The HTC Shift. A fantastic design that failed due to overly heavy operating system, a short battery life, low screen resolution and limited Windows Mobile implementation. Over a year of rumors and false-starts the HTC Shift became the most viewed device on UMPCPortal by a long shot. Videos of it were always popular and even after it launched, communities grew quickly and great things were done with the device. The [...]

Last year I ran a series of articles about mobile video editing. I covered smartphone, netbook and ultrathin solutions before settling on a low-cost , low weight set-up.. The Samsung NP350 worked well with its 2.2Ghz Core i3 but by moving up a notch in performance and efficiency, lowering the weight and, yes, increasing the cost by well over 100%, I’ve found a solution that’s quite stunning. I’m not just [...]

The Kupa X11 is a relatively niche Windows tablet PC based on what is the lowest-energy Windows-capable platform there is – Intel Oaktrail, the Z670 CPU and GMA600 GPU. With it’s 1366×768 screen, SSD storage, 2Gb of RAM, fingerprint reader, active digitiser layer and fanless design, it stands alone in the market with, as far as I know, no comparison. The model we have here, the Kupa X11 Pro, even [...]

Back at IDF September, Intel and Google finally announced that they’d be working together to get Android up and running on x86 devices. While there were a number of Android-running x86 tablets and a smartphone prototype or two floating around IDF, it wasn’t immediately apparent what the major advantage of Android 0n x86 devices would be for your everyday consumer. In fact, it wasn’t even apparent exactly why any of [...]

Last spring, I launched into a rant on my personal blog (due to some minor profanity, the linked-to article is labeled as not safe for work) over the way the tech media was labeling a lot of the activity that was going on in the tablet market. You see, back then, circa May 2011, the pockets of resistance against the iPad were beginning to fade, and people were starting to get it that this [...]

As Intel continue to craft Atom into the phone and tablet market it makes sense that they explore all avenues for the core. The ‘netbook’ wave is over but that doesn’t mean there aren’t spaces for Atom to be fitting into. Low cost and low power computing is one of them. Open-source computing is another and it looks like Intel is heading in all of these directions with the Balboa [...]

I’ve done some tests on the Kupa X11 and just like they say, it’s possible to use it for up to 10 hours on battery. It’s impressive but what about getting things done on the Kupa X11? You can have all the battery life in the world but if you can’t use the device, it’s worth nothing. To test the real-world value of the Kupa X11 in terms of ‘getting [...]

I’m looking back on UMPCPortal to see how long it’s been since we’ve had hands-on with a 1KG, ≤ 10”  PC…..In Sept 2011 we covered the MSI Windpad 120W which didn’t make it to market. There was also the Fujitsu TH40/D which also doesn’t seem to have made it to the market. I also had some hands-on with the new Gigabyte S1081 Windows tablet at CES (which I forgot to [...]

It was last August that I wrote about the Kupa X11 tablet. I highlighted the battery capacity as the key feature because it’s not often you see such a high capacity battery in an X86-based device under 1KG. What I didn’t know then was that Windows 8 would require 1366×768 to run the full range of Metro apps and features so the Kupa is now one of only a handful [...]

Back during CES, Sony was showing off a hybrid tablet with Windows 8. This was a sliding design that could function as a tablet with the screen down, or the screen could slide up screen up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. Image credit: Engadget We’ve seen a similar approach from Samsung, but despite an official press release about the product, it never made it to market (perhaps they were [...]

Nokia may be working on a Windows 8 tablet, due out by the end of the year, according to some sources. We’ve long wished that Nokia would jump into the tablet game as their hardware design has rarely managed to disappoint. However, with Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone 7 last year, the company was put into an awkward position. Microsoft built Windows Phone 7 from the ground up as a phone operating [...]

I’ve read a lot of negative press about the Windows 8 user experience recently which seems to focus on a ‘problem’ created by having two user interfaces that will confuse users. I just don’t see that issue. Sure, there will be some new things to learn, every new system has a learning curve, but I don’t see huge barriers in Windows 8. Today I’m working on a Windows 8 Tablet. [...]

As I tool a look at the MSI booth at CeBIT yesterday I couldn’t stop myself from getting a little hands-on with the Windpad 110W. AMD Fusion-based and equiped with a nice optical mouse pointer and full SD card slot it’s a tablet design that could rally benefit from the next-gen OS and platforms. The MSI rep nods and smiles and I talk about 1366×768 and Windows 8, as we [...]

I’m in Hannover, Germany, for CeBit and as I start this article, Sascha Pallenberg of Netbooknews.com is sitting on the other side of our ‘blog apartment’ watching the Windows 8 consumer preview keynote from Mobile World Congress last week. A few evenings ago I was testing Windows 8 on an Atom-based tablet and while all that has been happening I’ve been thinking about Cover Trail W,  the ultra-mobile platform that [...]