Apparently David Carnoy is not the only person who thins that the UMPC is dead. His article last week told readers why they will probably never own a UMPC, a claim that would have been pretty surprising a year or so ago. This article created a (minor) fuss when the UMPC fanatics over at JKontherun noticed the article and issued a rebuttal. The same thing basically happened all over again. Over at TG Daily Carnoy's ideas were echoed In an article called, "The UMPC dies. And no one notices." pointed out that the UMPC, despite everyone's initial excitement is going to end up a niche device and that Intel's MID (running some sort of Linux) is the device to watch out for. James over at JK is up in arms again over this slight to the UMPC, but does bring up a few good points. The TG Daily article completely forgot to mention the Nokia N800, a sub-$400 Linux-based mobile device. Okay, it is not running Intel's 45nm Silverthorne processor but it still a great indicator of consumer's response to the MID. This is to say that mobile enthusiasts will be drooling over it, certain businesses will find applications for it, a few enthusiasts communities will pop up, but the mainstream consumer will probably remain unaware. James correctly points out that, "UMPCs are not dead as the TG Daily article implies, even the author admits that. But he is correct in pointing out that current 2nd generation UMPCs are not going to appeal to the mainstream consumer. I don't think that will happen until there is a $500 fully functional PC with a cheap data plan. It's all about anywhere access and price." Right on the money... Any time your introduce a form factor that is between two successful form factors (notebooks and smartphones in the case of the UMPC) the average consumer is not going to know how to react. These items are generally great in theory and consumers will say, almost to themselves "A guy can do great things with a gadget like that... Great things..." when they first see one. Then they won't buy one because they have a notebook, or because their BlackBerry (which their employer provides) can do most of that they would want to do on a UMPC or MID.