I finally got around to installing the latest Origami 2.0 UI for UMPCs on my P1610 and I have been pretty impressed. Graphically it is much better than the previous version which looked horrible on anything with a screen larger than 7" and fixed backgrounds larger than 1024 x 568.

Installing it was pretty easy. I just download and installed. The colors and taskbar icon are very Zune-like. Looks like they used a similar color palette.

I don’t know if it installed because I had previously installed Orcas to get the older version on it, but the install was pretty painless. It will now install on any Vista PC without screen size restrictions. It works on the TX2000 with its touch screen and I even installed it on my Media Center PC to run the browser with favorites via the remote control.

Starting up Origami 2.0 Central brings you right to a splash screen with your Media with icons allowing for background playing of Music, Picture viewing and Video Playback, with the choice to launch the Internet and Programs as well similar to the original Origami experience.More on that later.

Playing music has a similar interface to Windows Media Player, but is more akin to the experience in Media Center and it almost has the same font, but different color background. All the buttons and icons are larger to facilitate a touch interface. I really like having the album art and track information of the song playing in the bottom right hand corner of many of the panels while doing other things in Origami.

Video playback is pretty simple it will find videos in your users video directory and list them on the screen for playback. You can choose to view the video in small format as pictured above or you can tap on the video and it will play in full screen tapping the screen again will exit you back to the video main screen.

Looking at photos via the Origami interface is a very pleasant experience allowing you to rate each photo.

You can start a slide show from selected photos that are from the library which is basically several directories on your device that contain pictures/picture directories. You can access the Library as with all other media from a tab on the left hand side.

There are several slide show options to choose from as seen above. The animations between pictures is really cool. Tapping on the screen will show some options on the screen. To pause or play located in the center. Pressing this will pause the picture on the last picture in full screen allowing you to move through your selected pictures one by one either forward or  backward. In the lower right hand corner after tapping the screen will allow you to set the speed of the slide show and tapping the icon in the lower left corner allows you to set the options of how the slide show is displayed full screen, zooming in, two picture split screen, 3 pictures, and Polaroid snapshots. You also get rating buttons at the bottom of the screen while playing. I would have loved to see a way to tag files while viewing them.

Under the Internet option of Origami Central you get the options to view web pages and surf the net with a touch friendly interface as well as to read RSS feeds that share the same feeds from IE and Outlook 2007 with scrolling and touch navigation.

The IE browser for Origami is the same one for the device except it has a touch based UI layered on top of it. You can scroll the pages similar to pen flicks from Vista or mouse movements from other browsers like Maxthon.

You can quickly launch sites since it is tied to your IE History and Favorites and it looks like it also leverages IE7’s Quick Tabs.

I liked the quick launch of my favorite websites that I made a shortcut in the Media Center Programs

The RSS reader also uses the shared IE7 and Outlook store for reading RSS feeds

Some cool things are the ability to use a picture as a password via touch called Picture Password. This is a nice option if you have only a touch screen interface with a UMPC, but with my P160 the fingerprint reader is still a better option.

Setting up the Picture Password is pretty simple.

Here you can see how picture password works by tapping a sequence of targets on a picture instead of typing a password. Windows Mobile has a few programs that provide this same feature and this seems to be a Windows version of that.

You don’t have to use the default images you can also use your own.

Finishing up you will now have the option to use a picture password after entering the password for the first time and following the directions on the screen to finish setting up Picture Password to unlock your computer.

The Origami Now application utilizes around 18.5MB of memory on your device.

Clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner appears to close down the Origami Now interface, but in fact there is a drop-down Origami now button that stays hidden in the center of the screen similar to the TIP that hangs out on the side of the screen.

To shutdown the Origami application I found you could do so in the drop-down menu under the Gear icon, which has an Exit at the bottom of the list

On the top of the screen between the Origami Central icon and the battery indicator is an icon for Flip 3D, so you can easily navigate between open windows.

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