As some of you may know, Samsung held a big press event today at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco where they unveiled the pricing and availability for the Q1. So without further ado:

Price: base model of the Q1 will be $1099 (USD).

 

Availability: starting May 7th, you'll be able order directly from Best Buy’s website. Later this summer, select Best Buy locations will have the Q1 available in-store.

Dustin is currently down in San Francisco, so when he returns I’ll try and convince him to write up a brief recap of the day’s events. Should be fun to read.

On a related note, our team was lucky enough to get a few of the first production Q1 models last week, and have since been using, configuring, and enjoying “living the Origami UMPC lifestyle”. We’ll have a bunch more to talk about in the coming days/weeks about the different UMPC models, but I thought I’d start out with a little play-by-play of my first few minutes with the Q1. :)

First things first, we had to unload all of the boxes out of Victoria’s van (Victoria, Dustin, and Jeremy had to make a quick run to pick them up before the mail room closed so we could get them that day).

Here’s Dave and Wendy loading up the cart.

Once we got them back to Dustin’s office, we started opening the boxes. After knocking Jeremy to the floor, I grabbed the first unit out of the box, stepped over him, and hurried back to my office. Here’s the one I escaped with.

And a couple more box shots. Here’s the back.

Side.

Sliding the cover off.

And here it is without the cover.

Lift the top, and what am I greeted with? The Samsung Q1!

Let’s get that little guy out of there…

Here's everything taken out of the box.

Profile showing the stand in action.

And one where it's all booted up. Let the fun begin!

Well, that about wraps it up for this post. Like I mentioned earlier, we'll be talking in great lengths both here on the team blog and in the forums about the Samsung, TabletKiosk, Asus, Founder, and all the other great UMPCs that are available now or will be in the near future. Stay tuned!