Sometimes, the most amazing things come out of the most unknown companies. OQO is one such company. Their masterpiece: a computer slightly larger than a Palm Pilot in size, but featuring Windows XP, a 10 gigabyte hard drive, and many other features of a good desktop machine.

   Jory Bell and Joe Betts-Lacroix – engineers, who worked on the Apple Titanium notebook, established OQO in 1999. People from NASA JPL, IBM, MIT, Oracle and Transmeta are present in the company as well. People like that don’t joke around – and OQO computer has already received support from Microsoft and IBM [which has already agreed to license the technology for its upcoming futuristic PC, the MetaPad].

   OQO is a small box with an enhanced liquid crystal display from Synaptics – a screen that is several times better than anything currently used on notebooks. Inside, the box contains a 1 gigahertz Transmeta Crusoe CPU, 256 MB RAM, and abovementioned Toshiba hard drive and Windows XP OS. OQO weights 250 grams, has built in USB and FireWire ports, supports wireless protocols 802.11b and Bluetooth, and will support GPRS in near future. On the way to work, OQO can be used as an MP3 player, and, when you get into the office, it can be plugged into a special dock, connected to a monitor and a full-size keyboard, and used as a standard desktop PC. All this is called “Ultrapersonal computing” – “everything that belongs to me is always with me”, materialized to the full extent.

   Since Crusoe is much less power-hungry than an Intel or AMD, a single battery charge will last approximately 8 hours of working with office-style programs, or about 2 hours of watching an MPEG movie. The processor automatically adjusts its clock speed according to how much computing power is required at the moment. OQO will go on sale this year for about $1000 US dollars. For what seems like an incredibly low price on something so awesome, this will sure be a very hot, revolutionary, item.