CES Reports: The Origami Experience

When we first headed over the UMPC area of Microsoft’s booth at CES, I saw two Asus R2H UMPCs running an interesting looking program. Turns out it is the new Origami experience designed for UMPCs running Vista. You can get an entire rundown with a ton of pictures from Sears and Dustin on the Origami Team Blog. Suffice it to say this looks very, very cool and is more than just a launcher. Remember this is a Vista application, so you’re UMPC will need to run Vista to take advantage of it. I didn’t see this run on the new OQO or the Medion UMPC, but with those very vibrant small screen devices the one thing I’m sure of is that it will be glorious to look at.

I’ll be giving Vista a try on the Asus R2H within the next few weeks. And on that front Matt Faulkner and I had a talk with some reps at the Asus booth at CES and were disappointed to hear that they aren’t planning on any new drivers for the R2H that will support Vista. Our deduction is that they are looking ahead to their next iteration.

One other interesting note though. To the dismay of many, the code name Origami disappeared or morphed into the Ultra Mobile PC. So, here’s a question. Why is this called the Origami Experience? I’m just asking?