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Kohjinsha V801. Possibly more.

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:05:57 +0200

UPMania has the scoop on a new, redesigned Kohjinsha V-series UMPC. It follows the notebook style of the SA and SH ranges but this time, and I really don’t know why, includes a CDROM. In one and a half years of using UMPCs I’ve never needed a CDROM on the go. Wouldn’t it have been better to stuff another battery in that space?

One assumes that they’ve had to completely re-design the motherboard though so maybe, just maybe, they’ve managed to reach better efficiencies. THe SH-range, remember, was an under-performer compared to other McCaslin-based UMPCs when it came to energy efficiency.

Due to a broken broadband connection here (thank goodness for the Q1b HSDPA again) and a back-log of CES posts I haven’t been able to pick out the specs. I’ve got a few requests out and will get back to you all soon.

In addtion to the V801, there’s a new SA1 AMD-based device on the horizon with a 1024×600 screen. The AMD-Geode based devices are some of the most efficient available but not really up to the task of laptop replacement. With Menlow round the corner, the life of the AMD Geode in UMPCs must be fairly limited now.

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Origami Experience 2.0 is LIVE!

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:02:39 +0200

It had to be called OE 2.0 didn’t it!!!

Jeremy from the Origami team at Microsoft has just posted news about a new Origami Experience release. There’s a few images and some information available. The main point being that there are 4 new applications:

OrigamiT Central. An update to the main OE application including RSS feed reader and “fully-optimized browsing experience.” This appears to be building on what OE 1.0 was.
OrigamiT Now. A home-page type application that allows you to bring in favorite content. Looks like Windows sidebar gadgets.
OrigamiT Picture Password. A touch-optimised password application.
Touch Settings. The under-estimated optimisation program that enhances the UI. No enhancements here though.

Two things spring immediately to mind and I’m sorry, they are both negative. Firstly, Touch settings doesn’t seem to have been changed at all so there’s no automated optimisation of Vista. This is a chance missed. Secondly, it looks like Vista-only to me.

I’m looking forward to testing this on my Q1 Ultra though. I’ve asked for a download link as I can’t find one at the moment. I hope it’s not going to be a locked application as before.

OE 2.0 is available for viewing at CES this week. Lets hope one of the bloggers out there gets some hands-on.

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Qualcomm mobile platforms. MIDS from the...

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:58:19 +0200

Qualcomm are showing off a couple of mobile platforms at CES. They aren’t UMPCs or even x86 devices but they’re certainly Mobile Internet targeted. On the lower image, the platform known as ‘Ancorage’ (Also shown above next to an iPhone) is running Windows Mobile.

Both this demonstrator and the ‘Fairbanks’ variant are running the ’snapdragon’ platform which I wrote about recently. Its a Ghz-capable platform utilising the scorpion, Cortex A8 ARM architechture. HTC and Samsung have already shown interest in this and I personally think its going to be going head-to-head with Intel’s Menlow. Take a look at some MIDs that have been shown at CES. The target markets are exactly the same.

Gigabyte MID on Menlow platform.

Qualcomm are just showing these off as demonstrators of their mobile platform and it looks like they’re made by Inventec but the focus is clear - Mobile Internet!

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GBM hands-on with the R50A. R3 makes an...

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:54:13 +0200

One of the more attractive UMPCs we’ve seen in the last few days has been the ASUS R50A. Its bigger than we expected, with a 5.6″ screen and it’s a fairly high-spec device. GottaBeMobile’s Rob Bushway and Kathy Sierra got some hands-on time with it and shot a video which i’ve just made some notes on. Read on…

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Amtek U560 ‘maxi-mid’ arrived today.

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:50:50 +0200

Thanks to MobilX.hu, the Amtek U560 UMPC sample arrived today, well ahead of expected availability early next month.

I’ve been making notes in this forum thread so feel free to join in with the questions. I have also prepared some videos for a post tomorrow where I’ll give my first thoughts. So far I’m impressed. It’s got a fair bit of chubbiness but it’s a curvy and efficient little device and has strong video qualities.

