I think they have great potential but they really need to make a model with a touch type keyboard that is a clamshell shape.

just my observation.

However it would seem that of the 51 on offer, Expansys sold exactly…. 2.

I have a feeling they’ll be back on offer soon enough as Expansys need to clear their stock – but Zip’s comments on the dead batteries and scoobies’ comments on the reliability of these machines should be heeded. All the research I’ve done seems to suggest a pretty high failure rate and very poor CS from OQO.

OQO is not discounting these, Expansys is. These are models that are over 1 year old and the batteries are dead.

Expansys is getting rid of old stock and sticking OQO with the warranty claims. If you buy/bought one consider yourself warned.

high capacity persistent storage
Windows XP/Vista right out of the box.

An incomplete, after the fact XP install hardly counts. Gigabyte doesn’t support this and it’s missing drivers. Moreover, Gigabyte doesn’t look like they’re making any moves to support XP. This will seriously limit the number of people who buy the M528 to use XP even if someone does develop the missing drivers.

In any case, it’s not OQO cutting the price. It’s Expansys. If it were OQO, you’d see this price cut all over the place. As near as I can tell, this is just limited to Expansys. (Expansys USA did do the same thing to the 02 last week.)

In any case, it’s impossible to divine the reason for the price cut simply from the cut itself. As a few people have speculated, perhaps an 03 is imminent. If that’s the case, the hypothetical 03 may look like a response to the M528, but OQO probably started work on it long before Gigabyte announced the M528.

[Also, what the folks at OQOTalk expect from the hypothetical 03 isn't a direct competitor to the M528. They're expecting something more powerful than the 800MHz Atom inside the M528. Just because two devices are the same size doesn't mean they compete against each other.]

What you tell the buyers who paid the full price are:

1. You bought it at what you considered a fair price. That hasn’t changed.
2. For the price you paid for it, you got to use it for all that time between when you bought it and now.

Basically, if you didn’t think the original price was a fair price for it, then you shouldn’t have bought it. If you did think the original price was a fair price, that it’s now cheaper doesn’t change that.

A pocket PC with a thumb-keyboard is a fantastic toy for fun and some valuable tasks as long as it is cheap enough, because you still need something like the Everun Note or Fujitsu U2010 with a touch-type-able keyboard to be productive and/or a smartphone to be truly pocketable (OQO is still too heavy and large for you to put in your pocket all the time).

Just don’t expect a OQO2 to be your all-in-one device that’s all you need. If it is such an AIO, $2000 or whatever is worth it. Unfortunately it is not. For $2000, it can only be an expensive toy for rich executives. But, as a unique and useful gadget, it worths every penny of $700.

The OQOManager, a utility installed by default, messes up lots of things other than providing, supposedly, a better user experience. I removed that garbage from my OQO, but most people don’t know how to handle it.

See my tips posted to oqotalk forum (including a mouse button emulator I programed for OQO2) to get a sense for what issues you’ll be facing with and how to tweak them. You can easily add a build-in 3G module.

For such low prices, it is good to get this fantastic toy.