FlipStart - The Latest In Ultra Mobile PCs

Paul Bishop of the Seattle P-I reports:

More than two decades after leaving Microsoft Corp., Paul Allen still has designs on the computer business. But this time, hes aiming for something smaller.

To be precise, its less than 6 inches wide and weighs just about a pound and a half.Its a miniature computer, dubbed FlipStart, and its slated for release later this month, after years of development. The device rests on the palm but looks like a tiny laptop, contains a 30-gigabyte hard drive and runs full-fledged software on a microprocessor good enough for a traditional desktop computer.

Although a bit pricey for the average business, let alone the average user, competition is definitely starting to heat up in this space. I’ll stick with a BlackBerry or SmartPhone for now, but as these get smaller yet keep the power of a full PC I’ll be keeping a close eye out. There was a concept device I read about years ago where an individual would carry around a PDA-sized device that was their entire computer system and they would dock into various devices as needed. Standalone, it was a phone and PDA. Plugged into a docking station, it was a full PC. Plugged into the car, it was a fully connected GPS, and so on. Cool, eh?

[tags]Paul Allen, Microsoft, FlipStart, Ultra-Mobile PC[/tags]