UMPC Site

A few very very silly articles attacking UMPC have been published lately. I didn’t report them to you because i didn’t want to direct and expose more people to this poison. As you know, although i’m a UMPC blogger, i criticize recent UMPCs very much, but these articles are just silly.

But i’ll gladly report good articles fighting against these silly ones. Kevin Tofel answered to Simon Burns at theinquirer.net.

Simon says: “This dilemma highlights one of the unresolved contradictions that undermines the UMPC concept. You have the ultimate pointing device here: a touch screen. It’s the only input device that lets you simply point at what you want. Until we have USB ports on the back of our heads, things won’t get any simpler than this. So you have the perfect pointing device. But you can’t use it. With both hands gripping the edges of the UMPC, your thumbs only reach the bottom corners of the screen. Most of the standard Windows software has controls which are out of your reach.”
Kevin says: “Exactly how do you use your laptop (or desktop, for that matter) with one hand? Now, THAT would be a great article that I would read. Take a chance and hold your UMPC with one hand Simon; if I can hold the 2 pounder in one hand (and I’m a minuscule 125 pounds), I’m betting you can too. Ironically, at only 5′5″, I can hold my Q1 with two hands as you suggest and still reach every bit of the screen with my thumbs. Oh and one question for Simon and all of the other reviewers: how long have you used and how proficient are you with the Windows XP Tablet Edition OS?”

According to Bloomberg, Intel will lower CPU prices to steal AMD’s market share. (and VIA’s i guess)

Intel said it will reduce prices of faster dual-core chips by about 15 percent, according to Alex Lin, a product marketing manager at Micro-Star, Taiwan’s third-largest maker of motherboards, which connect electronic parts in computers. Intel also told him that it plans to lower Pentium prices by 60 percent.

Good news for cheaper UMPCs!

Yes, i know it’s not a UMPC but neither is UX.

Engadget took some pictures of cPC at Computex 2006, it doesn’t look like the picture in my mind.

According to Daily News, ECS H70, one of the UMPCs we only heard at the unfolding of Origami, will have ULV Celeron 900 MHz or Pentium M ULV 1.0 GHz. It will have 2:10 hours with standard 3-cell battery and it will have 6-cell battery option. And it’s supposed to be under 1000$.

The H70 uses Intel’s 915GMS chipset backed up with either an ULV voltage 900MHz Celeron or an ULV 1.0GHz Pentium M processor and features a 7″ WVXGA (800×480) touch sensitive TFT LCD. The H70 also packs two USB 2.0 ports, 802.11b/g wireless connectivity, Bluetooth 1.2, a 4-in-1 flash media reader and a 1.3MP webcam.

ECS representatives are claiming the H70 will put out about 2 hours and 10 minutes of operation with the included 3-cell battery but the company is planning to offer a 6-cell battery which should double battery life. The H70 weighs in at just a little under 2lbs and, price-wise, will weigh down pockets with under $1000 of change which is much more acceptable than what we have been seeing in the ultra-mobile PC market.

Apperantly Microsoft didn’t stop working for Haiku, the prototype Bill Gates showed on last year’s WinHEC. Otto Berkes, general manager of Microsoft Ultra Mobile PC operations said “We don’t think [the Haiku] is feasible today, but we’re very excited about the roadmap [Via Technologies] shared that will make this possible in a few years.” With these companies developing ever-smaller chips that run cooler, use less power and require less space inside gadgets, developing portable devices such as the Haiku becomes more feasible, Berkes said. “We’d like to see them out in the $500 to $700 range. The closer to $500 the better.”

Remeber Averatec’s UMPC? After a couple of news and a few Averatec’s attempts to change the news, it dissappeared but it came back. Engadget got a little inside information (don’t know how) and preliminary specifications:

1GHz Celeron M
30 or 40GB drive
Up to 1GB RAM
1.3 megapixel webcam
Bluetooth
802.11b/g
WWAN optional
5-inch 800 x 480 display
External VGA & Audio out
4-in-1 card reader

It “will supposedly be somehow optimized for VoIP, videoconferencing, viewing live TV and VOD, and apparently even gaming “.

And it will be priced under 800$ in Q4 2006 with docking station. As Engadget says, it doesn’t look much possible.

It is not a UMPC, at least not very UMPC, and can’t be a competitor to Q1 or eo, but it can be a very good competitor to Sony UX. If you are thinking of buying a UX, you can consider waiting for this.

IAt Computex trade show in Taipei, Intel announced a new Ultra Low Voltage,with Dual Core and power consumption of “a median average” of 0.75 watt! I will be very very happy with even single core and that power consumption. This “median average” thing may lead into a normal consumption of 7-8 Watt, i’m not very sure of this figures, but we will see the result in the second half of this year.

via vnunet

James Kendrick published a Sony UX50 unboxing video. If you like these unboxing videos, enjoy it but i don’t like them. The video is about 250 MB and 44 minutes 47 seconds and you don’t learn almost anything. If you are an ultra geek like me, you look at little things to get out of boredom. When he made a little comparision with U71, i said “Oh thank you! I thought this unboxing will continue and i wait forever!”.

I believe U71 is way better than this UX series. Yes, UX is a bit smaller, have thumb keyboard and have bigger resolution screen, but U series have a much better form factor and usability to me. When i saw U71 on the video for the first time, i felt like jumping from 15″ TV to 40″ Plasma!

I’m waiting for the review video and more importantly text review that i hope he will make. I feel UMPC and mobile PC community is going “unboxing” or unboxing-type video reviews from intelligent text reviews.

Akihabara news published a new video about Sony UX series : UX50 vs UX90. It’s mostly about the “crappy” software Sony preloaded on UX and how it slows down the computer. As you can remember, in the first video he was very angry about the bundled software.

According to a jkOnTheRun reader, Samsung Q1 accessories are available at Fry’s. And as you can see here, Q1 is available on Fry’s online arm, Outpost.com. BestBuy have some on stock again too.