I like the simple design, but it reminds me of the Muji radio - which also has a CD player for �99!

http://www.mujionline.co.uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?Sec=2&Sub=7&PID=6

John Kendrik from the jkOnTheRun blog seems to have been involved with the development of the UMPC.

He says that "I have seen the Via running on handheld devices and it runs circles around the Intel processors speed-wise. Big, honking circles."

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2006/03/origami_umpc_th.html

Much as I like the previous iteration, I found it a little too flabby to be a useful phone. Then again, it didn't have an 8GB hard drive - might need to rethink my principles!

I'm sure this is not very new. On my rather prehistoric Cybiko I could read books using a program called "Run Reader" which did pretty much the same thing. It would just project words into sequence on one spot, and you could increase and decrease the speed to what was comfortable.

I can remember reading at about 1200 words per minute before it got rather difficult. "Run Reader" also tried to take note of punctuation, so it would pause briefly after a comma and even longer after a full stop.

Overall it is not as natural as reading and I still prefer the flow of words from side to side.

Video interview with Otto Berke (who seems a pleasant chap) here (.wmv):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=46&p=5&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=2fdf4cbc-7ef4-433b-a875-089b6b3c5436&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f7%2fc%2f2%2f7c2a8d5f-2dcf-4aee-9f75-97026f2aa04b%2forigami_otto_berkes_2006.wmv

Asus' brushed steel model looks quite nice (and more fingerprint resistant.

http://scr3.golem.de/?d=0603/origami_preview&a=43885&s=1

There are going to be MANY models of UMPC.

Here is a photo of the one by Asus:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/001587.html

For a top-secret viral campaign which is due to explode tomorrow, Microsoft is doing one hell of a poor job!

Doesn't stop me being obsessive though!

Better (fingerprint-free) pictures of the Samsung Q1.

http://www.infosyncworld.com/laptops/tablets/samsung_q1.html

Video of one in action. Also looks quite nice.

http://www.zdnetasia.com/itlibrary/webcasts/0,39044504,39315918,00.htm

http://umpc.com/full.swf

I'd share it, but I can't seem to download the .swf file - Firefox says it is not cached!