Here’s a bit of news for folks who are tired of the same old PC designs: OQO’s model O2, billed as the world’s smallest PC running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Vista, is seeing encouraging sales, according to investor Mike Kwatinetz of Azure Capital. As many are selling in one quarter as the last model sold in a year, he told me. The company can’t yet keep up with demand.
The O2 competes with Samsung’s Q1P SSD, and Sony’s (SNE) Vaio VGN-UX390N. Granted, these are not mainstream PCs, and the unit sales numbers (which he didn’t share) would surely be small. But gadget lovers might be encouraged to know there’s a growing market for such pocketable devices.
The Vista-capable O2 ($1,850) has a 1.2-gigahertz processor, a 60-gigabyte hard drive and 1 GB of memory, plus WiFi, Bluetooth and options for phone-like wide-area wireless coverage from Sprint (S) or Verizon (VZ).
The wireless option makes the OQO and Sony models usable for Skype calls, though that probably would be practical only for international chats.