Bash, Bash, Bash

10 March 2006

So Microsoft’s “Origami” = a “Ultra Mobile PC”, or UMPC for short.

Yuk

Who, exactly, wanted one of those? And why do big companies insist on taking a great product name – origami – and rebranding to a really bad one at the last minute (Microsoft isn’t the only one that do this, but they’re particularly guilty of it)?

So big. Such short battery life. No specialised interface for PDA functionality ( nasty thumb keyboards aside ).

Why the hype?

The Xbox and Xbox 360 show that Microsoft can get this sort of thing right, but they seem to have really blown it on this one. And while I’m on the subject of Microsoft – have you seen the new Office 2007 screenshots?

Check them out here

Yes, that’s right folks – they’ve got rid of the nice looking (but in dire need of some constancy) interface of the previous betas and replayed it with something awful. Even with the black skin it looks nasty, and the big gloopy circa Mac OS X 10.0 “Office” button is a very strange addition. Admittedly, the new look is a lot more consistent from what I can see – the old style had about a dozen different button styles – but the new aesthetic direction is disappointing to say the least.

I do, however, really quite like the functionality of the “ribbon” – it seems like a good solution to the huge amount of features most of the office suite members contain. The lack of menus is going to really confuse people, though…

From: Articles

10 March 2006