Intel Atom, Clevo and the 7-hour UMPC. Hands-on.

Here’s a fantastic demonstration of how energy-efficient a system designed around an Intel Atom processor can be and it’s one of the first demonstrations I’ve seen that really highlights what an Atom processor could bring to a pro-mobility build.

Clevo, who you might have seen in some UMPC and mini-notebook related CeBIT reports, have designed a 7″ convertible mini-laptop that they are showing off at CeBIT. They’re looking for a customer to sell and market the design and based on what I saw at CeBIT, I’d say it won’t be hard to find one because this SH8 look-alike has some very nice features indeed; 1.6Ghz Atom processor, external PCI-express slot, fingerprint reader, scroll-wheel, internal PCI-express slot (presumably the new Intel mini-mini PCI-express format) a 1024×600 touchscreen and a standard battery that will power this baby for up to 7 hours according to Clevo.

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7 hours on a standard battery sounds like marketing spin right? No, I don’t believe it is because from what I’ve seen at CeBIT, Menlow-based prototypes (prototype board design, no software optimisations) can run at around 8W average (in-use, 7″ screen device at 1.6Ghz - 20-30% less than Stealey-based devices.) Lets assume that that figure comes down to 7W under load which, with a standard 30wh, 3-cell battery, would return an impressive 4+ hours battery life with a no-load figure of over 5 hours. The really clever thing about this Clevo design though is that they’ve taken advantage of the reduction in motherboard size squeezed in a fourth cell in their battery design which brings the total average battery life up to around 7 hours. In a quiescent state, this baby could sit around for 8 hours before running out of juice! Compare that to the Kohjinsha SH8 with the standard battery; just 2hrs in heavy use and not much more than 3 hours under minimal drain conditions.

Pricing? To be honest, the target end-user price of 700 Euros I was given seems almost too low but if it can be achieved, it could make a very tasty little ultra-portable indeed. If it has 7 hours battery life you can put me down for one right now!

OEMs and VAR’s, or whatever you are calling yourselves these days; this was one of the most interesting mini-laptop designs I saw at CeBIT so if you’re looking for something to compete with in the mini-notebook sector, this one is definitely worth calling Clevo about. Tell them that UMPCPortal sent you and tell them we’d prefer XP TE on it and a couple of mouse buttons on the frame. When you’ve done the deal, reserve the first 10 devices for a UMPCPortal competition please!

Jkkmobile has posted the video we made on the Clevo over at his site and I’ve put all the Clevo specifications in the database.

Clevo website.