Intel shows Origami-like deviceIntel's marketing director, Brad Graff, showed CNET News.com several of the Ultra Mobile PC devices, including an example of the kind of hardware that will ship in the next few weeks as part of the Microsoft effort.
Both Microsoft and Intel have been targeting the affordable, ultra-portable laptops market for some time. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed off a prototype of such a device at last year's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle. Intel has been touting the Ultra Mobile PC idea as well. Intel and Microsoft's latest efforts are not the first stab at shrinking the PC. There has long been a class of ultraportable laptops, mostly with around 10-inch screens. There have been a few prior attempts to take the PC even smaller, most notably from OQO and a minitablet introduced this year by Dualcor Technologies. Most of these devices, though, have been priced at about US$1,500 (S$2450.25), which is above the budgets of the average consumer. The key feature of the new devices, Graff said, is the ability to get the full Internet, with plug-ins and other advanced Web features. Entertainment--including music, movies and TV--is probably the second biggest selling point, he said. Although Intel has consumers in mind for the Ultra Mobile PCs, Graff said he expects technology enthusiasts, as well as some niche business and education customers, to be the most likely buyers of the first generation of devices, which will sell for under US$1,000 (S$1633.50). "We expect this to be a real consumer product and to do that, you have to be able to hit real consumer price points," he said. Intel also found in its testing that the devices appeal to active mothers, who, the chipmaker learned, have schedules similar to corporate road warriors. "It was something we didn't expect," Graff said.
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