RIP, OQO: company discontinues repair service, disconnects phone lines
By Ross Miller 
posted May 21st 2009 6:09PM
posted May 21st 2009 6:09PM
Update: GottaBeMobile stumbled upon SVP of sales and marketing Bob Rosin -- outside one of the writer's garages, apparently -- who confirmed the company's demise, and added that the technology and engineering team might stay afloat should a deal with an undisclosed PC vendor pan out. That said, there are no more devies left in stock and don't expect anymore to be produced.
Too bad in a way, I got to play with one of the early dev models. Very nifty, but when the price point hit on it and the fact it only supported windows I lost interest.
I think things like the n810, smartphones, and netbooks killed this product pretty well.
This was the only UMPC worth buying, if you were into that sort of thing. I wish I was.
Yea, i like that little thing too
only if there ain't a recession i would have bought a oqo instead of the Asus R2H
@RijilV -
First of all, do not speak of OQO when you OBVIOUSLY have no flippin' clue about them. I've got Linux running on my OQO, along with XP Tablet, and Vista. I know people who have OS X on theirs as well. So don't go making false statements that the OQO only supports MS Windows when even, when the OQO site was functioning, their own developers posted an "unsupported" installation guide for Linux on their website. The company just would not help you out since it wasn't designed to really run Linux, but the DEVELOPERS at OQO did it. You just sound stupid and ignorant.
eh, I think you're a troll Bryan, but its a nice lazy holiday in the states today so here we go.
By "the fact it only supported windows" what I actually ment was that the OQO company only supported .... and here it comes ... windows.
It isn't that I managed to get Linux running on my Sega Dreamcast or installed OSX on some generic netbook, its that the corporation formerly known as OQO never put forth any effort into providing support in any way for Linux to run on the OQO device.
If this isn't yet clear for you, and I doubt it is, what I'm talking about with respect to support is something like Nvidia, who actually makes drivers for Linux, or select models of Lenovo's Thinkpad line that come pre-installed with it. ASUS and Nokia and Acer and MSI who release netbooks with Linux already instlaled. I would even argue the Beagle Board strives very hard to release drivers and the such for Linux on their platform, and other grassroots products like the OpenPandora. 3ware who releases good drivers and usable Linux tools for their products.
All of those products have a company behind them that puts real time and money into bettering the Linux community. A commitment to actually providing support for Linux is I'm looking for in a company when I choose to purchas their hardware. Just because its possible to drop Linux or OSX on a platform isn't enough for me, I want the company to do something other than rely on the open source community to make their product interesting to me. The company needs to contribute back, not steel from the community or their own developer's spare time.
I hope you came back and read this and got something out of it. Feel free to just insult me some more though and repeat your original statements as if I had not clearly addressed them though.
.r'
goodnight, handheld computer maker.
I must refer back to my comment on the bad mainboards article..
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/10/oqo-model-2s-suffering-from-failing-main-boards/comments/18754747/
I feel sorry for anyone who bought one of these and is now (or will be) in need of support.
IMO, it was one of the best designed UMPC, too bad it could succeed. But with all these 300USD netbooks showing up it's hard to compete I bet.
The most innovative companies often kick the bucket after creating new product categories. They blaze the trails, and then someone follows after benefiting from their mistakes and tweaking things to get the best bang for their investment buck.
The most successful companies are often the least innovative. Apple and Microsoft for instance. They usually don't create new ideas, they just repackage the old ones in just the right way.
Price and Smartphones killed it. Next in line: MIDs.
Come on, liquidation/clearance sales! The idea was good, but not for the price they wanted for it. Now bring this down to about 300 bucks to get rid of inventory and we'll talk.
Agreed, way too expensive.
Completely agreed, if this thing were cheaper, I'd have one. I was really excited for the OQO 2, now I'm kinda disappointed.
yeah it's the price that held me back
the price was bad, but I was turned off most by the digitized touchscreen. Capacitive would have been swell, but at least resistive! Maybe they had their reasons, but i wouldnt want to feel like i was using a pda again.
dag, yo! where can I get wunna those extra-fly laser etched headstones??
There will be a lot of unhappy investors and employees that worked for options...
We have two unused models in the back here. One is the sleek black one and the other is the earlier brassy model that looks like some steampunk kind of get up. The black one had Vista on it which didn't make for speedy handheld computing.
Oh wasteful company spending.
How much ? :)
Sell to your friends here at engadget
I liked the OQO, was just waiting for it to hit a reasonable price. Oh well, I'll pick one up if people start discounting them.
