UMPC Site

Apparently GadgetKorea’s Vega review wasn’t that great and could lead into wrong information. First, Raon Digital contacted Carrypad and informed that the information may not be correct.

“Please be advised that RAON, the manufacturer of VEGA, releases the official information of VEGA only on its homepage www.raondigital.com. Information from other sites may not be incorrect and/or insufficient”

And now, Gadget Korea removes the forum thread and review. So, we are going to wait a little longer for the first Vega review.

You can see a link to this “10 Battery Maximization Tips” everywhere, and i believe most of you are saying “Hey, we already know these, are you kiddin’ ?”. Yes, i know them too, but if you don’t, fly over there.

Brightness: how low can you go? Without any question, the fastest way to suck the life out of a battery is leaving your brightness high. Turn it down as low as you possibly can without needing to up your glasses prescription. On my Vaio, I can select from one of 8 levels. During one test, at brightness level 3 my system reported 60% full, with 3:52 (all times are hours:minutes) of life to go. I switched up to level 5 and in 17 minutes of use, I was down to 52% full, with 3:06 to go. In other words, 17 minutes used 46 minutes worth of battery (all other variables were held constant). You can even be so bold as to lower your brightness all the way down when sitting idle for a minute or two (for example, if you are writing a long blog post and pause to clarify your thoughts before typing).

I have been searching for a good synchronization software for a long time. Exchange Server looks a little too complicated, although i haven’t tried it yet, and Foldershare etc. is clearly not the solution i’m looking for. Here is the answer : UltraSync.

UltraSync Features
- File/Folder sync
- Outlook folder sync (messages, contacts, calendar, tasks, etc.)
- Browser favorites sync
- Sync Selection Wizard
- Deletion Tracking
- Overwritten/Deleted file recovery
- AutoSync (automatically start sync process when UMPC and partner PC are connected via wired/wireless LAN)
- Skin Selector (decorative skin selection for the UltraSync “dashboard” UI)

Actually there are lots of synchronization software, so you may wonder why UltraSync became such a hit. Don’t worry, i wonder it too. Probably because they are introducing it as a UMPC software.

(via UMPC Buzz)

Here is a new Amtek T700 reseller, AGOPC. Their UMPC is the same as Amtek T700, Tabletkiosk eo V7110, but it has a clear advantage : It’s only $899 with 512 MB RAM and 40 GB HDD and for a limited time, a flexible keyboard.

Actually with the new eo series ( i7200 ) , i was expecting a price drop on the older V7110 series, but apparently AGOPC saw this opportunity. I’m planning to reveal my own UMPC series as soon as i find a financier! And yes, it will be marvellous!

It’s not an extensive review, but here is the first Vega review from Gadget Korea. Clearly they loved it!

The screen is excellent thanks to it’s 4.5 inch huge screen. Especially running task manager was easy for us. It is a pleasure to watch videos and viewing angle is very wide - 800×480 of pixel sharp resolution makes the screen even more crisp & fine. We had no problem with the screen and the it is very easy on the eyes (when we were playing some awesome 3D games for 14 hours - more about it later).

You can control the mouse with that round ‘joystick’ and the top two buttons on the right acts as the two mouse clicks. There is also an integrated alphabet (Hangul) and I was surprised how easy it was to use in a fast typing MSN Messenger conversation. If you are familiar with a PDA, however, you can still use a touch keyboard, which is equally great. But I personally prefer the external USB keyboard, which can be wrapped as well.

We can tell you that it won’t do our sarcasm but I can assure, you can play 3D games with this gadget - and by 3D games, we really mean 3D games. We ran the FF-X-2 demo, of course in the hope that the thing wouldn’t even run it, as it is one of the most graphically extensive game demo developed in Korea, very much like 3DMark. For our surprise, we nearly fainted when we saw framerates of over 34 - thanks to AMD’s Geode LX800 processor and the huge 256MB of RAM.

I quoted a little bit much, but it is really shocking. Don’t forget to visit the review for the full review and pictures.

Samsung released a BIOS upgrade for Samsung Q1. There aren’t much details about what is fixed, but it is tested and recommended. You can download it over here.

(via JKOnTheRun)

Carrypad found more pictures and news about Vega over Korean-language Shinhojun blog.

And Raon Digital’s Vega page is now available with featuring a lot of details about the device. Most importantly, it doesn’t have built-in WiFi, only comes with a USB WiFi stick,which is bad! I hope they change their design a little to put the WiFi (and hopefully BT) in.

According to Raon, it has up to 5.5 hours of battery life with Standard Battery ,in “VGA size movie playing, LCD Full Brightness, 50% Internal Speaker Volume Condition” , which is very very much better than Sony UX Series. (I’m comparing to UX because UMPCs have much bigger screens than these) Sony UX180P got 2:10 hours with optimized battery settings on and WiFi off. Mobility Today’s battery benchmarks.

Raon should send units for reviews quickly, i’m very curious.

CTitanic made a very nice guide for changing eo’s hard drive.

If you are planning to use your eo as your music companion paired with your iPod or to watch movies you may run out of space sooner than what you think. I ordered mine with a 40 GB HDD spinning at 7200 RPM and after a few weeks of use I found that to use it to hold my 20 GB music collection was just impossible. So suddenly I found myself in front of the task of upgrading my HDD.

I’m not sure of calling it “UMPC”, but the cheap ultra portable PC that we saw it “coming”, is revealed. It is Vega.

Specifications:

AMD Geode LX800 processor
Widows XP HOME operating system
256MB of memory
30GB hard disk
4.3 inch 800*480 LCD
measures 160 X 80 X 27.5mm and weighs 480g
wi-fi antenna
connector for GPS antenna
USB to connect remote keyboard
DMD reception again using USB
available in September

And there is rumors about 6 hours of battery life and price of $700.

With the new eo i7200 series, Tabletkiosk revealed new accessories too : A little case, a bluetooth keyboard and a mounting plate.

(via Carrypad)