UMPC updates. 30-07

I’ve just got back from a week away in the UK where I was worried about keeping up with the ultra mobile PC news. There wasn’t much news though was there. I needn’t have worried. I think I can sum up last weeks ultra mobile PC news with just a few paragraphs.

Founder coming to America.
Firstly, there’s a new ultra mobile PC coming to America and it turns out that it’s the Founder which, in fact, isn’t new at all! ultra mobile PC core specs were announced at the beginning of March and 5 months later, the Founder Mininote dissapoints a little as it uses the Celeron processor. Granted, it has some good accesories, especially the docking station. The big question is, who is going to brand it? Frank seems to think that its going to be a Tablet Kiosk brand but with a Celeron processor, its going to cut right across the same performance bracket as the eo. If the founder had a different processor however, it could make a nice high-end brother to the eo 7110.
Tablet Kiosk said that they’d be making an announcement in July so maybe we’ll hear something next week.

Founder Mininote datasheet and news links

DualCor cPc
The second and final piece of real news this week was about the DualCor cPc. Judie Hughes of ‘The Gadgeteer‘ decided to take up an offer to buy a pre-release model and received it last week.
As expected, the first versions have no wifi or bluetooth built in but Judie says:

future shipping versions will include built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. Even better, I was told that I would be able to upgrade my device to the shipping model once they are ready. YAY!

The ongoing blog by Judie is available here.

So it seems that my little story about the cPc shipping was partly true. It looks like its available by invite only. Final versions are said to be shipping in the 90-120 day period. Thats past the Christmas sales period so I’d say Jan 2007 for this one.

DualCor cPc preview.

And thats it for now. Here’s hoping that next week is going to be a bit busier!

Steve / Chippy.