Asus Drops Their R50a in November--Ugh!

In today's world of on-demand-everything, you can't always be at your desk when you want to do things that you normally need to do in your day. With UMPCs, as the joke says, you can take it with you. This is only true when the "it" you're referring to is the computing power of your office computer. Asus, a company that has shown it can produce a pretty mean laptop ("mean" in a good way), is heading into the UMPC world with the R50a, a handheld device it claims is a full-powered PC.

After wowing the world with their very mobile Eee PC, they're living up to the "U" in UMPC by providing an Ultra Mobile PC that is truly feature-rich. The R50a is 6.2-inches long, is a full-powered computer, has a 5.6-inch touchscreen, and will run Windows Vista or Linux. Thusly, it's a little bit like folding up your office computer and sticking it in your pocket--well, almost.

It's not quite pocket-size, but according to , there are quite a bit more features to be impressed with on this little guy.

Apparently, the R50a will come with GPS built-in. Oh yeah, it'll have what that press release calls "3.5G high-speed connectivity" which makes it really start to sound a heckuva lot better than the iPhone. Then, in a bit of strangeness, the R50a will come with, of all things, a TV tuner. There's no mention anywhere if it will record onto it's (Solid State Drive). Still, that's a happy addition to any handheld. Of course, with the built-in cameras (one for each side) one would assume recording video is a given. This makes a person wonder about video-ins and video-outs, too.

The other (mild) surprise on this baby is the biometric, finger-print scanner for security. The theory is that with this shiny little reader right on the face, evildoers will be less likely to walk off with this puppy. Of course, it's been reported that the R50a will price in at "above $500," so, maybe the thieves can just hock their iPhones and go buy one of these themselves.