desperate to be cool
If you’ve been on the blogwatch circut lately you’ve no doubt have noticed the thread on Microsoft’s Origami Project. Initally it started like all viral ad campaigns, a few pics, then an advertistment video leaked to the net, people wondering, then blogging about that, and eventually, probably in march we’ll get the skinny on it.
However until then, what is this thing? It’s a big PDA if you ask me. People are calling it a lifestyle tablet/pc. Kinda reminds me of the Nokia tablet, or the Mirra smart tablet, without the mirroring. Anyways its a big clunky not so sexy piece of gear if you ask me. The advertisement video is sexy though, a pristine metalic camper basking the sun in the middle of a desert where a young girl can use her origami to playback music, draw some ideas on, pass it around to her cookie cutter make believe friends wearing the coolest stuff around. The future lifestyle ad seems, i dunno, pretty fake to me, its magical and pristine and very Aeon Flux utopian-ish.
All the while the device itself is a small tablet pc concept. So pen stylus drawing along with wifi, bluetooth, gps, and every other gadget goodness you can think of… and so what? Hows that differ than the psp, the ipod. the mobile phones, etc and why is it that we think consumers want a one device do all system, its been done repeatedly and it fails. I dunno microsoft, if its an experiement, have at it I suppose, if anything it buys you a little pr to toss around.
Probably the only thing out of what i’ve seen on it that interests me is the functionality of using it as a really small notebook for todays ever increasing digital classroom. I could see that taking off really. A better smaller, smarter, tablet pc for kids in high school. But even then I wonder, did they do their homework on kids yet?