So, I thought it would be great to try out the Origami Experience on the UX390N.  Unfortunately, the dialog you see here was shown to me.  How odd, as this machine is defintion quite mobile and is certainly running Vista.  Apparently, though, it's not a "licensed" true "UMPC" machine.  That's also apparently because it doesn't have a 7" screen (it's even smaller at 4.5").  So is this an EMPC (or XMPC) (extreme mobile PC) and thus not supported?

I found instructions at "seamonkey420 blog" on "tech-recipes.com."  After following this, it installs without any issue. 

It's runs full screen at 1024x600 and apps will run at whatever screen resolution you're at.  That is, Origami ran at 1024x600 even while at 1024x768 while Sudoku ran at the full screen resolution.  (Incidentally, the Sudoku implementation is quite good.  More on that later.)  The screen shot shows what I mean -- you can see part of Live Writer at the bottom with this post in it. 

Origami Experience itself is like a UMPC version of Windows Media Center.  I guess it might be more like Portable Media Center, but I've never seen that. The chosen set of apps isn't bad and the little quick button to the 3D switcher is fun.

A number of the links didn't work, though. The links in "Origami Experience\en-US\Shortcuts" all had the same strange issue.  For instance, '%windir%\explorer.exe "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=58443"' doesn't work.

Now, you'll probably want to have the Sony launcher button be able to launch Origami Experience instead. To do this you have to launch Vaio Central, choose Special Buttons, then in both rotation tabs change the launcher button to "Start Program" and choose Origami. 

You'll now e able to launch Origami Experience with ease.   With lots of personalization available for it, you can certainly make it look nice, too.  It might even suffice for a reasonable entertainment console in the car -- just don't do video if it's in the front seat.

Posted by Shane on March 28, 2007 8:04 AM | Permalink