By now we’re fully aware that the Fusion platform comprising AMD Ontario/Zacate CPU and Radeon 6250 can turn in some impressive 3D performance. With HD video decoding on board too it’s a double-punch to Intel platforms with the Atom CPU but with the high-end E-series requiring power that most mobile computers can’t deliver it’s only the C-series (C-30 single-core and C-50 dual core) that we’re concerned with here and in [...]

Ultra-mobile computing includes daylight usage and despite attempts at high-brightness screens in the mobile computing market, there has never been a truly low-cost mainstream solution on a device larger than about 4”. Transflective screens have been around for years and I vividly remember the Nokia E90 and how it worked so well in the sun so it’s good to finally be seeing transflective screens on a netbook. OK, so the [...]

JKK (JKKMobile), Chippy (Carrypad) and special guest Al Sutton (Funky Android) talk in depth about Honeycomb and some of the tablet and netbook news from the last 2 weeks including Fusion, WebOS and Galaxy Tab 2

Here’s the weekly rundown of items that we posted to the middle column on UMPCPortal, our ‘Other News’ section. It’s all good UMPC and MID-related stuff that, in most cases, we didn’t write about as a main news item. Shared How to Report and stay Mobile at MWC (and CeBIT, IFA etc) – MobileMonday Germany. Shared Google Translate. Shared AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, [...]

Gigabyte launched a new Tablet PC at CES that we haven’t reported on yet. My fellow MeetMobility podcaster Sascha of Netbooknews has just had hands-on today so it’s worth plugging his video and talking a little about the device. Firstly, we’re talking about 10” capacitive touchscreen tablet at 900gm running Windows 7 on a netbook platform with the N570 (2×1.66Ghz) CPU. Usefully, there’s a built-in mouse area and left-and-right mouse [...]

Here’s the weekly rundown of items that we posted to the middle column on UMPCPortal, our ‘Other News’ section. It’s all good UMPC and MID-related stuff that, in most cases, we didn’t write about as a main news item. Shared CES 2011: Samsung Previews Slider Tablet, Air-like Ultraportable. Shared Strong Intel outlook eases longer-term tablet fears | Reuters. Published Mobile Computing at CES – X-Over 2011. Liked Peter Biddle on [...]

Are you waiting to see how that 1Ghz dual-core AMD Fusion platform benchmarks before buying your next 10” device? I am. As someone who’s had a netbook for nearly two years now I am probably in the same boat as millions of other people – I’m looking for an upgrade. I’m not buying until i’ve assessed Fusion though which means I’m scouring the web for information every day. I’ve seen [...]

My reporting kit changed quite a bit for this years CES show in Las Vegas. I’m aiming for a shift in devices, an improvement in video, preservation of my smartphone battery life and, of course, a test of new equipment. Without testing new equipment it is impossible to know if there’s a better solution out there. As a reminder – here’s what I’m trying to achieve. All day battery life [...]

There are a lot of companies out there that you’ve never heard of but who have an important role in deciding whether a device hits the market. The distributors are often, along with carriers, the first people to have hands-on with preliminary hardware builds. They make multi-million dollar decisions and can make or break a product. It’s a risky, but important behind-the-scenes business. One UK distributor that has been bringing [...]

Building concept devices for CES is nothing new and in a way, is one of the easier, cheaper methods of getting some good marketing buzz going at a major consumer electronics show. You create a roughly working concept device, make it look smart, talk about some out-of-this world scenarios, create some nice videos, put the device behind plexiglass and ignore the fact that it will have serious issues in getting [...]

This is not the first time we’ve discussed the crossover between pro/productive/full-os mobility and the continuing threat/opportunities offered by mobile operating systems. See: Mobile Changover – What’s Your Plan? for more from June 2010. CES 2011 was an absolute whirlwind of crossover products and after a week of note-taking, I’ve put together a report. Following the crossover theme, I’ve published it over at Carrypad! Report: Mobile Computing at CES 2011 [...]

Here’s the weekly rundown of items that we posted to the middle column on UMPCPortal, our ‘Other News’ section. It’s all good UMPC and MID-related stuff that, in most cases, we didn’t write about as a main news item. Published Ocosmos Announces Two Oak Trail UMPCs Running Windows 7. Shared 5 videos. Published X70 Slate. 6.5 Hours of Windows in 420gm! Video. Published Ocosmos OCS1K Morphs into OCS1U and Loses [...]

JKK, Sascha and Chippy talk about CES and cover new netbook platforms and what might happen in 2011. There’s also a lot of detailed discussion around 7″ tablets including those from Dell, Viliv, Motorola and RIM. Don’t forget to rate us if you’re listening on iTunes.

The HP 500 tablet was an important milestone for low-cost Tablet PCs as it combined the finger-friendly capacitive type input with the pen-friendly digitiser for using some of the important features of Windows 7 at a breakthrough price. The combination is perfect for those wanting true PC productivity in a tablet and really, without that digitiser, there’s a mis-match between hardware and operating system in my opinion. It was encouraging [...]

The average weight of a 6-cell netbook is somewhere around 1200-1300 grams with true battery life of about 6hrs so seeing the specs for the Acer Aspire One 522 (AO522-BZ897) is quite encouraging considering the increase in CPU and GPU processing power that this will offer. 6hrs sounds good but let me send a quick warning out because the power envelope of this device is likely to reach much higher [...]

I’ve got bad news for many of you that were very interested in the Ocosmos OCS1K slider UMPC today. The slider version has now been dropped (Official. It won’t be produced.) in favour of the mini tablet version you see in the middle above. For a company that tries to promote its own multiway pad input solution, I guess this isn’t surprising. Specs are shown above and the only thing [...]

I have been surprised at the claims of battery life on Oaktrail devices this week at CES. Taking into account the marketing BS (and subtracting 30% and questioning people about how they tested) I’m getting the feeling that Oaktrail devices might be slightly better that I expected. Certainly in terms of sizing we’re seeing some really important improvements. The Samsung PC 7 / Gloria will probably blow the Dell Duo [...]