According to news from Hugo Ortega in Australia, Tegatech have been appointed as a Samsung partner for the distribution of the Q1 UMPC in that region. This is great news for the Australia and New Zealand and great news for UMPCs. Samsung obviously feel that its worth pushing the UMPC into more regions. If you’re interested in selling the Q1 to end-customers in that region, get in touch with Tegatech. [...]

JKK has sent some nice comparison shots of the Tablet Kiosk v7110 and i7210 UMPCs Take a look at the gallery for more details. Thanks to JKK. Steve / Chippy tags: umpc, v7110, i7210 View details of all Ultra Mobile devices in the UMPC product database. From N800 to Flybook V5, its all there!

Evan Easton has been running a series of posts about the TabletKiosk i7210 since he got it a few weeks ago. Today he posts about a possible mounting solution he’s found. Its a mounting solution designed for the Motion LS800 and Evan is working on modifying it to fit the i7210 and fitting it into his Hummer. CarPCs are going to comprise a significant slice of the UMPC market and [...]

I’ve just read some great news relayed by Ctitanic at UMPCBuzz. It looks like Yahoo are going to market a UMPC next year. The news comes via TGDaily and it mentions the ‘second generation’ UMPCs. My guess is that this is all part of UMPC2007 that Dennis Luo of Microsoft talked about at the VIA Technical Forum (Computex, June 2006. His presentation is still available.) From the Carrypad VTF report: To be [...]

I’ve only had the i7210 for 24 hours so I’m still installing software and showing-off in cafes. However, hard-working JKK, active member of the Origami Project forums (there’s a thread running about the video there.) has produced a video covering many details about the device. Does it get hot? What’s the touch-screen like? Vectoring Issues? Video Performance?   Its all answered in the video along with some really nice software tips [...]

John Biggs stays true to his word and publishes a short report on the Pepperpad-3. it is specifically designed with folks who wouldn’t use a laptop. It’s rugged, easy to use and small enough to hide out of the way when not in use. That said, it is also a hacker’s dream He also calls it a Kitchen Computer! You do a lot of cooking John? Anyway, there’s some good [...]

Hugo Ortega got hold of one of the VGA adaptor cables for the Vega UMPC. This was (and still is) missing from my Vega so I’m interested to see how Hugo’s testing goes. Hugo, can you run Powerpoint up on a big monitor to see how if it works OK? The testing I did indicated that it works fine at 800×480. 1920×1600 might be a different matter! Projectors run a [...]

Dynamism have cut a deal with Raon Digital in South Korea to import and resell the Vega UMPC so if your local UMPC dealer doesn’t have it in stock (admittedly, there aren’t many!) then Dynamism is your best bet. The Vega is nearly (apart from the OQO +1) the smallest consumer Windows PC there is. Ignore the 500Mhz processor specification because unless you need 3D support (Streetdeck, iTunes, Google Earth [...]

Its been a nice day for UMPCs. There was the Pepperpad 3 news, then the IDF UMPC prototype, the ASUS R2h launch and then my new i7210 turned up. I ordered it through the Scandinavian TabletKiosk distributor Coxion in Finland (who are also developing another mobile PC, the WebBook 3G.) They aren’t selling devices direct to the public but are providing mobile-computing related professional services into Europe. For those of you [...]

Exactly as planned, the R2H has just been officially launched for the German and Austrian market at a press conference in Munich. Its taken way too long to get here (six months in total.) but at last we can finally be sure of pricing and specifications for the European markets. What do we want to know? Specs, Availability and Price, right? Specs: – 7” TFT WVGA Display (Auflösung: 800 x 480 Bildpunkte)- [...]

More information has come through on the keynote speech by Intel CEO Paul Otellini at the IDF. Firstly, the complete keynote speech is available here. UMPC-related stuff starts at around the 50 min’s point. You’ll hear Anand Chandrasekher, GM of the Ultra Mobile Group at Intel, talk about the Steeley processor. The Steeley processor will be the successor to the Celeron-M with a Merom-based (65nm process) reduced-cache version of the [...]

In about 5 hours (1700 CET, 1100 EDT) we should know the official specifications, pricing and availability of the ASUS R2H in Germany. Already we’re seeing online prices appearing between 895 and 970 Euros so its coming in at about 15% below the current German price of the lower specification Samsung Q1.   Online retailers are offering the following specification which seems to be the same as the full specification as announced back [...]

Update: Chuma (chuma.org) has already got his and is starting to post some opinions: The new Pad 3 hardware – based on the AMD Geode LX800 platform – runs circles around the old XScale architecture. It’s SERIOUSLY FASTER. I don’t know how I can stress this enough.   The $699 Pepperpad 3 is due to start shipping in 3 days time (according to amazon.com) and already there’s a teaser article [...]

The Japanese UMPC customer now has another Sony UX to choose from because Sony have decided to offer 32GB of flash and 1GB of RAM in the Sony UX90/32SS/1 The price is high of course (around $500 premium over the 16GB version) but you get ruggedness, less heat and a significant speed increase over the spinning disk models and of course, a reasonable amount of storage space. Dynamism are already [...]

Update: A CNET video of the prototype UMPC show below is now available. (Via jkOnTheRun.) A few interesting bits of UMPC-related news have come out of the Intel Developers Forum in the last 24 hours. Firstly, Intel have said that they will be able to get the power usage of their mobile CPU’s down to 2.5W by the first half of 2007. (I assume that this is the Ultra Low [...]

[img]http://www.origamiportal.com/uploads/img4519a88535b8d.jpg[/img]

Anandtech had a writeup of the keynote for this falls IDF. Origami related info located [url=http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2840&p=8]here.[/url]

And now an exciting summary!

The umpc was on the list of subjects for the first days keynote. Above is the overly generic roadmap for the next few years of device development. Intels objectives at this point are power consumption and physical processor size, both of which should help with a number of problems facing the first generation devices. Also demonstrated was a new device prototype featuring a custom UI and Volkswagon sync capabilities. Nothing to exciting but good to see some progress and plans by one of the bigger players in the game.

Until next month,

–Marix

Black Diamond Advanced Technology have just announced a ruggedised UMPC – The Switchback. Magnesium cased, sunlight readable display, MIL hardware spec and an interesting condensed querty membrane keyboard. Back modules allow for user-specified expansion options. SwitchBack can support anything from a joystick control to a breathalyzer. The options are virtually endless. Cool, a joystick and breathaliser. Now there’s a LAN-party UMPC if ever I saw one! The rest of the [...]