When I reviewed Microsoft's Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) platform last year, I found the hardware to be lacking, but the software to be quiet good actually. According to the Origami team, however, it's about to get even better:
What have we been doing since we released Origami Experience™ Pack 1.0 this time last year? Well, Origami Experience 2.0!
Origami Experience 2.0 is been shown at CES this week and is being made available to UMPC manufacturers for testing and pre-installation this month. In this release we have included four applications, all optimized for the UMPC. We go into more detail on the contents of the release in future posts but, for now, here is a quick peek.
The release has four applications.
Origami Central
Origami Central is an update to the original Origami Experience application in the 1.0 release. As well as the familiar media features, we have created a fully-optimized browsing experience for UMPCs and an RSS reader. We have also extended the media features to include feeds that can provide information on new movies, audio books, or any media content that can be published using RSS.
Origami Now
Origami Now provides one-touch access to the information that’s important to you, email, calendar, RSS feeds, weather, to-do lists… . All organized into one context-sensitive screen that can change the information displayed according to the time, your current location, and freshness of content.
Origami Picture Password
This is a real breakthrough for using mobile touch PCs. Origami Picture Password allows you to login by tapping on a sequence of points on a picture; this not only makes it easier to login on a UMPC but also personalizes the login experience. You can choose your own picture and select points that mean something to you. It’s fun and secure.
Touch Settings
This is the familiar Touch Settings application from the Origami Experience Pack 1.0 release.
Like I said, just a quick preview. More detailed explanations of each application and screenshots to follow...
Looks nice. I have concerns about this product not reaching a large enough audience, but hopefully this week's newly-announced Intel mobile processors will lead to better UMPC hardware. [Crosses fingers.]