UMPC Site

MobileTechRoundup podcast gang got together in New York and they took a few photos and a little video. They are very nice for having a good idea of how DualCor cPC, Sony UX50, Sony u71P, Motorola Q and Samsung Q1 compare to each other considering their screens and form factors.

Sony U and even cPC look way better than UX considering especially screen size, don’t they?

jkOnTheRun reader Uli Suratos took some photos of Samsung Q1 “in action” - mounted in a car and next to a projector.

Channel Insider published an article about future of UMPCs, including an interview with Mika Kramer, head of Microsoft’s new Windows Client Mobility Marketing Team. I consider it as a expectation and assumption list, rather than a strict product timeline. And although it looks like “Hey! There will be new UMPC vendors!” in the first page, it turns out to be another “In the distant future, prices will be around 500$ and everything will be better!” article on the whole second page.

“You’ll see an additional wave of UMPCs available in the holiday timeframe,” said Mika Kramer, head of Microsoft’s new Windows Client Mobility Marketing Team, a group within its Windows Client Product Marketing Group in Redmond, Wash. “We are seeing a lot more Tier 1 players get a lot more interested in releasing the UMPC.”

Ultimately, “they have a long way to go to get [the UMPC] to $500,” Shim said. “With a new device like this it helps to have a focused, targeted audience, and they don’t have it yet—they started with consumers and are now looking to appeal to businesses. Then you look at the value proposition, and it’s still too expensive.”

Finding news about all tech got a little harder for a few days,not only UMPC news, but i’ll serve you!
The Age published a nice eo review. It doesn’t say anything new or giving benches etc, but gives you a good, complete idea (not too boo!’ing, not too Wow!’ing) about eo without stretching out. Underlining all the bad things and the good things.

Safely back inside, we discovered Origami’s main new usability feature is Dial Keys - an on-screen QWERTY keyboard split in two, each half fanning out from the bottom corners of the screen.

It allows you to hold the v7110 in both hands and type with your thumbs, which is a horrible user experience until you realise it only responds to the tips of your thumbnails rather than the fleshy pad of your thumb.

Of course, this severely shortens the reach of your thumbs, making it quite awkward to reach the keys furthest from the corners.

We found resting the v7110 on a tabletop and typing with the tips of our index fingers much easier. After a few minutes, you start to get the hang of it - it’s faster than using the stylus to press buttons on the virtual keyboard and more reliable than the handwriting recognition for beginners.

It’s very interesting to see although both are well-known, big publishers; one can be very brilliant and right where other is very wrong. You know the “other” publishers, there are lots of them and i don’t link those others much, but i’ll gladly link to another brilliant one.

Matthew Miller from ZDNet posted a good article to his blog : “The UMPC is not a disaster”. You’ll see the similarities of how great minds work :

It seems one of the biggest contentions people have with the UMPC, if they accept that fact that the specs will be less than a full blown laptop, is price. Microsoft was hoping these devices would be priced from US$500 to US$800 and they may get down there by the holiday shopping season. However, I don’t think the current US$1,000 range is really completely unreasonable if you look at how many functions a UMPC can actually fill very nicely….

Pioneer Computers (from Australia) is selling Amtek T700 (Tabletkiosk eo, Paceblade Easybook P7…) as Pioneer Dreambook UM 700. Amtek must be the only one making nice profits from UMPC, don’t they? (Despite of it’s many problems)

There are news floating about a possible Apple Ultra-portable again. I don’t understand what the heck people are smoking to be able to love and hype about Apple that much. Even biggest companies like Dell aren’t entering the market. There are lots and lots of ultra idiotic comments like “UMPC failed” are floating and even the few companies in the market are thinking “are we messing up?”

Do you really think Apple would blow up iPod’s success with a ultra-portable or pda-ish device? After the big Newton failure?

I think they are just harassing patent office.

Apperantly, i’m not the only one with a few more IQs than a golf ball. OnlyUMPC published a great post on some press’ favouritism on UX. So great that i’ll quote all of it in case you might be a bit lazy to follow the link:

Can the press be Baised?

Or is is just me ? Well about few days back the same inquirer said that UMPC is a Disaster, and they had some valid point to that,

Now they have a new article with the title “UMPC killer revealed, reviewed” - Great lets get to see what they have in it. They talk about a 40″JVC TV amnd its review, then about some ATP Thumbdrive, then about some video card and then the only place i see a reference is the Review of ths Sony UX50 at Digital Trends(they have a rating of 9 /10 for this device), which the inquirer states

It has a unique design that sets it apart from the rest of the UMPC/Ultra portable segment and reminds us how exceptional Sony designers can be at time. The UX50 has a sliding full size keyboard with two cameras, a unique design, a touch screen and a honestly priced tag. The rest is also impressive. 1.06GHz Core Solo with 2MB cache, 512MB memory, a 30GB HDD, 4.5-inch TFT and HD Audio.”

So what do they mean by honestly priced tag. The UMPC has a 7″ much better size with pretty much the same config other than those few gimmics and they said it was OVER PRICED. So what do you think ? I understand that when bloggers weite about stuff it is their personal opinion as opposed to a REVIEW that the public can refer to. Go ahead tell us what you you think.

Digitaltrends have a long and boring review of UX50. It’s six pages and you learn almost nothing. Despite of its’ benchmark results, they clearly loved it and gave a 9 out of 10.

Forget the UMPC hype. This is what the UMPC was meant to be.

Wow! I mean wooow! I’m not saying this for especially this review but also for some other reviews of UX. When you read UMPC reviews, only thing you will be reading is “1000$? Waayy to expensive! What the hell Intel and Microsoft were thinking?” But with UX, 1800$ doesn’t stand out much? With smaller and tiring to read screen and “not for long writing” keyboard, does it really engrave 1200$ more? (Considering that most of editors want UMPCs at 600$ price range)

If you think so, pre-ordering is available at CompUSA, with expected ship date of July 10.

Apperantly after upgrading Q1’s memory, (from 512 MB to 1 GB) AVS Now becomes unstable. Tomi B has a simple fix for it;

Plug in an external keyboard.
Shutdown and reboot into AVS now.
As soon as the boot logo goes away (or is about to go away), hit F8 (repeatedly if need be).
You’ll get an option to “Delete restoration data and go to the boot menu”. Choose this.
XP will boot, but for me nothing showed up (and this is the point I was searching for the restore CD).
Wait until disk activity stops and slide the power switch. If it shuts down, great. If not, just hold it until the machine shuts down.
Reboot into AVS now again.
The system will boot up and immediately go into hibernation.
Reboot into AVS. This time it should work.
You may need to repeat steps 6 and 7 twice. I booted into normal XP accidentally after the first shutdown.

(via Origamiportal)

After Kevin’s article (criticizing theinquirer), James Kendrick made a good article about UMPCs - How you should approach them, what it is good for, and especially what the hell is wrong about those silly articles.

…Now I don’t know about you but I don’t want to carry a 5 pound notebook computer with me on vacation, but I have no problem carrying a Mobile PC. I don’t want to carry the 14 inch screen with me as it’s too bulky and well, big. That’s why I love a 7 inch (or smaller) screen. Out in the real world a smaller screen (and thus device) is an advantage, not a disadvantage….