David Flynn / ZDnet have just broken news about MIDs that we were talking about yesterday. Its worth a read because David is over at IDF as a guest of Intel and so will be reporting straight from the horses mouth.
As we said, MIDs are the consumer-level UMPC plan from Intel, A 4-6″ Internet Device running Linux or embedded operating system.
It looks like McCaslin is actually the codename for MID2007 and it will be based on ‘Stealey’, a Dual-Core part running 600-800Mhz clockrates. If its a Dual-Core part then it has to be an underclocked Core 2 Duo because that’s the only part that has all the new power-saving tech on board.
If its McCaslin and its a MID, and a MID means embedded Linux then will all the new McCaslin based UMPCs be Linux based? No, because the Q1 Ultra and one of Intel’s reference designs run Vista and XP. What I think will happen is that you will see 2 flavours of the McCaslin platform
- McCaslin MID2007 with a Dual-Core CPU but older i915 (GMA900) GPU and embedded Linux for the consumer/prosumer market. Price point under $1000 ($750 I guess)
- McCaslin UMPC2007 with a Dual-Core CPU and new i965 (X3000) GPU and Vista for the IT/Business market. Price point $1000-2000.
Keeping consumer level devices on a completely separate operating systems makes perfect marketing sense and is possible the best thing that could happen to UMPCs right now. It splits the market into two distinct customer types. Very nice move.
Keep an eye on UMPCPortal over the next 48 hours as I have no intention of leaving my desk until the full McCaslin / MID question has been answered and if the market does split, then maybe I should resurrect Carrypad.com as a consumer UMPC portal (MIDportal) because that’s exactly what the original Carrypad concept was all about. I’m glad people are catching up with me now 