Don't. It will break (trust me, it WILL break) and then nobody will be there to repair it.
i wish more netbooks or whatever use OQO's form, kb is easily hidden away when not in use.
It was a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The OQO should have been $700. Even the Samsung Q1U series, which were overpriced, were cheaper. When the netbooks hit, mass production killed them. In a way, if they'd been a little less ambitious in terms of making it small, they might have been the company that triggered the netbook revolution.
Unfortunately for them, most people don't want a PC *that* small, nor are they willing to pay *that* much for it.
Still, a sad day.
"Shed a tear, won't ya?"
No. The thing was overpriced since day one, and it never really improved. We'll also ignore the fact that windows, and OS X might I add, was never designed around such a small screen. the GUI simply does not work well, IMHO. Again IMHO anything smaller then a subnotebook should be looking at Linux with a tweaked GUI, Android, or CE. When you have such OS's you then don't need the massive hardware that they had under the hood.
Sorry, but they were trying to force something into the market that really wasn't really for it. either technologically or GUI wise.
Death by iPhone insanely accurate n fast gps.!
I'm surprised they lasted this long, I don't know anyone who wants one of those stupid ass micro computers.
I'm glad I never bought one.
Good. Fuck OQO. Worst piece of tech I've ever owned.
"Shed a tear, won't ya?"
Uhm, no -- as someone who purchased the 02 -- I am happy they are gone. The product was too expensive, it overheated to the point you could burn your fingers, the battery life sucks, the way the antennas where integrated sucked more power than necessary. It was prone to break very easily -- I had 4 RMAs in a single year.
The company was run by many ex-Apple people who thought they could charge a premium like Apple when the whole world was moving to cheap netbooks. When Moore left the company, you know it was the end soon.
While the format had promiss, its price point and unreliability meant it was just a matter of time.
Was happy to pawn it on eBay and now happy with my Asus Netbook
Engadget needs a tech cemetery similar to the image above displaying all extinct hardware. Cnet radio used to do this back in early 2000 with failed .com business and called it the .com dead pool.
Here's my list
RIP
- OQO
- Pleo
- Folio
(just realized all three of these failed tech end in ohhhhh)
It's kinda funny, there was an OQO as a prize on Price Is Right the other day....talk about bad timing :-/
That's really sad. They may have been expensive but I still wanted one.
OQO lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. OQO kept popping up and I would say to myself " Wow! OQO is still around?"
I actually own, still use an OQO 01+. Been wanting to get the 02+, but that's never gonna happen.
Handy when I needed it... no doubt.
My power cord for my OQO got messed up and I have been putting off buying another (couldn't afford to drop $99 on a cord).
Is it now too late? Does ANYONE have any idea where I can get a cord for my OQO 02?
I can't believe my unit might be useless now -_-
I would appreciate any advice.
This is definitely sad too see. Hopefully this tiny powerful UMPC will get picked up by a financially sound company.
Oh look....the OQO 02 is coming to Sprint soon. Nice!! Add that to the lineup with the instinct and instinct2....soon you'll be able purchase your newly outdated unsupported hardware and it will then be 're'broken by sprint tech support. Magic I say...magic.
j/k ..... it was the best option of it's time.
Undisclosed PC vendor, eh...? Perhaps it's time for OQO's lead engineers to return home to the roost. Where's that you say? Why Apple, of course! ;o)
how depressing... one of the most promising UMPC's out there and its gone... This was a great little device, I hope to snatch up a few still in the wild before they pass on into the hallowed halls of techdom come.
I have a model 2 sitting next to the monster notebook in my backpack.
It is, hands down, the worst form factor I have ever used. The key layout is no-standard and incomprehensible, the keys are hard to reach because of the thickness of the unit, the digitized screen stinks, the resolution is either too short (800x420) to display dialog boxes with the buttons in view or you have to slide around in ovescan mode, or the rendering is unreadable in zoom out mode.
The battery life is laughable unless you turn off all antennas and turn down the screen brightness to "barely visible". Basically, it's not really usable except if it's plugged in. If you use anti-virus (and you really must), you achieve new depths of execrable performance. Boot times remind me of 2-year-old Windows 95 installations on fragemented hard drives. Forget about using it as a media presentation device unless you're fond of slideshows.
If it wasn't issued to me by my company, I'd dump it in a heartbeat. It _is_ good if you're a fan of jiffy-pop.
Betamax déja vue. Superior, but not selling enough!
I liked OQO.