Ex-Apple staff debut palm-sized PC

OQO, the start-up that debuted the 7oz "Ultra-Personal" at WinHEC this week is keeping plenty of details under wraps. But we did catch Executive Vice President Colin Hunter this morning, and he dealt with some questions unanswered by OQO's Flash-heavy website.

Hunter co-founded Transmeta, serving both as CFO while the company was in stealth mode, and head of the software engineering side. But the core design team includes several members of the Apple Titanium notebook project, including Jory Bell and Joe Betts-Lacroix, and research staff from IBM's Almaden labs.

The Ultra Personal really is small - at less than 5 by 7 inches, it's sleeker than a CD - but is nevertheless a fully featured Windows PC. It uses Transmeta's TM5800 processor, up to 1GHz, 256MB of RAM and the same 10GB Toshiba drive featured in the latest Apple iPod. It has built-in 802.11b and Bluetooth, and an optimistic battery life of eight hours under light usage.

It should be available by the end of the year, and Hunter told us it would be priced comparably to low-end notebooks, in the $1,000 to $1,400.

News source: The Register