Why Hasn't Somebody From Sony Or Oqo Gotten A Clue? Options

[pculliton]

While looking around for a suitable upgrade to my C1000 I checked out the two leaders in the available-in-the-U.S. UMPC market. After handling a UX and reading extensively on both the next-generation UX and OQO models I have begun to wonder... what is WRONG with these people?

From the beginning, the Sony UX's primary complaint has been "the keyboard is really, really bad." And now, how many models and years later, the keyboard is still simply, absolutely, crap. I tried to type out a sentence on a brand new UX390 the other day -- a machine which retails for ~$2000 -- and had to stop in disgust. The keyboard was completely unusable. My hunt-and-peck $30 cell phone is more usable for text entry.

The main issue with the OQO from day one has been the processor speed (that pretty much goes without saying, as soon as you read the word "Transmeta" in the specs for the 01 and 01+). But in their latest model they've "upgraded" to a processor that *again* significantly underperforms its competition (as in, 2-3x slower)! And they're *also* asking quite a bit more for this little wonder than they ought to be given its shortcomings.

Why haven't OQO and Sony caught on yet? I really can't understand why these old hands have failed to address their machines' primary issues in the past several years. I also don't understand the market force that gets people to actually buy these things (especially the horrid UX) for many times the hoped-for UMPC price point. They're failures of the UMPC model, but they SELL so well!

Getting back to my initial question, though -- what's up with Sony and OQO? Are they that unresponsive? Is this what we have to look forward to in the UMPC field? Brand stagnation, with the only real innovation being caused by new companies entering the market?

Just wondering. :-)