I’ll try and do a live session about an hour before Steve Jobs starts his presentation tomorrow. (15th)

Again, thanks to Mobilx for the loan of this.

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Flipstart. Big price reductions.

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:47:14 +0200

Want a powerful UMPC with clamshell design and good price? You might want to take a look at the new Flipstart prices.

A smidgen under 700 dollars buys you the entry-level model at Dynamism. Thats 5.6″ Wide SVGA, 1.1GHz Pentium, 30gb HD, 512mb RAM, Sprint Mobile Broadband Network Ready. I think it’s shipped with the high capacity battery too….checking….yup. high-capacity (3-5hours) battery.

I have never actually handled one of these devices but at that price…. 50% of the launch price….its worth thinking about.

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Modu concept puts mobile phone at the ce...

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:43:11 +0200

A new viral marketing campaign has surfaced for a product that appears to suggest modular mobile computing.

Best guess: A Mini phone with display, cpu and radios in a compact flash size package (or PCI-e?) that docks into a range of lifestyle devices.

You can find the website here but note that you can find a big list of job openings here which indicates that this product might not be ready for launch just yet.

Modumobile promo video.

JKK has some more thoughts on this over at JKKMobile.

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3G e-Reader with fold-out 5" screen near...

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:38:40 +0200

I’m a little surprised to see the Readius product nearing ‘availability so quickly. It has been demo’d before but this time, they’re talking prices and timescales!

It’s black and white, has the typical slow refresh rate of e-ink display, has GSM voice capability, mini SD card slot, MP3 playback capability and the software supports static page formats like RSS and e-books. It weighs 115gm and is based on an ARM11 processor at 400Mhz running a Linux kernel.

Will hit stores in mid-2008.

Reuters reports that it will cost as much as a high-end smartphone. Quite what that means is anyone’s guess but don’t expect it to be cheap!

Lets imagine this in the future.2009: faster refresh rate, better contrast? 2010: Thinner, refresh rate for video? 2011 Economies of scale reached for mass market B&W browsing and media? 2012 Colour. 2013 Touch? Touch! Wow, I can’t imagine how they will manage to integrate a touch layer in this and keep it reliable!

It will be a while before we see this in the mass market but it will be an important one to watch over the coming years.

Polymer Vision will be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in Feb so expect to see more news then.

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Archos and Wibrain in home TV action!

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:21:32 +0200

I’ve retro-fitted my TV with a new Internet, streaming media, uPnP-capable, portable device solution. Its not Apple TV or anything big and cumbersome like that, its the device that didn’t make the MID grade. The Archos 605 Wifi . I’ve entered a new world of uPnP and online TV on demand. My productivity has gone through the floor. Its great!

I bought the 605 WiFi last November to test its mobile Internet capabilities and it failed miserably. From a MID perspective it was slow, unsatisfying and only had WiFi. It has been in the cupboard-of-shame ever since.

Until last week that is, when my wife briefly mentioned getting a flat screen TV in the bedroom. Not being a big fan of the TV-in-the-bedroom concept I threw the idea away. Those wifey types are crafty though aren’t they. Damn them! Only 24 hours later I was watching Cranky Geeks in my bed on a UMPC and the seed sprouted. Wouldn’t it be nice to watch it on a flat screen TV on the wall in the bedroom.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

My wife should be in marketing. The subliminal type.

What if I could put a PVR up here and get all my videos and English TV [we live in Germany] and start syncing video podcasts into the server and… and, and, and. (You know how those thought-chains get out of hand right?)

At first I thought about MythTV but having done that project 4 years ago and having spent way too many hours on it I started looking for a simple solution. What I needed was a simple solution and that’s where the 605 WiFi thought came in. I had done a successful impromptu test in the UK with High School Musical (oh how the kids loved me) and a 5-hour music mix on new years eve. The 605 had worked easily and flawlessly. I remembered that there was a DVR station add-on with SPdif and S-Video output and it was beginning to sound perfect. This wasn’t going to be a HD setup but seeing as I didn’t have any HD sources it would probably be fine.

