The UMPC Begets the MID

The UMPC Begets the MID

Jan 08

You probably don’t recall–hell, I barely recall yesterday, let alone two years ago–but in the early days of Alert Nerd, I wrote about the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC). The specs and prototypes looked sexy; the products turned out to be way overpriced and made zero blips on the consumer electronics radar.

(And yet, Asus makes a big splash in geek circles with their Eee PC, taking some of the same principles and marrying them to a very small laptop form factor. Hmm. All these crazy kids should talk more.)

Now apparently, the UMPC has given birth to the MID (Mobile Internet Device). Those who followed Nokia’s Internet Tablets over the past couple years (I owned one, for a couple days, back in June of last year) may be familiar with the concept–web access, IM, e-mail, games, music, movies, and other ephemeral crap, all crammed onto a PYT of a device. Lookit, picture!

I’d been skimming over lots of this year’s CES coverage, as I just can’t get a boner over big TVs and GPS units. But this…this is a horse of another color.

I’m enough of a gadget whore to be intrigued. As always, I wonder about the true utility of such a device. They’re clearly horning in on Nokia’s “market” (such as it is) for the Internet Tablet, but adding in lotsa bling and probably an assload of media functionality–basically, a big phat iPod Touch. Do people want this? I do, but I have no idea why.

(The iPod Touch, by the way, is incredibly sexy; I played with one over the holidays. Again, I have no use for it whatsoever–the hard drive’s way too small and I get websites just fine on my phone–but man. That Safari browser runs like a motherfucker, and the YouTube? Oh, to DIE FOR.)

Ultimately, I pray for the day when my income increases to the point where I can drop a couple hundred on something so useless just to enjoy in the privacy of my own home. Until then, I will gape in awe at the teases on the internet.