The demonstration gremlin strikes again

The companies behind Microsoft's Origami ultra-mobile PC project were unable to demonstrate it successfully at a recent news conference in Seoul, the Korea Times reported.

Senior executives from Microsoft, Samsung and Intel all fumbled their on stage demonstrations of Samsung's Q1 handheld, which will go on sale in two weeks. Microsoft has emphasized ease of use as a key feature of Origami handhelds, but the executives struggled to control their new touch screen device.

Samsung's PC division vice-president was unable to turn to the second page of his Powerpoint presentation, the paper said. Then the device's battery expired only a few minutes into the presentation. The Q1 is supposed to have a battery life of between two and three hours.

The president of Microsoft Korea fared even worse, reports said. He was unable to start his own presentation on his Q1, until staff assisted him, and then was unable to navigate through it successfully, curtailing his demonstration.

Finally, the CEO of Intel Korea tried his luck with another Q1 Origami prototype, but he too was unable to run a PowerPoint presentation without help from underlings.

The Q1 will be officially launched on May 1 at a reported price of around $1200. The Q1, like other prospective Origami PCs, runs the tablet edition of Windows XP. The 800 gram Q1 has a 7-inch touchscreen, a 900 Mhz Celeron M CPU, 512MB of memory, and a 40GB hard disk drive.