Jkk has pointed out that according to Aving, the new Wibrain M1 UMPC has left the prototype stage and will now get built for production. The new device is a handheld slider form-factor with a thumb keyboard. It’s great to see a new UMPC using this sliding form-factor, though the specs aren’t too impressive. 4.8” 1024×600 touchscreen 1.33GHz Atom Z520 CPU 512MB/1GB of RAM 8GB/16GB SSD WiFi/HSDPA/Bluetooth Touchpad Linux or [...]

When I think back to the M912, Gigabyte’s first touchscreen netbook, I think about fast hard drive speed, a fun form factor and easy upgrade capability. Unfortuinately I also think about the noise and heat. [M912 Video]

This post is based on some notes I made in 2008. Following the release of the Opera 10 ‘Turbo’ preview client and the announcement of Opera Mobile 9.7 with ‘Turbo’ (Proxy) option I thought it would make sense to publish the notes.

Location-based services are an exciting and interesting area of mobile computing. Carriers, advertisers, developers and consumers all seem to understand the potential and as social networking grows in popularity, these services could be big sales drivers.  If these services become deciding factors for consumers in the mobile device space, mobile platforms that don’t support them will clearly suffer.  Leading mobile platforms like the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Maemo and Symbian that [...]

Following the week-long visit to the South by South-West Interactive conference, I’ve written up an article that has been published over at the Intel Software Networks Blog. It talks about the devices we took and, more interestingly I think, some of the feedback and interaction we had with the advanced Web users that we met. Learning from the Mobile Internet Pro’s at SXSW: Part 1 Part 2

I just recently finished the last section of the Sony Vaio P review. Many thanks to Dynamism for lending us the unit. The review was done in rolling format, so each section came out at different times over the last few weeks. In addition to a short review summary, this post serves as a hub to access all of our Sony Vaio P review articles as well as any additional [...]

I was pretty excited back in January when we first glimpsed the Dell Mini 10, the successor to Dell’s first netbook, the Mini 9 [Portal page]. There were several things that got me excited, but by far the biggest was the idea that the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page] would come equipped with a proper 16:9 aspect ratio screen and a native 720p HD resolution of 1280×720. Since the Mini [...]

We reported on the D50N back in Jan (and got the Model number wrong!) but following a tip-off from a reader (thanks Mike) I’ve been taking a closer look at the specs. The images and specs certainly don’t hint towards an Atom powered device but why are IRvier mentioning XP/Vista in their specifications? The IRiver website gives details of content partners too but I don’t recognise any of them from [...]

Everyone is free to make their own definition of a MID. Intel like to define it as a pocketable web-capable device. Dell used the expression for netbooks at one point and I’ve talked about a wide-ranging Ring of FIE (right) which includes MID-like, internet-connected devices that don’t even need a browser. It looks like ISuppli take a similar idea and use it for their definition of a mobile internet device. [...]

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting. Samsung N110 available for pre-order — The upcoming Samsung N110 [Portal page] has began preorders at Buy.com. Though the N110 was just recently announced, it looks like they will be releasing it soon. ASUS announces Eee PC E1004DN with optical drive, [...]

While we still don’t have confirmation of a US release, the UMID M1 [Portal page] is already out in Korea, and has been demonstrated doing some multimedia tasks on video. Take a look at the videos below: In this video you can see the UMID play a nice selection of games. Starting off with an FPS which appears to be Quake, then an RTS which seems to be Warcraft III. [...]

The Sony Vaio P is an impressively small unit that manages to pack some relatively powerful hardware into a small, envelope shaped footprint. Though it may not be practically pocketable like Sony wanted us to think, it is extremely light weight and slim. Let’s begin with the hardware tour, as usual. Hardware Tour Front (right to left): Wireless radio switch, SD card slot, Sony Memory Stick slot, power slider, battery [...]

Jenn from Pocketables.net has some interesting new info about the UMID M1 [Portal page]. Chippy has had some good hands on time with the UMID M1 and always seems to note that he wishes the build quality was a bit better. Luckily it looks like his wish might come true. From what Jenn tells us, it looks like the casing will be refined before the US release. But wait, there’s [...]

Jkk has a great little video showing you how to squeeze the most visible page space out of your Firefox browser. As he mentions, there are lots of add-ons to help reduce the interface size giving you more space for viewing your favorite websites, but jkk’s solutions increase the size by a good deal without the use of any add-ons. He achieves this by moving a lot of the UI [...]

Jkk points us to a quick video of the upcoming Samsung N310. Take a look a the video below. As I mentioned when we first saw the N310, I don’t quite see how customers will differentiate this from the N110. Both are running extremely similar specs and the only major differences seem to be aesthetics and a chilet keyboard on the N310 vs. a standard laptop keyboard on the N110 [...]

File this post into the better late than never category. Samsung started into the UMPC market with the original Q1 [Portal page] from there, they upgraded to the Q1 Ultra [Portal page] which added a split keyboard, increased the screen resolution, and made some other upgrades. Now Samsung is getting back to its roots with the Q1EX which was spotted at CES 2009. The Q1EX looks like a more refined [...]

Like women with shoes, geeks can never have too many gadget bags.
Over the last few days I’ve been testing out the Ultimate Addons netbook bag from Ultimate Netbook. Its a 700gm bag with a split, padded central area and additional front and rear pockets.