There’s been a lot of fuss on the web about Microsoft’s new tablet PC, currently going under the title Project Origami, with people claiming it’s Microsoft’s attempt to break into the handheld gaming market.

Just look at the picture though, and you realise nothing could be further from the truth. Sure it can play games, but at the end of the day it’s basically a laptop with a touch screen instead of a keyboard. Whilst impressively small as a laptop, it’s hardly handy to carry around with you so you can whip it out at short notice for a quick gaming fix, like a GBA, DS or PSP can.

I don’t wish to sound overly negative about it though. It certainly looks like a nice piece of kit, with some of the example uses shown in it’s promo video being particularly well suited. Examples show it being used as a navigation aid (though whether it’s got built-in GPS or not isn’t obvious), controlling a media centre PC, e-mailing friends and so on, as well as playing games. The ability to roll all this together into a single device is rather cool, although I can’t help wondering if carrying a GPS, PDA, mobile phone and handheld game system around with you would still take up less room, and of course presumably Project Origami isn’t actually a mobile phone (unless your running Skype or some other voice over IP service that is!).

Check out the promo video here and see what you think!

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