Viral marketing is all the rage. It's where a company pays six figures to slick spin merchants to scatter obscure webpages around the Internet with messages about some product that doesn't exist yet.

Microsoft recently dabbled with a bit of viral marketing of its own, with a project called Origami.

It was to be the do-anything, go-anywhere, ultimate portable device.

Rumours abounded that it was a portable Xbox, mobile phone, or iPod killer. In fact, it's almost all of these - it's the Ultra-mobile PC, or UMPC.

It's intended to be the device you always have with you. It has your contacts, your calendar, your documents as well as your music, videos and games.

There are only a few prototypes, including this Samsung, with an Intel Celeron M processor, 18-cm screen, WiFi and Bluetooth networking, GPRS mobile connectivity and 40 GB hard drive.

The UMPC falls between a phone, a PDA and a notebook.

The question is: is it trying to do too much? We'll see when it's released later this year.