It’s been nearly four years since HTC introduced their first and last UMPC – the HTC Shift. For those of you who don’t remember, the UMPC was Microsoft’s first attempt to bring full-fledged mobile computing to market. The idea was that you could deliver a full OS (Windows Vista) in a small package which would appeal to consumers. While the concept was great, the technology at the time simply wasn’t good enough or cheap enough for mass consumer adoption. UMPC device suffered from horrendous battery life, a poorly designed Origami skin on top of Windows Vista and resistive touch screens.
That being said, HTC couldn’t resist getting their toes wet in the UMPC market. The HTC Shift featured most of the same features offered by other manufacturers, but HTC took things a step further by offers a fairly large slide-and-shift keyboard and the ability to dual-boot into Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Vista. While the Shift got rave reviews, the price was too high for the times and Window Vista was… well, you know what Windows Vista was.
But things are looking up if you still own the HTC Shift. The new developers build of Windows 8 with its tablet friendly Metro UI can be installed on the Shift. The Windows 8 installation process is long and a bit tedious since you will have to install many of the HTC Shift specific drivers manually, but the end result is pretty amazing.
We’re glad to see that the development community is still hard at work, keeping the HTC Shift up to date after so many years. If you want a quick preview of what Windows 8 looks like on the Shift, check out the video blow. The clip in in French, but we’re you’ll be able to follow along just fine.
Source: Distant-Earth
