Archive for the ‘Report’ Category

Reading Steve Litchfields review of the N82 this morning and then Warners interesting cogitations reminded of the multi-device strategy poll I posted a while back. Only a few days ago I was saying that I had been ‘locked-in’ to the N82 because of the camera and gps-related features and it’s because of this that it’s become my #1 UMPC partner device. It could be better (keys, dim screen, very slow browser, battery life) but right now, I don’t see a device that could challenge it with the sort of media-focused work I’m doing. In fact, partnered with the Q1 Ultra its damn-near perfect and constantly puts a question-mark over my desire for a MID/Carrypad. For me, at the moment, the 2-device mobile strategy is the one that fits best. But what about everyone else? Read on for more about my own strategy and a walk-through of other peoples ideas.

[Read full article after the break…]

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Here’s a quick post about mobile blogging with the Kohjinsha SA1 Ultra Mobile PC.

There’s four three things that I want to show in this blog.

• How to do a high quality photo post to Flickr in 60 seconds.
• How to do a mobile photo blog using LiveWriter
• The typing experience on the SA1 

In the videos below you will see me write the live section of this post (I will have posted this blog entry live during my video recording.)

———-LIVE SECTION STARTS HERE—————-

 This is the Kohji SA1. I’m using it to demo near-live photo bloging. The keyboard is very small but i’ve got used to it now and can type with a fair rate of accuracy and a good speed. I also ike this you can thumb the keyboad.

————END of live blog ———————————-

 Here’s the Flickr image

The quality of the video (below) is not great because I had to use a web cam to record the video but in it you can see the very quick post to flikr and, what I think is more interesting, the use of the Kohjinsha, the Canon, 3G connection and LiveWriter to edit and post a blog. The technology is nothing new but it demonstrates how low-power mobile computing ties it all together. The total weight of the hardware is about 2Kilos and the power drain is about 8w. The whole thing could be run from lightweight solar panels.

We’re forecast some cold weather here in the next week. If it starts snowing in the hills near me I’ll try and get out with the Kohji and a hip-flask to do some live work from the hills.

I’m also looking into getting one of these solar kits. Anyone had any experience with them? I’m guessing the 12W one would be good enough. I need it to be able to directly power the Kohji via some sot of regulator. Or is there a regulator built into all notebook charging circuits? More research needed here methinks!

The 9 min 64MB 640×480 wmv file is here

 YouTube version below.

For more info on Digital Photography and blogging with a UMPC, take a look at my previous article about using a UMPC for digital photography.

It looks like many notebook and early UMPC owners will get blocked out of an unspecified amount of Vista software due to Microsoft’s definition of a capable PC.

The man of few words but many images, videos and lots of very good UMPC/Vista info, jkkmobile, has highlighted something very significant. Vista doesn’t let you run Movie Maker or DVD Maker on a UMPC when the hardware doesn’t meet Microsoft’s required specification. After testing it with jkk and others on four different UMPCs I now assume that if you don’t have WDDM drivers to achieve Premium Capable status, you don’t get the apps. This is what you will get if you run Movie Maker and DVD Maker on most UMPCs today.

Click to enlarge.

“Some features available in the premium editions of Windows Vista—like the new Windows Aero user experience—may require advanced or additional hardware.” [Microsoft. ref]

It looks like WMM and DVD maker have been designed for Vista Premium Capable PCs. [definition]  and MS isn’t telling anyone. What a load of old &@##$. Just because there are some 3D effects in there it doesn’t mean everyone is going to want to use them. My last video was edited with Windows Movie Maker on a 533Mhz Geode processor with no DirectX support at all. Why do I suddenly need a certified DX9-capable graphics co-processor to do exactly the same thing? You can run the XP version of Movie Maker under Vista as a workaround but that’s not really the point is it. The problem applies to DVD maker too. When you dock the OQO Model 02 into its DVD dock and try to make and burn a short home video, you probably won’t be able to.

How many other programs will get blocked because a PC is not Vista Premium ready? 

