GigaOM : Un-Origami

Om Malik, a well respected Business 2.0 writer, is decidely unimpressed by the Origami. His point is that Microsoft missed an opportunity to do something truly new, like the XBox 360, and instead just came up with 'yet another' Windows variant.

Om says:

If you read Michael Gartenberg hands on review, you will soon be running off to the nearest store wildly waving your credit card yelling take my money, and give me Origami.

I think he does Michael a disservice here as whilst he thinks Origami has a rosier future (if they can avoid calling it Ultra-Mobile PC - UMPC), he also says:

Expect the Origami story to evolve and remember, we haven't seen the Origami story in the Vista timeframe. Look at Origami the way you might look at a new platform, not the value of a particular machine today.

Perhaps Om is allowing the ugliness of the current hardware devices to influence his opinion. There is a potential market for this device, especially if it can fully handle Office documents, including SharePoint integration (and not just the cut-down functionality WinCE gave us).