With the holiday buying season impending and black Friday at the end of the week, I’m asking myself what I want.
I know what you’re thinking: What a selfish jerk – always thinking about himself. Well, in my defense let me say that you are absolutely right – I am a selfish jerk.
But, setting all finger pointing aside, I wanted to look at a few things and discuss their ultimate relevance.
The market for consumer electronics, which is really the one that I’m most interested in, becomes more and more fragmented with each new product, and I thought it’d be worth the time to just go through the products and get the general definitions.
- Desktop PC – Any computer that’s too big to put anywhere but on top of a desk.
- Laptop PC – Pretty self-explanatory methinks.
- Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) – Starts getting tricky here. What the hell is a UMPC, anyway? Seems to me there are just as many things under the UMPC banner as there are outside of it. But, for safety’s sake, let’s just assume that this is a portable PC with a screen that is smaller than 12 inches that doesn’t include a telephone service plan through any of the major providers.
- Cell Phone – More self-explanatory goodness.
- Digital Cameras – Pretty straight-forward, I think. Average these days is about 7 megapixels.
- Ereaders – You can read about these in my post from yesterday.
- Miscellaneous other gadgets – There are a plethora of these, all of them with their own “groups,” but I’m only focusing on the things that I want. Because, I’m writing this, and I don’t really care what you want.
Now, if you go back over the list there you’ll see that the only one where there is any trouble is the UMPC. The definition I picked was one of about a thousand, and I picked it arbitrarily from a longer list of definitions.
Wikipedia, in the article I linked to above, defines them as:
Ultra-Mobile PCs have a 20 cm (7-inch) or smaller touch sensitive screen at a minimum resolution of 800 × 480. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is used with slight tweaks to the interface to make it more suited for the small form factor. In addition, a software suite known as the Touch Pack Interface is included to make the interface more suitable for use of stylus as well as hand.
And reading back over the article, I realize that it’s about a specific device.
The problem is that whether or not UMPC was originally the name for a specific manufacturer’s device or not – it has now become the ubiquitous name for anything smaller than a laptop that isn’t a cell phone… Or… A PDA…
Dammit, this is getting harder and harder.
A google search for UMPC produces results for a wide range of products. Seemingly, the highest ranked links are for handheld tablet style devices with touch screens. Maybe I was wrong to define them as miniature laptops. It seems that my earlier definition might have been made a little to hastily.
But, if small laptops aren’t considered UMPC’s then what the hell are they? The OLPC and Asus’ Eee PC aren’t traditional laptops. They have specific form functions that are slightly less than a laptop, but definitely more than a PDA. So, if they’re not UMPC’s what the hell are they?!!
This is where I usually shut down and give up on the semantics of technology. Because that is really where a lot of the problem lies.
If my girlfriend thinks she might want an Eee PC and wants to know more about it. She doesn’t want a UMPC, and she already has a PDA and she wants to know the difference, what exactly do I tell her?!! Do I give her the dumbed down explanation, and tell her that it’s a miniature laptop?
She deserves better, but at this point that’s really the only option.
The other problem, semantics aside, is the UI. The input/output devices to be more specific. We’re at a point in technology where we are past the point of needing traditional keyboards and monitors, but we haven’t yet found a viable alternative.
Several alternatives have been introduced, including touchscreen monitors, voice input/outputs, and even highly modified keyboards.
Voice inputs are too error ridden and voice outputs are too slow – you can’t scan a page when you’re listening to a voice. Touch screens and modified keyboards are just reworks of the same problematic solution.
Improvements on the interface problem, like the iphone’s touchscreen, are leading towards a new movement in user interfaces but they’re just not there yet.
So, the differences between PC’s, laptops, UMPC’s, mini laptops, and cell phones, at this point, are really only defined by the size of the device and its capacity.
And, dividing them that way is ridiculous without specifications.
Don’t get me wrong – I give shit all about specifications – and I really don’t want them, but the divisions, as erratic as they are, are confusing and annoying to most shoppers.
Devices today, because of a lack of any really revolutionary new UI, are all crossing the lines and muddling the definitions.
And, really they’re all the same. They use the same I/O devices and should therefore be considered identical by definition.
The problem, of course, is a lack of anything to contrast them with. And, until manufacturers come up with an alternative way for us to communicate with our devices, a mini laptop is just a smaller, lower capacity computer with a keyboard interface – and a UMPC is just a smaller, lower-capacity computer with a touchscreen interface. Ultimately, they’re all the same.
The next big thing will be a new user interface, and until we have one that works as well as the one we have now – everything will look the same to me. And, really, it should to you too.
