Updates: 9th June 2006

Where do I send you UMPC?

Rob of Paperless Undergrad (paperlessundergrad.co.uk) has a very interesting post on the UMPC. Obvious enough he likes the Tablets a lot (look at this domain name again). Rob goes with describing what aspects of the UMPC he likes and does not.

Well I battened down the hatches while the Internet literally rained UMPC (codename Origami) talk these past few months and I chose to keep quiet on the subject. However with the recent spate of first class video reviews hitting our ‘screens’ (such as Kevin Tofel’s excellent ongoing review of the Q1 and James Kendrick’s and Akihabaranews’ review of the Sony UX50) I’ve had the opportunity, albeit in a virtual sense, to see what these beasties have to offer. So if it is at all possible to pass an opinion based solely on third party interaction (probably not) and if the view of a lowly student end user, although one that feverously strives towards paperless living, is of interest to anyone then follow the jump to hear my take on this whole UMPC scene […]

It’s worth, go ahead Read on

UMPC goes Vongooooo!

You bet, with such a portablity and the form factor Vongo is the perfect software for downloading and enjoying Movies. jkOnTheRun goes ahead with it and shares the good and bad about it.

I did run into two immediate problems, but found resolutions to both. If you’re beta testing the Office 2007 suite like I am you’ll have a .dll conflict when trying to run Vongo. A quick search online turned up the solution of renaming the offending .dll. I did that and Vongo launched without a problem; additionally, I’ve seen no ill-effects in Office 2007 as of yet.

The second problem had me totally confounded for about three days. After choosing a movie to download, the title would show up in my Vongo Download Manager and then simply disappear. No error message, no warning, it just disappeared. Thinking it was firewall related, I made changes and opened some ports to Vongo per some technical support information, but nothing seemed to help. This issue wasn’t just on the Q1; it was on my desktop as well, so I knew it wasn’t specifically related to the UMPC [..]

Read the full post here

The next gen VIA codenamed “John”

Via seems to be really focused on the UMPCs. We know Via for long but until their latest C7 they made it into low cost high performance category, which intel seems to be wondering about.

Wenchi Chen, president and CEO of VIA Technologies previewed the next generation of miniature PC platform (you know, he just means the UMPCs and may be the Sony UX Series) with the VIA CoreFusion processor platform series that combines a VIA C7-M mobile processor core with VIA’s upcoming VX700 mobile chipset.

As a processor plus core logic in a single, complete package, “John” will play an important role in maintaining the pace of miniaturization, especially in the mobile space, when it is launched later this year, according to Chen. Motherboards based on the VIA “John” platform are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2006, said Chen.

Chen also stated that the company’s VIA C7-M mobile processor family can be benefited by growing demand for the convergence of notebooks and handhelds into new device categories such as Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs), like those of partners TabletKiosk and PBJ, and PC phones, such as DualCor’s PC, which combines full PC functionality with a PDA and a phone in a ultra compact handheld form factor […]

Read on [DigiTimes]

ECS UMPCs to sport Intel Pentium M

You know when there are only few (rather only 2 as of now) choices to choose from, things are always difficult, especially if you want the best one out there and you know if you wait for a few more months you’ll have more powerful devices. Again Asus might have very close spec to the ECS with the Core Duo
Yes, ECS announced their H-70, and looks like it would have the option of upgrading your UMPC to have the ULV 1.0 GHz Pentium M. Note that with the 6-Cell battery, the company is promising a 4.5 Hours of life

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 […]

Via [DailyTech]

The war of the Chips

It was INTEL, then VIA and then rumor had it AMD. Samsung might not switch to AMD or VIA for that matter. The only main reason being the price of Intel. Now Bloomberg reports that intel is lowering its price up to 60% (bet this is lower than anything AMD or VIA can offer) and up to 15% on its new Core Duo processors to keep its Market Share.
It was only this week we heard about Samsung’s chances of moving to AMD…

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 […]

Via [jkOnTheRun]