's a COMPUTER not an ORGANIZER!