The ABC's Of Ultra Mobility
It's tough to keep track of the ever-shifting jargon in the red-hot Ultra Mobility arena. What's the difference between a MID and a UMPC? Where does Google's Android fit into the picture? Why would anybody purposely say the word "Tweet" in public? The answer to all these questions and more can be found in ChannelWeb's easy-to-digest alphabetical guide to all things Ultra Mobile, beginning, of course, with the letter 'A':
A is for the Atom
Intel's latest tiny chip
It plays real nice with a small device
But will it ever ship?
B is for the Blackberry
So curvy, sleek and slim
But pity the guy who has to tie
The IT network into RIM
C is for the Classmate
Chipzilla's toy machine
It's Otellini versus Negroponte
While Gates collects the green
D is for the Demo show
Where new tech braves the heat
Of six-minute feeds on an edge that bleeds
Or so, as they say, we've heard Tweet
E is for the E-Book
A great idea indeed
But will kids turn the spindle on a brand new Kindle
If they never learn to read?
F is for you, Facebook
And Flickr's photo stream
Kids on the go may love Web 2.0
But reading Scoble makes us scream
Google, Google, you're our G
Your Android's gone Medieval
On closed designs for cell phone lines
To the Telcos, please be evil
H is for the Hoopla
The future's bright, I tell ya
So invest it all in something small
(Except this bridge I also want to sell ya)
I is for the iPhone
One of Apple's greatest Jobs
But we'd like to see less AT&T
Before we join the fanboy mobs
J's for the Jornada
As dead as Dell's old Axim
That they'll make stuff as dopey as GMate's Yopy
Is high tech's enduring maxim
The K in Intel's high-K
Gate dielectrics offers clear ...
Hey! What's with the groans? Stop quoting Bones!
Fine, we get it -- you're not an engineer
Linux, it begins with L
And the only thing that's worse
Than migrating to Vista, we're telling you, mista
Is hearing open-source zealots converse
M is for the wondrous MID
Small, powerful -- a bargain
What's that you say? What's it anyway?
Hey, we don't invent the jargon
Negroponte starts with N
St. Nick convinced us all that
His OLPC could guarantee
Laptops for every rugrat
O is for the OQO
The Porsche of gizmos to be sure
For 2,000 clams you can get your hands
On this pocket mid-life crisis cure
P is for the prescient Palm
A pioneering PIM promoter,
They once led the race in the PDA space
But it ain't '98 no mo', sir
Qualcomm is our choice for Q
Their 3G deals were tawdry
But that's at an end, so they contend
(Unlike their pals, the Padres)
R stands in for RISC
And the ARM chip architecture
With Intel's plans fixed, will it be x86'd?
It's worth watching this space, we conjecture
S is for the Smartphones
But how smart is it really, Hoss --
To drop, let's say, a full week's pay
On a digital leash to your boss?
T is for the Tegra
Nvidia's wee chipset
As light as a feather, the purpose, we gather:
Dialing Liberty City on your handset
U is for UMPCs
A confusing category
Are they tablets, MIDs or netbooks, kids?
Can't we agree upon one story?
V is for VIA-detta
Whose valuation's veering vendor-ly
'Midst the vicissitudes of verisimilitudes
To Intel's voltage vim, vows Enderle
Windows starts with W
Redmond digs that mobile tune
Too bad, to date, they've had the fate
Of dancing to it on a Zune
Y is Yahoo's watchword now
As in, 'Why'd Redmond's bid go bust?'
Now Google's might leads to a surreal sight:
Microsoft crying, 'Anti-trust!'
Z is for the Zodiac
Another one-time player
But in a space so crowded with new gizmos touted
Tapwave didn't have a prayer