Origami PR Campaign Is a Puzzlement

Microsoft has done a masterful job of manipulating the buzz around its Origami project. It's got the press playing "Where Is Carmen Sandeiego," tracking a flurry of rumors and sightings of the diminutive touchscreen PC all around the world. Our Man In San Francisco, Paul Kapustka, even got a sighting of his own at the Intel Developer's Conference. And here are the pictures.Intel was playing coy, refusing to confirm or deny that the prototypes Kapustka saw were Origami devices. The chipmaker showed off two versions, both of them touchscreen devices with a marked absence of control buttons and switches:

Kapustka's video report for The News Show shows two sleek devices with screens that might be about the size of your hand, one in silver, one in black.

Microsoft, meanwhile, was busy half-way around the world at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, Germany, dribbling out a few details about Origami, like, it's a 7-inch touchscreen computer running a full Windows XP OS with wireless built in but without a keyboard and battery life of three hours.

There's a lot more questions to be answered, like does it have a hard drive, does it come with a stylus, can I install Firefox on it, and so on.

But at least now I know some things, like it's too big to put in my pocket, and has too little battery life to be really useful as a mobile device. Hmmm, is this the kind of first impression Microsoft really wanted to create? It might have done better to be a little bit more open.