A few comments to some of the postings...

I plan to include some of the early "Origami" designs and stages of progress as I go. Please bear with me as I set some of the context and background, it will help explain things a bit more clearly. I will also explain why Origami is physically larger than some other miniature PCs….

About two years ago Bill Mitchell (VP of the Mobile Platforms Division) asked me to re-join Windows working for him as an Architect. He was aware of some of the work I had been doing in Microsoft Research, and of my passion for the ultra-mobile PC area.

We had a lot of interesting discussions about the overall viability of a very small PC, about the big problems that needed to be solved (heat, battery life, usability), and what the value would be to the user.

Much of my focus with previous efforts had been on getting first-generation products built. I tend to want things to happen as soon as possible once I get an idea in my head. But Bill asked me to step back and do a very simple thing – design a product concept that assumed significant advances in technology. In other words, design a concept that was not limited by the existing limitations of technology.

I’m a product person at the core, and I wasn’t too excited at the prospect of thinking about things that actually couldn’t be built. But in fact, I found the process to be very liberating, and the results came together very quickly. I named the concept "Haiku" (with help from my wife) in the spirit of the poetry form – simply, elegant, expressive.