Do I still have to pay full price for Vista when there are disabled features in it? Is there a list of disabled features? I’m not asking for much to be honest. I run an Internet portal. I need a browser, ssh terminal, photo editor and a simple video production app. I’d also like to use media center and the excellent looking Origami Experience when i’m not working.  The i7210 UMPC that I used daily as my only PC now won’t be able to process my videos after I upgrade. From the choice of 35 or so Ultra Mobile PCs I had yesterday, I’m now reduced to about 3. The Sony UX which I don’t like or the Fuji P1610 and Flybook V33i/V5. All of those options will cost cost me over $1500 and in fact none of them really fit my other UMPC requirements. I’m left with a choice of NONE. Not even the ASUS R2H, which looks to be running Vista quite nicely, will get the all-clear by MS so software will be blocked.

What’s even more annoying is that the chipset used on many of the Intel based UMPCs, the 915 with GMA900 graphics, supports Direct X 9 which satisfies the standard set by Microsoft. The problem here is that Intel obviously want people to move on and up (slightly) to the 945 chipset. The 915 has been end-of-lifed and what Intel says here pretty much confirms that they’re not going to create the drivers. OK, Intel want to move things on but they seem to have forgotten that the 915 chipset is part of Origami 2006 and still being used in new UMPCs. One of them was even announced at CES 2007. The new Samsung Q1P-SSD appears to come with Vista and an Intel 915 chipset (as far as I can tell.) Is this true? Will they release a new UMPC based on old hardware?

The issue of WDDM drivers was mentioned by Kevin Tofel way back when I had no real interest in Vista and it looks like he will never get his driver and will be blocked out of Aero, DVD Maker and Movie Maker. He’s spent many many hours testing Vista and getting it to work on his UMPC. I wonder how he feels.

The only ray of hope I’ve seen so far is a report on Mobility site from Oct ‘06 that says the Q1 was seen running Aero Glass. I wonder what chipset was in it. 945 perhaps? That already has WDDM drivers. Even Aero glass will work.

Lets not forget VIA in this matter. VIA chipsets are also in an unknown state. They don’t support DX9 in hardware at all so we can assume that they will never get WDDM drivers. It also looks like the Vista drivers and Media Center/Player software still don’t support the hardware acceleration of MEPG2/4 and WMV9 that’s in the VIA chipset. This is still to be confirmed by VIA so we’ll talk about that issue another time.

I was really happy to see the ASUS R2H running Vista today but this issue is really taking the shine off it. There is no other OS solution that has the UMPC-support that Vista does but I’m now reluctant to upgrade because I’ll loose apps and risk getting blocked from others. What’s the answer?

Steve.

Thanks to Matt, jkk and Raoul

Last August I did a quick overview and a few calculations on the OLPC battery life using some stats that were lying around. I calculated 10 hours battery life.

I was wrong. According to a Linux Today report quoting Michalis Bletsas, Chief Connectivity Officer for the OLPC project, the MAXIMUM drain on the OLPC is 5W. The minimum active-OLPC drain is an incredible 350mw. If you sat down with the OLPC to read an e-book in black and white mode, you’d have a good 24 hours before you’d have to get the Yo-Yo charging unit out. I guess, you could actually put a solar panel on the back of it and it would charge enough during the day to last all night. It would never ever run out of power.

Lets compare this to the what I believe is the most power-efficient notebook PC in the world - The Kohjinsha SA1.

The Kohjinsha uses a 30w/hour battery and will run a pretty impressive 3.5 hours playing a movie and if you use it as an e-book you’ll get over 5 hours with the WiFi off. While browsing, you get up to 4 hours which equates to about 8W drain. The OLPC uses about 1/3 of that power in the same scenario.

How?

Well, its using a 377Mhz AMD Geode processor for a start. A slightly lower-performance version of the 533Mhz one that’s in the Kohjinsha, the Pepper Pad 3 and the Raon Digital Vega. It also has a very efficient WiFi radio and a flash drive too but the main reason for the low-power drain is the screen. It really is an amazing bit of kit. If you haven’t read about it yet, take a look here. In summary its got two modes. An active backlit mode that drains about 1W (compared to 3-5W on a UMPC) and a non-backlit transflective (requires ambient light) mode in black and white that drains about 0.1W (zero point one.)

