Robin on Tech

The codenames assigned to products under development are usually meaningless. As a case-in-point, AMD went through a phase of naming its CPUs after horses, and Intel has traditionally favoured rivers.

So, Microsoft’s choice – about a year ago – of Origami as a development codename name for the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) might have been par for the course. Afterall, it clearly doesn’t fold, sprout a tail, or bear any resemblance to a swan. In two respects though, the UMPC is ultimately very close to its moniker: it is pretty but quite useless.

The UMPC is far too bulky to fit in a pocket, so users have to carry it in a bag. It lacks a keyboard, so emailing, word processing and anything which requires sustained data entry are all out of the question. It runs a full-blown copy of Windows XP. XP is a fine operating system, but is pretty impractical at anything below 1024 x 768. The native vertical resolution of various UMPCs is far too small – even to fit some dialogue boxes on the screen. And, on most units, the battery gives out after less than three hours.

So, here we have a device which accomplishes far less than a decent (and pocketable) Windows Mobile device (check out the HTC TyTn for an example of the way it should be done) or an ultra-portable laptop.

• It cannot be easily used for office tasks. Of course, it’s possible to purchase and carry around a compact USB keyboard. But then why not buy an ultra portable laptop and benefit from its larger, higher resolution screen; comfy keyboard and ‘proper’ Windows experience?

• It cannot be used as an effective media player – as it’s far too big and the battery life is far too short.

• It cannot be used for 3D gaming – due to the absence of a decent graphic accelerator

• It’s fairly impractical for web-browsing ‘on-the-go’ as most UMPCs incorporate wi-fi but not 3G

As it’s no good for serious tasks and no good for having fun, who did Microsoft imagine would use this thing? In large usability and information architecture projects, I’m sometimes asked to produce a ‘personas’ document. This is a list of partially fictionalised users (based on real customers). Each user is described, along with their needs, priorities and objectives in relation to the product. Each persona is named, and may even be referred to affectionately during the project, along the lines of “Would Fiona cope with this dialogue box?” or “Is this flexible enough for Ted?” We try to ensure that the full spectrum of users – from the least sophisticated to the most technically adept – are catered for by the product.

The trouble with the UMPC is that it’s difficult to conceive of any situation in which other devices - namely ultra-portable laptops or Windows Mobile devices – couldn’t provide the same functionality more effectively, more conveniently and often at less expense. Can I imagine Ted or Fiona using this device? No.

After nearly a year of poor sales, it appears that the industry still hasn’t learnt its lesson. Instead of abandoning the concept, recent leaks and announcements suggest that Microsoft and its partners are going to have another go. We’re being promised smaller, lighter, less battery-hungry devices and pseudo-UMPCs running on Windows Mobile with keyboards.

Switching to Windows Mobile would definitely be a positive development: running Windows XP on a tiny screen was a daft decision from the get-go. Improving the battery-life and reducing the overall form-factor are obvious Good Things. Unfortunately, it still leaves a device which simply won’t fit inside a jacket pocket, let alone a trouser pocket. It’s too large to carry around everywhere, but too small and too hobbled to work on efficiently. In effect, it falls awkwardly between two established form factors, acquiring none of the positive points of either platform, but suffering all the deficiencies of both.

So, the questions remain. If users already own an ultra-portable laptop or a pocketable Windows Mobile device, why would they purchase a UMPC? If users don’t own an ultra-portable laptop or a pocketable Windows Mobile device, why would they purchase a UMPC? I can’t find an answer to either of those questions.

Rather like the Tablet PC line that preceded it, the UMPC is ultimately doomed. It is a product in search of market that does not exist. One can only wonder how many years of poor sales and badly received product iterations Microsoft and its partners will have to go through before they finally give up on this wretched concept.

Everyone loves a prize fight. And many commentators love analogies: the sillier the better. So the ‘war’ between the two next generation DVD formats – Blu-Ray and HD-DVD – has had many commentators falling over themselves in breathless anticipation of the ‘battle’ as the two ‘competitors’ slug it out for our cash. And of course, a tiresome slew of identical (and identically silly) analogies has followed, as comparison is made with 1980s ‘battle-to-the-death’ between VHS and Betamax for the home videotape market.

The theme underlying most of these articles is that “the consumer will lose out”. The conventional wisdom goes as follows. Consumers will unwittingly purchase overpriced players that will only play content from the movie studios which happen to have signed deals with the relevant ‘side’. Consumers will then be unable to play any content from the ‘other side’. Worse still, one side may come to dominate the market, leaving the other one a dismal failure – a la Betamax – and leave millions of consumers stranded with expensive but obsolete players.

Fortunately, that kind of forecast is wrong on every level. It’s predicated on two false assumptions

• It assumes that consumers are both ignorant and stupid

• It assumes that hardware manufacturers and content providers will endlessly put politics and pride ahead of making money.

And it ignores some pretty salient facts:

• Most consumers are happy with the current DVD standard and are in no particular hurry to upgrade. They’re willing to wait for prices to drop, especially as the advantages of next-gen DVDs are much slimmer than the benefits of, for example, DVD against VHS or CD against audio cassette.

• For all intents and purposes, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray present identical value propositions i.e. they’re equally good, but they’re also equally incompatible and equally expensive. As neither is better than the other, there’s nothing to persuade consumers to pick one over the other (apart from slick marketing).

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players are expensive right now. If we’ve learnt anything from our experiences of first generation DVD players, it’s that few standalone players (i.e. excluding the PS3) will be sold until the price drops below £200. This is unlikely to happen until 2008, at which time dual-format players (i.e. compatible with both formats) will be hitting the market at similarly affordable prices. LG’s dual-format player was the first out of the gate, but at $1,199 it’s hardly a commoditised device yet.

In other words, most consumers are likely to ignore next-gen DVDs throughout 2007 because the players are too expensive and widespread media coverage has highlighted the compatibility issues. But 2008 will see prices plummet and dual-format players become the norm (because most consumers simply won’t accept a device which only plays half the available content).

Meanwhile, the movie studios would never accept a situation in which they knowingly and deliberately froze themselves out of half the potential market. Fortunately, they also know that affordable dual-mode players are on the way, and can safely cut deals with whichever side it’s politically expedient to do so.

The only real question is whether the technology ‘champions’ for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (Sony and Toshiba respectively) will produce dual-format players of their own, or continue making single-format standalone players that no-one will want to buy.

Sadly for sports fans (and anyone who enjoys the analogy) we’re unlikely to witness a real prize-fight. Instead, it’ll be more like a prolonged stare-a-thon, as each side gazes menacingly at the other, and everyone else just gets on with business.