Intel now has its own teaser site for the Ultra Mobile PC, which says nothing apart from "Stay tuned" for March 7. This presumably refers to the Ruby concept design rather than Microsoft's Origami project. (See today's Technology section.)
It would be surprising if the two didn't overlap, but Intel and Microsoft always do competing projects, and often don't even mention the other company -- as happened with Intel's Entertainment PC project and almost happened with the follow-up, Viiv. In Intel's case, that's partly becuase it's willing to bend over backwards to help Linux or any other non-Microsoft operating system. In Microsoft's case, it's because it goes out of its way to support AMD. And with the UMPC, I suspect it may be looking towards Transmeta.
Sure, Transmeta was overhyped (as I complained at the time) and turned into a bit of a disaster. But the OQO Model 01+ Tablet PC -- one of the UMPCs already on the market -- has a Transmeta processor, and the Origami clearly offers a new market opportunity. Geeks didn't like paying high prices for small notebooks with Transmeta chips because they were horribly slow, but non-geeks might find current versions are fast enough, if they are cheap enough.
The way the game is played, this may not mean extra sales of Transmeta chips. However, it could encourage Intel to make its low voltage Pentium M chips more attractive when it cuts prices in July.
