The iPhone Cometh

The Buzz: As the iPhone countdown continues, I thought I'd chime in with my reflections on Apple's uber-device and its rivals. I spent some quality time with an iPhone at Macworld Expo in January, and it truly is impressive. Its mobile Web browser alone is worth the price of admission--the touch-based pinch and stretch zoom controls are beautiful. The music, photo, and messaging features are cool as well. But the touch-based keyboard isn't great for thumb typing, and Apple's decision to ban third-party apps is a big disappointment.

Unfortunately, competition may not arrive for a while: LG's Prada phone won't be sold in the States; and Samsung's neat F700, a touch-screen phone with a slide-out keyboard, may not reach our shores either.

Bottom Line: Unless the iPhone can magically get an AT&T signal to my house, I'll skip it. Too bad Apple locked out third-party solutions--I was all set to take Skype calls over the iPhone's Wi-Fi.

Linux Graphics

The Buzz: If you've ever considered switching to Linux, the user interface was probably pretty far down your list of reasons. But that could change this year, thanks to the Beryl Project, a hardware-accelerated window manager to rival the visual flash of Vista and OS X. As of this writing, Beryl has barely reached its 0.2 release, but already it boasts some very cool features. It has transparent windows and title bars, a Mac OS Expose-like task switcher that scales windows to thumbnails, and a 3D cube interface for switching between virtual desktops.

Bottom Line: Beryl could drive up Linux adoptions once it's stable enough to be included in default Ubuntu installations. Combine that with Dell's expanded lineup of Linux PCs and this should be a good year for penguins.

Refolding Origami

The Buzz: As mentioned in "New Face for Tiny PCs" last month (scroll down the linked page), Microsoft isn't done with Origami yet. The first generation of Ultra Mobile PCs were marred by high prices and limited hardware, but the latest ones aim to change that. Samsung's nicely designed Q1 Ultra starts at $799 and packs a split-style thumb keyboard and a 7-inch, 1024-by-600-pixel display. Asus and Gigabyte have sub-$1000, keyboard-equipped models coming, too. The Asus T83 swivels tablet-style to reveal a QWERTY keyboard under its LCD. Samsung's and Gigabyte's UMPCs should arrive in May; Asus's, later this year.

Bottom Line: This is a step in the right direction, but between powerful smart phones and smaller subnotebooks, I still can't see where UMPCs are going to fit in.

You can contact PC World Senior Editor Eric Dahl and read additional Plugged In columns.