Using the battery docking station I was able to rig it up on a test TV (the main TV in the living room) and start messing around. I fired-up a uPnP server (TwonkyMedia on my favorite distro, OpenSuse 10.3) in the cellar and BANG! there was everything. Working, with a nice UI, my SMB shares, Internet widgets and….wait a minute, there was YouTube in full-screen glory. Cranky Geeks too. The thing that suprised me the most though was that the browser was enjoyable. Using it on a TV like this puts the slow browser into perspective. The last time I had really looked at searchable info on a TV was while waiting for page 26 of 52 to come round on the Teletext road traffic site. Opera on the 605 Wifi is light-years ahead in comparison and this change of context made it incredibly impressive. After installing the Archos PC-based podcast sync software (it would have been nice to have this as an application on the 605 itself) I was soon catching up on old Diggnation and CrankyGeeks episodes. Awesome!

But now I have another problem. The Archos 605 Wifi is a better playback device than my Mini-ITX PVR that I built 4 years ago. It boots in 5 seconds (current PVR takes 3 minutes as it is diskless and boots over the network) it’s silent and it supports uPnP which is so much easier than SMB or NFS shares. The best thing is that it’s highly portable. I probably won’t use it myself as a PMP but I know my daughter will love it in the car. I still need to add the DVR station accessory which gives the ability to use a remote control and do recordings but I plan to order that ASAP for even lazier on-sofa Internet action.

I think we can call that a success…

Oops! The wife. She wanted a new TV didn’t she. I wanted Cranky Geeks in bed and my solution, the 605 Wifi, is now installed in the living room and I don’t want to move it upstairs. Do I buy a second 605 Wifi or do I go for something else.

[Here comes the UMPC part.]

I was looking at the prices of the LCD and plasma TV panels and thinking - mmm. Expensive. And thinking… ‘What about getting a simple PC panel and feeding it data through the VGA connector.’ What about using the Everun and the docking station with a DVB-T module. Mmm. A tad under-powered for this applications. Looking at the WiBrain B1H sitting on my desk I remembered the DVD-capable docking station and the WiBrain’s ability to stream well from the Internet….Bingo!

So that’s where I am right now. The 605 is working well in the living room, i’m ordering the PVR station and am starting to work on the WiBrain. The WiBrain will be tested with a USB DVB-T stick and Sage TV. I’ll use the VGA-out dongle for testing and when the docking station comes out, I’m going to connect the DVB-T sitck to that, add some powered speakers and connect permanently to a LCD monitor. If it works, the WiBrain B1H will be the smallest XP-based media center possible and a really tidy solution.

I’ll be blogging about the WiBrain PVR project on UMPCPortal so stay tuned over there for progress reports and if you have any suggestions or ideas, please let me know.

More information available on the Archos 605 Wifi in the database.

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Kohjinsha SC3 UMPC. First impressions.

actfind — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:57:12 +0200

If there’s one thing that always annoys me in the UMPC category, it’s a wasted chance. Be it poor design, poor software or poor hardware. If there’s one thing that annoys me more than that its when a company makes the same mistake twice. Even worse than that is when the device in question is high-quality in every other respect. Because of this I find the SC3 the most frustrating device I’ve ever owned. I want so much to love it and take it into my daily life but….

Q1 Ultra Premium. Soon in Europe. Soon m...

actfind — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:17:47 +0200

One of my….no, let me start that again. My favourite UMPC, the Q1 Ultra Premium with its 1.3Ghz Intel Core processor and 6-hour battery life running XP Tablet Edition in its sub-2lb package, is coming to the UK and Europe via Expansys. Final specifications aren’t 100% clear yet but it looks like it will ship with the docking station (which is actually just a battery charger and USB hub) and the superb Samsung mobile keyboard which beats the Eee PC keyboard hands-down in desktop scenarios.

