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UMPC: better, but the jury's still out

We've just reviewed our second Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), the R2H from ASUS. In case you'd forgotten, the UMPC caused something of a stir back in February/March when Microsoft ran a teaser campaign for Origami (Redmond's codename for what turned out to be the UMPC) — a small slate-style Tablet PC running Windows XP.
Written by Charles McLellan, Senior Editor

We've just reviewed our second Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), the R2H from ASUS. In case you'd forgotten, the UMPC caused something of a stir back in February/March when Microsoft ran a teaser campaign for Origami (Redmond's codename for what turned out to be the UMPC) — a small slate-style Tablet PC running Windows XP.

Optimists hoped that Origami/UMPC systems would be go-anywhere, do-anything wonder-gadgets, but the bubble of anticipation soon burst when Samsung unveiled the Q1 at CeBIT in Hannover. The Q1, although a neat enough piece of kit, was short on features, processing power and battery life, and long on price (£799 inc. VAT).

It's taken until now to get our hands on a second UMPC, and the ASUS R2H is a big improvement. It still costs £799 (inc. VAT), which will get you a very decent traditional notebook, but (in the UK at least) you get a great set of extras and add-ons, including a digital TV tuner, folding keyboard, external DVD rewriter and a mouse. That's on top of built-in features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a 1.3-megapixel digital camera. We certainly enjoyed setting up this little critter on the desk and keeping an eye on the TV news.

But that's the problem really: unless you have an absolute need for a small Tablet PC, a machine like this is only ever going to be an accessory. Few business people are going to want an R2H for their primary computer — especially with its pedestrian 900MHz Celeron M processor.

So until I or my employer have got a spare £800 lying around, I'm going to have to pass on the UMPC for the moment.

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