I must apologize. I'm very bullish about UMPCs, but there's something more flawed than what David hints at: the price.

I assumed that OEMs would be able to get the price down closer to $500 than $1,000. At $1,000 you can buy a high-powered laptop. These things just won't do well until they drop in price.

If they were cheaper, I could answer the "why" for David. But they aren't. Until they are, we're doomed to a niche market, no matter how useful or cool they are.

Pricing +is+ important here. It's embarrassing that we haven't been able to get the price down to a noticeable gap between low-end laptops.

When the pricing comes down I'll get excited again. I still will probably buy one at $1,000, because I can see enough geeky uses for it (coffee table picture frame, remote control, GPS device and media player for car, etc) but I'm a geek. The fact that I get excited by something doesn't mean the normal person on the street will get excited by it too.