Kevin Tofel gave the WiBrain B1H a review last week and Ctitanic has just followed up with his review. Both provide a good overview of the unique features and negative points of the device. Kevin suggests that a lower-priced version without a touchscreen would be a good offering and I agree it would give the end-user a nice choice. If you don’t want to use the device in a car or with any touch-optimised software then its a good option.  Frank on the other hand wants to see the OS giving more touchscreen capabilities. He criticizes the decision to ship the device with XP Home saying that it cuts the capabilities of the device by 25%. Obviously that’s only true if some of your work is done using XP TE features. For many, maybe even most people, it won’t make any difference. Again, the option would be nice though.

Both reviews confirm my first impressions report that showed a maximum of three hours in-use battery life although I’d put average in-use life at around 2.75hrs unless you’re careful with backlight settings or run the device at a lower CPU speed setting. Both reviews also confirm fan noise!

One thing is for sure for me, becuase of the WiBrain I now prefer a 1024×600 screen to an 800×480 at 4.8″ and above. Previously I was having a problem with such a high resolution on such a small screen but by bumping the DPI up to 125, you get the same physical size fonts as with an 800×480 with the advantage that they are sharper. By setting icon sizes to large and running browsing at 125% (especially good in IE7) you also get a better clarity than in 800×480. I’ve also widened my scroll bars up to 26 pixels which enables me to thumb-scroll using the touchscreen. The disadvantage of this of course is that you need to set it up and it can affect some software that doesn’t scale itself properly. As my software-suite runs within a browser, it doesn’t really affect me. If all else fails, running the WiBrain at 800×480 interpolated isn’t bad at all so you really get the best of both worlds.

So, two good reviews well worth reading. My review is on its way but may take a few more days due to some background tasks I have with UMPCPortal at the moment (sponsors, advertising, tax, server maintenance, CeBIT organisation….)

jkOnTheRun review.

UltramobilePCTips review.

For more info on the WiBrain, see the product page.

Using a USB SD card reader and the Windows XP image resizer from Microsoft i’m doing another image upload test. In some respects its easier than LiveWriter. 2 Mins per post!

I haven’t had as long as I would have liked with the Amtek U560 so this review won’t be as complete as previous ones but I think it will be more than enough to allow you to make your decisions on the device. The model I have here is a production sample that Mobilx.eu have loaned me. [Many Thanks!] It’s not a final build so as with my testing on the HTC Shift, some things may change. Most noteably, the processor speed on the final production version.

The U560 is Amtek’s third UMPC. They started with the T700, one of the first ‘Origami’ devices to come on to the market, and followed-up in 2007 with the VIA-based T770. Both were 7″ slate devices and so the U560 is a slight departure from that being built around a 4.8″ 1024×800 screen that slides up to reveal a keyboard a-la Sony UX. The U560 uses an Intel platform this time but continues Amtek’s good tradition of solid construction.

When a 7th birthday and Karneal clash in Germany, anything can happen! Of course, I managed to find 5 minutes to test the Everun and ScribeFire out in between glases of Sekt.

I had intended to do about an hours cycling but I had’nt gone more than a few km before I saw this. Carnival season is here. Im not a big fan myself but it’s at least good photo op! I would have posted these on he spot with the Everun but my HSDPA modem wasn’t working. I haven’t use it since I sent the Everun on a review tour so I guess it was suffering from that. A driver re-install did the trick. Images taken with a Canon S2, downloaded […]

A quick test post with scribefire. Check! Seems to work nicely on the Everun. Im going to replace the cam with a Nokia N82 for moblogging I think. Until later.. Powered by ScribeFire.

Amazing, a virtual screen. That’s what happened on my 800×480 i7210 when the graphics drivers broke. It was annoying but useful for running a rdesktop session on a remote device at a higher resolution.

Shouldn’t they be marketing the real features? How does the keyboard work. Where’s the coathanger?

EDIT: OK. Forget what I said. The video has just been removed from YouTube. Maybe they were listening

EDIT: It’s back. In all it’s glory!

This is really quite bizarre. I’ve just finished a post on how I’m now using the Arcos 605 Wifi as my living room media player because it’s got great online media capabilities and comes with a nice podcast download and sync package. I had written about how I was enjoying Cranky Geeks and Diggnation and even entered the Archos 605 Wifi into the product database as a consumer device as a result of this enjoyable little test. After confirming that all the info was in the DB I went back to my feeds. One of the first posts I read, literally within the first batch of 5 that came in on my reader, I see that Internet Tablet Talk  (ITT) have posted news about an online media download, sync and streaming application for the Nokia Internet Tablets. Freaky Deaky! The app was apparently a Beta so there’s already a fair bit of info floating round but its news to me and I’m sure its news to a lot of other Nokia Tablet owners.

Looks like I’ve got another few hours of Internet media testing ahead of me this evening. Damn, more TV ;-) I’ll get back with some thoughts over the weekend but the first one is that the N810 isn’t going to be able to output to any sort of external display device so its not going to be doing anything like the work I’ve got the 605 doing. However, if this works as advertised, this is another good value-add package for the N800 and N810 making them even more attractive. Ubuntu Mobile team watch out, you’ve got a very fast competitor to catch!

While I’m testing, hop on over to ITT (Internet Tablet Talk) where you can read news post (with images) and join in the discussion.