Its a ray of light for UMPC users and shows just what is possible.

Here’s one scenario to ponder. Who’s going to be first in line to use some of the technology? What if that organisation creates a slick new design, an efficient ‘thin’ software layer and tacked on a few million of these onto the production run? What if they dedicated a top bar to contextual advertising? With a life of 5 years, it might just pay for that organisation to give them away free. Did you know that Google are a major partner in the OLPC project? Bring on the Google Switch Mesh!

Via OLPCNews

Steve

Pocketables have posted a nice detailed piece about DialKeys and the TIP (Touch/Tablet PC input panel.) There are some nice tips in there but what caught my eye were Jenn’s typing speed co-efficient’s. I know it sounds rather boring but its important. Pay attention please because when I list all the figures in order, it makes interesting reading. To some people. Maybe.

Here are all the typing speed co-efficients that I know about at the moment. Its not many but its a start. What I’d like you all to do is to submit your own if you have time. I’ll record the data and create a big list of UMPC-related input mechanisms which will allow potential customers to understand the limits of each input type. I think that’s going to be something useful, interesting and a good reference for keyboard designers, software and hardware alike.

Here’s what we have already from fastest to slowest.

1. Full size desktop keyboard - CE 1
2. Eleksen Fabric Keyboard - 0.6 (chippy)
3. Kohjinsha SA1 UMPC (keyboard) - 0.55 (chippy)
4. PepperPad 3 (split thumbboard) 0.5 (chippy) 0.54 (jenn)
5. Medion & Gigabyte 0.42 (chippy)
6. Sony UX (keyboard) - 0.37 (jenn)
7. OQO Model 01 (keyboard) - 0.34 (jenn)
8. i7210 + On screen keyboard (TIP) - CE 0.3 (chippy)
9. DialKeys on Samsung Q1 - 0.27 (jenn)

Its certainly not conclusive yet so please contribute. Here’s the easy test method I used.

1. Take your normal desktop keyboard and using your fave editor, time yourself typing “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” 5 times. Its 220 characters long (not including CR/LF) (220/secs*60) = characters per minute (CPS)
2. Do exactly the same with a different input method. Calculate CPS.

Result 2 / Result 1 = speed co-efficient of the alternative input method.

Other methods will work as long as you do the same for test 1 and test 2.

Repeat with another device (to fade!) and publish the results or times on your blog. Place the link in the comments for that threaded SEO effect that we all like so so much! I’ll also place your link in the results table when I create the page/database table of results. Alternatively, post the results directly on the comments or via the contact form.

Please state whether you have trained or not on the alternative input method.

What I’d like to see are Blackberries, PDA’s, Speech input and handwriting recognition (that one will vary wildly!) and any other method you can think off. When I have enough results I’ll publish a nice table and graphic.

Get typing, tapping and talking!

Here’s a mobilitybeat and digg link as this post is probably worth promoting to get as much feedback as possible.

My new estimate for 2007 UMPC sales: 700,000 units.

Yesterday in the Computex website I read that ASUS were expecting to ship 10,000 R2H units per month in 2007. The R2H is currently one of, if not the, most popular UMPC on the planet so that gives us a big hint about sector-wide sales in 2007.

Now consider this statistic from DigiTimes:

VIA’s shipments of the CPUs and chipsets to OQO this year will allow the US vendor to roll out 40,000 UMPCs

That doesn’t quite mean that 40,000 OQO’s will be sold this year but its close. We’re starting to get a picture of the market. I previously estimated a max 500,000 UMPC units to ship in 2007.

Here’s my prediction for 2006, based on the stats I’ve seen (there isn’t many) and cross calculating from notebook sales figures and smartphone sales figures, I’d say we’re looking at global sales of around 500,000 UMPC units in 2006 using the correct current sales channels ad maybe 1 million if they get into cellular carriers hands.

I don’t think that’s far off the mark. Here’s another rough/guesstimate calculation based on all that I’ve read, studied and heard. (UMPC = all devices on the Carrypad product portal.)

