Around 10 years ago, before the rise of the smartphone, there was a brief moment when it looked like mobile devices were going to take a very different direction. Ultra-mobile PCs — small, even pocket-sized Windows computers that ran the same full versions of Windows XP or Vista as your desktop, with all the same apps — looked like they might be the future of portable computing. Obviously, history was not on the side of the UMPC, and products like the OQO Model 01 or Samsung Q1 have faded into relative obscurity, replaced by smaller smartphones and larger tablets like the Surface.

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