HTC Vista UMPC to hit the UK within weeks

by Parm Mann on 8 February 2008, 11:30

James Sherwood of The Register reports:

The Shift, which first appeared almost a year ago and was due to go on sale in November 2007, will be available from online retailer Expansys on 19 February, for a device-only price of £885 (€1185/$1720).

Separately, bloggers Tracy and Matt claim to have seen a copy of Orange’s retailer-oriented February pricebook, which apparently reveals that the network operator will offer an own-brand version of the UMPC in March.

A clipping, supposedly from the pricebook, gives a brief outline of the Shift’s specs, but states that it “cannot make voice calls using a mobile network”.

HTC Shift - More than three times the price of an Eee

So what other features does the pricey device have? The Shift has a 7in touchsensitive display that tilts up to reveal a Qwerty keyboard. It runs Windows Vista Business edition, and hides 1GB of DDR 2 memory and a 30GB hard drive under its shell.

For data connectivity, the Shift has quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge, 3G HSDPA for connections of up to 3.6Mb/s, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0. There's a fingerprint reader to stop unauthenticated users from easily gaining access.

Orange was unavailable for comment at the time we went to press, so if you’re looking to land yourself an HTC Shift as soon as possible, your best option is to head to Expansys’ website.

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Nice, but it would have been better personally going with linux and bringing the price point down - getting rid of the mobile phone connectivity because you're going to be using a phone as a phone, right? So the only people who will get this are those who can afford two phone contracts and justify both, cutting out loads of enthusiasts like me who just like your bog standard laptop.

The offspring of the nice features on this:
- touchscreen
- nice sliding screen for tablet use - very useful for portable devices imo
- robust security - again there is more chance of something like this being nicked, if the worst should happen you don't want your saved cookies in your email giving away bank details etc.

With the cost effective points on the EEE:
- free OS
- small HDD / memory (I.e. no unneccessary ‘poweerrrrrrrrrr’)
- no extra phone network (I mean, its a UMPC, not a phone! I can use my phone via USB if I need phone connectivity, which is probably rare).

Would be awesome. Hopefully there are some Asus and HTC devs reading. At the end of the day the best products will get the most sales and the market will have to re-adjust. Although having all the features is always going to make you look good (i.e. HTC Kaiser) - its often unnecessarily expensive and so can't be specialised in doing what it's supposed to be doing well.

On that point in fact I tried to make a thread saying I was giving up the kaiser for a K850i but the database is down or something.

Dreaming
Although having all the features is always going to make you look good (i.e. HTC Kaiser) - its often unnecessarily expensive and so can't be specialised in doing what it's supposed to be doing well.

Kaiser does what its designed to (business mobile comms systems) extremly well, its when people buy it for other reasons that they are disapointed. The vast majority of people complaining about the kaiser purchased it as a toy rather than a tool, the shift might just sell as a tool. Just about all the mobile engineers I deal with use sub notebooks so could replace them, and they have to be wndows based due to all us clients using MS specific software. Personally I have been toying with the idea of an eeepc for a while, but as a toy, not as anything to do with work. Would I buy this as a toy no, could I justify it for work yes. Will they buy it for me, errr no.

Flibb
Kaiser does what its designed to (business mobile comms systems) extremly well, its when people buy it for other reasons that they are disapointed. The vast majority of people complaining about the kaiser purchased it as a toy rather than a tool, the shift might just sell as a tool. Just about all the mobile engineers I deal with use sub notebooks so could replace them, and they have to be wndows based due to all us clients using MS specific software. Personally I have been toying with the idea of an eeepc for a while, but as a toy, not as anything to do with work. Would I buy this as a toy no, could I justify it for work yes. Will they buy it for me, errr no.

Fair enough. But there are two markets I feel - the IT professional market and the tech enthusiast market and I think sometimes products are developed for both. I agree the kaiser is probably not what I should have got, but it's still sold in retail stores as a premium smartphone, vs. the competition what is a tech head going to get? With its superfluous HTC home screen etc. But again, that's besides the point. The marketing is certainly two tiered, product development is expensive so if you can pay half the cost of developing two products for two different markets by simply marketing one product as the ‘ideal product’ for both what will a company choose?

I think the beauty in product design is when you've had a few successful products like the EEE Pc and possibly the HTC machine you can see what works and what doesn't. People will always moan that a product isn't perfect for them but it's about getting the mix right. Obviously IT professionals who are using them as tools to diagnose and fix systems are going to be prepared more than someone who wants a cool toy, so definately there are two price points to fixate towards. But that's not to say that it's wrong to steal ideas from the upper or lower market offerings if they give a better or more cost effective product - afterall Ferrari developed car brakes and such (ok, I don't know the details, but the concept is accurate) are used in your 3 door family hatchback after a few years.

The only concern I have is this new ‘lower market’ of ultra cheap, almost ‘disposable’ laptops that come with no frills except the basics will be ignored because if the price is low then the revenue is low, even if development times are the same. And you could saturate the market with PCs, so someone who may have bought your £1000 UMPC with everything but the kitchen sink will realise the £200 offering is just fine.

But anyway, lots of talking from me :p. I guess I hadn't come to think of the market as split in two before - I'd assumed professionals would get proper laptops or specialist hardware, and that these were designed effectively as toys - to use to watch films on trains or check your email or just because you like gadgets. For the average joe the price point is too high.

Flying in the face of most of what's been said, I'd like a device that can do everything. The size of this would be perfect for me.

I've got T-Mobile's “Kaiser” (Vario3). It's good, but it's not a PC.
I've got a HP TC1100 PC. It's good, but it's not a phone. (Also it's too big to be “carryable”.)

I'd like something in between these two, that could be a PC when needed, but switch to being a phone (and therefore save battery) when the PC was NOT needed.

The size of this thing looks bang on. All I feel it needs is a “phone” as part of WM6.

Does this have GPS like the Kaiser, btw?

HTC Vista UMPC to hit the UK within weeks

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