OQO PDA To Run WinXP??

R

RHITMacMan

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Has any one checked out the specs on this OQO (http://www.oqo.com) PDA type of thing? Apparently, it will run Windows XP and plans to hit the market this fall. I have to say it looks freakin awesome. It apparently will come with 256 MB RAM, 10 GB hard drive, 1 GHz Crusoe chip, 4-in 640x480 touch screen, USB, Firewire, Wireless 802.11b, and even bluetooth. It also has the ability to dock with a monitor and keyboard/mouse to make it function just like any desktop. I don't know about everyone else, but this sounds damn awesome for a PDA a sized machine. I don't see how they could get it all in there. I'll definitely be in line to try this one out. They say it is expected to debute for about $500-700.

Apparently, some ex-apple employees are working on this a project. I think it would be awesome if Apple acquired this startup company and made this thing run MacOS X. I bet they would sell a million of these things in no time. For $500, this would far outpace the iPod and totally kick it's ass. Many have said that Apple has the capability of recompiling MacOS X to run on different processors based systems including the Crusoe, so this shouldn't be so hard for them. Just think, getting a complete operating system on a PDA!!!

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It's been done before by Apple.
I can't remember what it was called, but it was a laptop computer (that could run OS 7 I believe) and had the ability to dock into a base station which would allow it to become a fully automated desktop computer.

Of course it wasn't as sleek, small, powerful, and most likely fast as the OQO, but as a Mac user I'm really doubting the OQO's "performance". They've been working on that project for more than 3 years now and it's getting old. :)

P.S. (Of course Apple's wasn't as good as the OQO, but that's because they didn't really have this tech. back in the 80's. :) )
 
are you talking about the emate?

(I'm still kicking myself for missing that whole era of computing)

EDIT: the oqo looks cool. I might get it just so I'd have a portable comp, and I need a copy of windows anyways for all those apps that won't work on mac, etc. if there was a mac os x version, that would be GREAT!
 
It sounds to me like you are speaking of the Duo dock computers from way back when. From what I can remember the Duo dock computers could dock with a desktop type unit connected to a monitor. Although, the duo dock computers were just PowerBook laptops, I believe, that were dockable as a desktop. I don't remember them being small at all, regular laptop size. Take a look at the pics on the OQO page, and the pic at link I listed above. This is definitely not laptop size, it's PDA size. It fits in your Palm, and it can run the full fledged version of Windows XP, not a lite version for PDAs.

I really don't think 3 years is unreasonable for a startup company designing an extremely powerful PDA equivalent to many laptops. From anything I can remember, there has been nothing like this in a PDA, so it basically is a new design as far a the guts of the machine and resulting functionalities. I mean, it's not like they're a well-established multi-billion dollar company like Mircosoft, Dell, or even Apple and able to throw tons of R&D money at it. If Apple were to aquire them though, I'm sure they could quickly turn whatever they get into a great little machine. Then they could continue to prove themselves as revolutionaries in the industry since they saw the future and promise in the next big thing when no one else was really doing this on the same level. Sure there are other PDAs and laptop-PDA hybrids, but the only one that I have seen running a full fledged operating system with specs equivalent to most laptops is the OQO.
 
The PowerBook Duo's were really small, actually :)
They weren't PDAs, but I think they were smaller than the new iBooks, and that's not bad at all for a laptop in 1993.

Apple also made PDAs called Newton, but they were discontinued in 1998 to be followed by PDAs running Mac OS, but these PDAs never came...
The last Newton, the 2100, had a 161.9 MHz ARM RISC processor and a 480x320 pixel display, but were too heavy to really be counted as "PDAs" (0.64 kg)...
 
You guys are forgetting 1 thing and it's driving me crazy: the OQO is not a PDA! It's a new breed (sp?) of portable computers, not Palms. lol. :)
 
Originally posted by Trip
You guys are forgetting 1 thing and it's driving me crazy: the OQO is not a PDA! It's a new breed (sp?) of portable computers, not Palms. lol. :)
Click to expand...

In other words it's equialent to a Newton MessagePad 2100 ;)
 
Originally posted by ksv

In other words it's equialent to a Newton MessagePad 2100 ;)
Click to expand...

I don't think so. All the Newtons were PDAs. I don't think they had color LCDs, and their operating systems were more like the Palm from what I remember. I don't think they had 10/20 GB of storage space on them with about 1-2 GB or so occupied by a full desktop OS. Like I said before, the OQO is a PDA hybrid, I guess the OQO people call it an Ultra Personal Computer. A UPC???
 
No, but such small hard drives didn't exist at the time Newtons were in production, either. Nowadays, though, it's fully possible to use 5 GB PC card hard drives in the 2100.
The Newton 2100 had a 161,9 MHz processor, 480x320 pixel grayscale LCD, two PCMCIA card slots, and weighed 0.64 kg. A PDA? ;)
 
Did it look like a PDA? Was it marketed as a PDA? Could it do more than a PDA? Could it run MacOS apps with no modification? It was a PDA. Perhaps a really soaped up PDA, but it was a PDA. If I see you get a MacOS on it and run some applications with major modifications to the original design, I'll go with it being something more than a PDA. I think if you ask Apple, they would say that it was a PDA too. All the current day modifications though, weren't around in the day of the Newton, like the PCMCIA hard drive. I've never tried it, but I wonder if that would work. Somebody would need to write some drivers or something for the PCMCIA HDs. Anyway, it was originally sold as a PDA, nothing more.

It's been said that Steve Jobs actually hated the Newton and that's why it got axed upon his return. He preferred the Palm PDAs, I think Apple even looked into buying Palm at one time. But instead, they did some joint projects I believe to further the Palm's compatibility with the Mac. Then there was that whole time period when it was believed that Apple was developing a Newton replacement. It was believed that the Newton replacement would run a MacOS Lite version. But it never materialized. So perhaps now is the time to take a another look at that with the current technologies available.
 
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