As time goes on and I speak to more and more people about whether a CE or WM5 browser could ever compete with a full desktop browser like IE7 or Firefox, I am more and more convinced that the mini-browsers just wont keep up. Even my LX800 Kohjinsha and Pepper Pad 3 have troubles with some sites now as they get fatter and fatter and more demanding on the processor. Even my own product portal requires a surprising amount of client-side processing to get all the java script working. (Has anyone tried the product portal on a smartphone yet?)

I’m getting less and less excited as each WM6 device comes out and each CE5 PMP device comes out. I pretty much dismissed the Cowon Q5 when it was outed at CES in Jan. There’s more info available on it today and lovely as it looks, its still got the very poor browser included which is just not going to compete with a UMPC browsing experience. I was discussing it with a friend today and he highlighted the HSDPA as a possible answer. Not because you can get content more quickly but because you can use realistically use it as a thin client using remote desktop (windows terminal services) to offload all the work on to a home PC. Ping! On goes a light! We had talked about it before and I’ve even used it myself on my parents old desktop PC but I had never thought about it as a solution for PMPs. A quick test here on my own web page via the Kohjinsha SA1 and remote desktop over a UMTS (350kbps)results in a page loading time of 5 seconds. Switching to the local browser resulted in a 10 second load time for the same deep refresh operation.

If you can imagine having a flat rate HSDPA tariff and picture yourself with a thin RDP client (its part of Win CE5) then what are you missing from the browser experience? Pretty much nothing. OK you will use a lot of data and flash videos will still be a problem (you could download them into your PMP!) but its not far off a real UMPC experience on a cheap, good looking device. At half the price of a UMPC, its really worth looking into and I’m seriously thinking of dropping this into the database as a possible Ultra Mobile PC solution.

My interest in PMP’s has been rekindled somewhat by this thought today and I’m quite convinced that I need to buy one to test out this remote desktop theory! Anyone know where I can buy one in Europe?