UMPC for the masses?! Please give us HSDPA!

I noticed today that both What Laptop and PDA Essentials magazines here in the UK are carrying several page features on UMPCs.

The What Laptop article touches on the MS basis with Origami and mentions the Sony UX, the Fujitsu 1610 and sums things up by saying "A UMPC is designed to do most of the things that a real laptop can do, but nothing it can't".

But what's more interesting than the article itself, is that these two major publications are writing about UMPCs, in depth. One is targetted at the laptop buyer, and one at the PDA owner. Perhaps UMPCs ARE about to become mainstream.

While that might mean less random conversations when using one it can only be a good thing for the market!

Personally I think we'll see this only when the OQO, the Sony UX, the Fujitsu 16xx, the Samsung Q* and their ilk come with HSDPA inside. HTC seem to have got there first with the Shift and I wonder how long the others will take to follow suite.

It seems so painfully obvious on our island, but I guess with HSDPA coverage in the US being what it is we'll have to wait for the US to get bored of EVDO and move on, or hope for someone to be bold and give us an HSDPA module.

Come on OQO...we know you can do it...we've seen the pictures of an Model 2 opened up, HSDPA and a SIM card holder installed... We know about the SIM card sized dimple on the battery...