I was never a fan of the tiny UMPC machines that hit the market place at inflated prices before the massive netbook revolution. The thing I never liked about the little machines was that the keyboards tended to be sized for thumb use only and I just couldn’t see them being useful in the real world.

One of the cool looking UMPCs at CES 2009 was the OQO Model 2+. The little machine promised an Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, OLED touch screen and more. I was rather excited to see it at CES 2009 and while interesting, I didn’t think it stacked up at all against the mass of netbooks around.

OQO showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show this week its new model 2+ small form laptop. The company said will be available in the first half of the year for around $1,000 starting, through pre-orders can be placed now.

The OQO model 2+ weighs less than a pound and measures 5.6- x 3.3- x 1-inches. It sports an embedded Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) display, increased brightness and contrast with better outdoor readability. It is available with a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 CPU and 2GB of RAM.

Before the dawn of the netbook age, there were several tiny, ultraportable machines on the market like the OQO Model 2. These devices were much smaller than the notebooks of the day, but offered too many compromises in usefulness and performance so they never really caught on.

Today the netbook has shown many consumers that a lower performance computer can be very useful and netbooks are leading the computer market in growth. To grab some of this action OQO is getting a new Model 2+ of its little machine ready for a CES 2009 debut.