Its not clear if the UK model includes the fingerprint reader which brings a lot of benefits to UMPCs and is something I’d definitely like to have on a high-end model like this, and of course the price and availability is missing but if the price isn’t too extortionate I will seriously consider buying this as my next UMPC. I’m 100% sure that, apart from heavy video editing, a 1.3Ghz Core-solo based device will handle all my computing needs and with the 7" screen, can handle desktop style scenarios too. The only thing that might make me wait is a solution that had a real grab-n-go docking station but I don’t see anything like that on the horizon at the moment.

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Gigabyte M704. Confirmed Euro-pricing.

actfind — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:13:05 +0200

Last week I highlighted some reseller pricing that was appearing for variants of the Gigabyte M704, the UMPC with the 1.2Ghz CPU and 7" 1024×600 screen in a casing that’s smaller than even the HTC Shift.

The M704 is now expected to be in stock at the beginning of July and the confirmed Euro-price, based on real Gigabyte retailer prices is just Euro 745. If you’re looking for a slider or 7" 1024×600 UMPC, this is very competitive compared to the 1200 Euro Shift and 1100 Euro Samsung Q1, especially as you can get a real docking station for just 60 Euros. DVB-T and GPS snap-on modules also exist as the M704 is built on almost the same hardware as the U60/Medion UMPC that I tested out last year.

It’s currently showing as a Windows XP-based device which is strange considering it falls into a device category that Microsoft won’t sell XP licenses for after June 30th. If it gets forced to run Vista, it won’t be a pleasant user experience and will kill the device in review scenarios so I hope Gigabyte have bought up a stack of licenses they can use in the future. As it is, with its nice accessory range and useable processing power, its quite the Euro-deal for a UMPC.

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Aigo MID: unboxing. Testing. Hacked to W...

actfind — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:07:42 +0200

The lucky lucky lucky guys over at UMPCFever got an Aigo MID [specifications] test device and have started to publish their hands-on reviews and video. This is the first time anyone has ever really had extended private time with a Silverthorne/Menlow-based device so pay attention as the guys have already got Windows XP up and running on the device although judging by their feedback on the Midlinux2.0 OS build, it’s looking like things are already pretty sweet out-of-the-box. [Commentary after the pic...]

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Willcom D4 UMPC preview from Akihabara.

actfind — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:55:55 +0200

Once again, we sadly have to report that OEMs are trying to squeeze Vista on low-end UMPCs. I’m also hearing that ‘unoptimised drivers’ excuse again… [Deep breath...Gooosefrababa]

Akihabara have done some testing on a Willcom D4 1.3Ghz Atom-based UMPC which they say has a "Beautiful design, ergonomic, a well thought out keyboard, multiple positions, touchscreen…"

The device appears quite large in comparison to say the Gigabyte M528 MID and reminds me of the Raon Digital Everun which isn’t a bad thing because I’d be extremely happy with an Everun that used this design and ran Windows XP. Vista, however, is just going to end up embarrassing Sharp and Intel as it appears to do in the video that Akihabara have produced.

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Sony Ericsson Releases XPERIA White Pape...

actfind — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:51:22 +0200

Sony Ericsson today released the second revision of the XPERIA X1 White Paper (PDF) detailing many technical aspects of the upcoming XPERIA X1 (hands-on preview here). The document covers the X1i and X1a models. Here is a partial list of changes from the first version of the paper according to inxperia.com –

Quad-band EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
Tri-band HSPA:
X1a: (850/1900/2100 MHz)
X1i: (900/1900/2100 MHz)
X1a model supports MPEG4, H.263 24fps encoding at QVGA only and not H.264
Size: 110.5 x 52.6 x 17 mm (formerly 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm)
Weight: 158g

Swing by inxperia.com for the rest of the list, and feel free to download the paper yourself with the link above.

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