The Busch-Muller Dymotec S12 (12 volts/6 watts):
http://www.nordicgroup.us/s78/dynamo.html

A Taiwan company is developing a bike generator that up to 8W and can be stored in a battery for later use:
http://www.ylcpchome.com/siza.html

Any comment?

i’m not sure about these MID platforms concerning battery life, ubuntu in general is not exactly THE power efficient OS, but if you change the default settings (CPU scaling is fantastic, brightness etc.) i’m sure you can get more battery out of these devices. but MIDs should have already in standard mode long battery life. this IS a portable device, i do not want to recharge it all the time after 3 hours. i expect these devices to have at least 5 hours! it’s sort of compromise while i’m out somewhere and if i need to connect. i would like to use it as media player on the go, if sitting in a cafe to browse the web, when travelling at the airport or plane, or whatever, that i don’t have to check the remaining time all the time. on my tablet if i have 20% left, it means in 15 min it’s dead. if i see 20% on a MID i want to be sure i still have 1 hour!

but as you can see from above video, even though the UI is not entirely touch friendly (small icons panel etc.) it is still way better to use than having XP. with XP you’re totally busted without a pen or stylus. even if i don’t like the iphone, it still is so easy to just grab it and touch an icon and do what you want without having to use a stylus and use goggles to actually see something with small icons. i’m not old, but sometimes i have problems seeing the menu entries on the 7″ screen on an umpc of my friend – with XP.

i agree that XP is a great productivity OS, but i am so tired of having all the time to see and feel that people do not want to leave that OS finally to rest and try something new! it IS an old OS, why not going back to Win 2K, it will run even better on MIDs than XP. come on people, win XP is old and even you all know that not all drivers are available.

This brings me to my reasons for wanting XP on a pocketbale device my ultimate goal is to not only be able to communicate and interact with the web while being mobile as I already have for a decade but to have the ability to run all the programs I need constantly that are only available for XP, and it’s a handfull of them.

I tried tangoGPS on a roverpc A700Q, which is the gigabyte M704 i think. it’s not bad at all. at least i did not have to find a cracked/hacked version of iGO for pc which is nearly 2 GB with all maps and my friend still complains the maps are not updated..

i’m very keen on the review/first impression report of @chasmic@… keep us posted. thanks

Enough to run XP just fine like I am on mine along with JKK on his.

1. stick with what you have

or

2. hack the hell out of the device! tweak, wipe the drive (creating an image recommended) and install everything which is available out there.

install also tangoGPS for GPS…

me personally i would not be able to use my idol (ergo M528 etc.) for quite a long as i would do all possible tests with it.

waiting for your impressions / review of the device

but, looking at steve’s video, it would appear that the OEM compal unit he’s got has a much more ‘full’ (later) UI and application suite than my m528 has. so just a heads up if for anyone planning to buy the gigabyte units that are currently available – they probably won’t have all the apps steve has just demo-ed.

i’m hoping that some kind of upgrade becomes available (and upgrade method!) from gigabyte (or a hack that allows me to upgrade to the compal build)

/jAmES