After several months of being idle in my thoughts about the UMPC, my main question remains: Is the Ultra Mobile PC a successful product? The Ultra Mobile PCs were introduced to a fanfare of discussions among bloggers. Not everyone expected the form factor to succeed. Worriers attempted to compare the UMPC to the demise of the Tablet PC due to the lack of advertising, products, and general support from Microsoft. Fortunately, the UMPC has Intel, AMD, VIA, and many other companies supporting the platform. Have these companies been affective in spreading the word about the UMPC platform? Pros: The Successes Every new UMPC hardware released to the market has received a fair amount of links in blogs and forums. New people discover the UMPC platform every day and spread the word. Companies are calling their products an UMPC when they are actually small form factor platforms. New bloggers write about their positive and negative experience with the UMPC. Cons: The failures There have been several gotchas with the UMPC campaigns. First, the marketing is boring. Snoring boring! There is a general lack of snap to product announcements. In effect, the press releases over-complicate the news by burying why someone needs an Ultra Mobile PC. PR firms should have serious conversations about the purpose of their product - and make sure the product fills the need of their targeted consumer. For example, I cannot imagine public schools which refuse to embrace the UMPC. Every student should have a UMPC in their possession at all times. Textbooks, note-taking, dynamic lectures, and connectivity to the Internet are four important enhancements to the school experience. Students are no longer tied to textbooks with lame graphics and images. Instead, figures built in flash make the material come alive for the student. Note-taking is brought together into a single notebook. My OneNote folder is now over 30 GB in size because of the notes and papers placed in the single folder. Searching is easy;...