Proving that the Italians just never stop communicating is the second MID to appear in their country. The IDOL. Baed on the Compal JAX-10 design and using the Redflag Midinux software build, the IDOL is selling through Itelco for 449 without contract or FREE if you sign up for a 24x40Euros data contract.  It calls into question the current 500 Euro + price for the Aigo MID which doesn’t have [...]

For our German readers: I was speaking to Sascha of EeePCNews the other day and he mentioned the meet-and-greet that he is planning in Köln. As I’ve had a few people ask me about meeting up in Germany, I thought it would be a good opportunity if I joined up with him on this event and brought up some UMPCs that people could test out.  Wann: Samstag, 08. November 2008 [...]

Via Eeepcnews.de Source: macx.cn

Remember my in-tent Samsung Q1 Ultra test? 9hrs battery life on the Samsung Q1 with 25% backlight? An average drain of 6.9 watts. It was impressive and since I blew up the Q1 Ultra doing some solar-charging tests, I’ve been missing those 5, 6 and 7hr figures. I was just getting over the trauma until I read this article about another Samsung Mobile product with great battery life. Notebook Magazine [...]

I’m going to be honest. We haven’t been covering netbooks with very much enthusiasm. Why? Because except for a few, they are all the same components stuck in a boring looking plastic laptop shell. I mean how many more models of the EEE will Asus still release? I have lost track already. There have been a few netbooks however that stand out such as the S101 or the N10 from [...]

Jkk has been playing with the first MID that has world-wide availability, the Aigo P8860 [Portal page]. Being the amazing modder that he is, he has already managed to put 3G in it, and has a video demo of the MID browsing with 3G which later goes into details of the mod itself. The video which you can see below, shows various sites including YouTube playback which works great, and [...]

Sascha from EeePCNews.de recently put up an unboxing of LG’s first attempt at a netbook, the LG X110 [Portal page]. It seemed as though the X110 got lost for a little while, probably because of its cookie-cutter netbook specs released in the face of more exciting hardware, but according to our Portal popularity graph, there has been some growing interest. This is the first unboxing I’ve seen of the X110, [...]

Tnkgrl has been on a modding-spree with her new Acer Aspire One [Portal page]. I noted in my review of the Aspire One that some of the important connectivity options were lacking, such as Bluetooth and 3G. Luckily smart people like tnkgrl are here to show us how we can fix some of those important but neglected components. Moving on to part three of her Aspire One modding-spree, she shows [...]

There has been lots of attention around this end of the blogosphere lately about a site launched by Intel and Asus. The site is called WePC, and it hopes to collectively gather the best ideas for a laptop. Users can submit just an idea, or a complete idea of their dream computer. Submissions can be voted on by the community, and the site says that Asus will build the best [...]

Not content with having one of the most powerful ARM-based platforms out there, the Open Pandora team have decided to increase the RAM on the devices to accommodate Ubuntu after some successful tests by members of their community. (Video below) “Expect to fly through the mobile Internet soon.” says one blog post. “RAM is very expensive but we have decided if we want a real UMPC style device which is [...]

You might not have seen the announcement that Ubuntu-mobile had a last minute name change to Ubuntu-UMPC based on the fact it was targeting mobile computers rather than the lower-spec Intel-based MIDs. Oliver Grawert, one of the lead guys on the Ubuntu-UMPC project, explains on his blog. It was just in time for the release of version 8.10 (AKA Intrepid Ibex) which was went live today. Before I give you [...]

I’m going to keep this short otherwise I’ll end-up writing reams of thoughts (many negative) that are in my head about the Aigo MID I also have (thanks to Mobilx.) I’m going to save those thoughts for my own hands-on post. Pocketables have posted a review of the Aigo 8860 MID.  Personally, I think she’s being too kind as, out of the box, this is like the Christmas present that [...]

LAPTOP has gotten their hands on a Samsung NC10 [Portal page] that is fresh off the press (the ‘press’ being Korea). Not content to wait around for a US model, LAPTOP imported an NC10 and it sounds like they really like the machine. Just listen to the opening sentence of their review: The Samsung NC10 has joined the ranks of 10-inch netbooks—including the Eee PC 1000H, MSI Wind, and Lenovo [...]

Christmas came early this week. I’ve had three new devices in 24 hours! Yesterday it was the Everun Notes, today i’ve got the Aigo MID. It turns out I might have a new software build too (V030 5005) as there is a software updater installed that others have not got on their Aigos. Naturally i’m going through a software update as I write and myself and JKK will be putting [...]

The blogosphere tends to be fairly polarized in terms of netbook reporting. In the western world, where most of the English-speaking bloggers, readers and advertisers are, we have a slick range of style-oriented designs that are mostly based on the Intel Atom processor. In other parts of the world, the situation is rather different. The focus is on functional, simple and extremely low cost PCs. In developing countries, where SMS’ [...]

Friday nights live podcast with JKK and Sascha is now in the feed and available for direct download. We had a fun time talking about some of the latest netbook news (NC10, S101) about the Aigo MID that JKK is testing, about the Linux opportunity, multitouch and a why XP can be a good OS for MIDs and UMPCs. Download here, stream now by clicking the play icon or pick [...]

I have just received two new Raon Digital Everun Note UMPCs. The S16S, a lower-cost device running Linux on the Sempron 1Ghz processor and the D24S, a high-end device running XP on the Turion X2 (as per the standard D60H) with a 24GB SSD drive. I’ll be live at about 2200 CET (GMT+1) on UMPCPortal.com/live and you’re welcome to come along and watch a short presentation and ask questions as [...]