The general consensus of opinion last week was that Microsoft's new UMPC (that's "ultra mobile PC"), code-named Origami, didn't look very interesting. Microsoft got a lot more press than it deserved by being so mysterious about what an Origami is and when -- if ever -- you'll be able to buy one.

What it is, it turned out, is a tablet PC in a form factor too small to be big and too big to be small, with a nebulous set of features but one important requirement (at least from Microsoft's viewpoint): it runs a Microsoft operating system.

Microsoft desperately wants to have the same kind of presence in handheld devices that it does in desktop and laptop devices, but so far it hasn't found the right formula. The Pocket PC wasn't it. Cellphone makers have tried Windows Mobile, but there's no clear win for Microsoft in that space.

Origami reminds me of the Apple Newton. It's a nice try, but it's just a little bit ahead of its time.

Someday, if we manage to beat back Big Telecom and get WiFi everywhere and constant connectivity at affordable prices, we'll all carry something like an Origami device. But I suspect we won't even think of them as the same thing. It's likely to have a folding screen so we can carry it in a pocket and open it to something big enough to browse the Web on and touch-type on and take photos and videos with, and it will have to have battery life like cell phones -- two or three days, not just two or three hours.

Origami is proof of that old adage that when what you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Microsoft's got Windows, so everything looks like a Windows PC. It's a company that needs some new ideas.

Meanwhile, I don't expect we'll hear much more about Origami.