Raon Digital Everun. Exclusive preview video.
I feel very privileged to be able to air this introduction video of the Raon Digital Everun that will be on sale next month. Thanks to Raon Digital and a meeting schedule that took them through my neck of the woods I was able to meet up with them …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Everun's debut lands in a young but already crowded Ultra Mobile PC field. Since late 2006, enthusiast sites have been benchmarking the category's anchors — GottaBeMobile's usability InkShow of the Asus R2H, follow-up notes on the same device, and Engadget's March 2007 hands-on with Samsung's Q1 Ultra — establishing that these machines live or die on keyboard, battery, and real-world ergonomics rather than spec sheets.
First-order effects
- Raon Digital gets launch-month mindshare through an exclusive preview rather than a paid campaign, letting a small Korean vendor enter the conversation alongside Asus and Samsung at zero media cost.
- Prospective UMPC buyers gain a third serious hardware option to weigh against the R2H and Q1 Ultra before spending on a category where usability complaints were common.
Second-order effects
- Incumbent OEMs now face comparison reviews that judge every new UMPC against the usability bar those earlier InkShow-style writeups set, raising the bar for what ships next month.
- Specialist blogs consolidate their position as the de facto launch channel for niche mobile-hardware vendors, which cannot command mainstream press attention on their own.
Third-order effects
- If sub-notebook-class devices keep arriving from regional vendors, the UMPC segment splits between OEM giants competing on polish and specialists competing on form factor — with enthusiast reviewers as the gatekeepers deciding which designs get taken seriously.
The trend: Pocketable full Windows PCs are moving from a two-OEM curiosity into a multi-vendor niche, with independent enthusiast media shaping which devices survive scrutiny.