• ASUS R2H. 120,000
• Samsung Q1 all models 120,000
• Medion UMPC (including Arima OEM sales under other brands) 120,000 [guess. Could be a big seller.]
• OQO 02 30,000
• Sony UX 80,000
• Nokia N800 50,000
• Others (through VARS, vertical markets) 150,000

Total in 2007 - approx 700,000 units.

Sounds quite a lot doesn’t it? Its not. Its about 0.35 of one percent of the global notebook PC market if I got my maths correct. (assumption: 200 million notebooksPCs are sold every year.)

This doesn’t include hi-end smartphones such as the Athena, Omni, E90 rumors.

Instat said 8M by 2011 so that would indicate that the market will just about double every year.

As I see stats during 2007 I’ll try and update the figures. It would be fun to split that 700,000 units across Intel and VIA. Gut feeling is that Intel will take the majority in the early part of the year but VIA will take the majority in the second half. Depends on weather the VIA-based Asus UMPC rumor is true and whether Intel get their finger out and start shipping the new ULV processors. [report on Intel low power CPU’s here.]

Any UMPC product/marketing/sales managers watching? Don’t use these figures. They are my guestimates. On the other hand, if you get a big bonus because of my stats, drop me a line and i’ll give you my PayPal details!

Steve.

I respect Rob Enderle’s experience in product development and marketing but it doesn’t mean I have to agree with him does it. This article that compares the iPhone launch to the Origami launch is something I don’t agree with. The title has a question mark in it for a start (always a bad sign,) and the content is just too fuzzy. ‘Link bait’ comes to mind when I look at it.

Rob says that iPhone is “the Origami done right?” and he goes one to talk about what appears to be marketing/PR related issues and what Origami did wrong (which is interesting because I thought that the Enderle group was involved with the Origami product before it launched. I could be wrong though.) 

There’s nothing that really justifies the comparison of the Origami and iPhone products, marketing or launches that Rob has made. Sure, people can learn a lot from the iPhone launch but its nothing to do with Origami.

• iPhone: In-house controlled design, development and marketing of a voice and PMP product that you keep with you all the time. Development of an existing product group with historical sales figures. 1st year (2007-2008) sales targets: about 10 million? Subsidised sales model. Highly targeted audience. (Non business. iPod-generation.)
• Origami: Specifications and guidelines for a mini-PC that’s mobile. Completely new product group. First year (2006) sales target: about 0.5? No subsidy. Multiple models. Multiple designs. Multiple manufacturers. Multiple user types. (Consumer and business)

These are two completely separate processes, products and markets. No comparison of launches is really possible.

OK Let me go back and read it again just in case I’m getting all emotional about someone attacking UMPCs…

No. I still think he’s wrong. And the article doesn’t really provide any decent arguments either.

This paragraph doesn’t make sense at all…

The iPhone, in concept, hits on almost all of the notes that Origami missed. It prices in at under $600 (granted with a 2 year cell phone commitment), is relatively small, has integrated WAN, and they figured out that by using Synaptics’ technology they could make a touch screen keyboard work. The iPhone’s interface is simple (even though the OS is based on OSX) and they did a great job of eliminating the complexity (in effect they completed where Microsoft didn’t).

The iPhone is probably more expensive than an Origami device (the iPhone is subsidised.) WAN was never part of Origami spec probably because during 2005 everything was 2.5G and technically WWAN was quite an expensive thing to do. Subsidising it through a carrier would have been impossible too. Try to convince Vodafone to subsidise a suite of UMPC products when the worldwide target market for all products is under 1 million. They will probably laugh at you. And what the *&%^$ does ‘relatively small’ mean. UMPCs are far smaller ’relative’ to PCs than the iPhone is ‘relative’ to a normal mobile phone. Regarding the interface - The Origami interface was never meant to be simple  - Windows XP was the specification. The target market wouldn’t have wanted a new interface. Quick learning curve and interface familiarity were important.

Nobody knows if Origami was wrong yet. Even if everyone in the world has an iPhone I still believe that the Origami concept would be a sound one. The game is not over for Origami just because iPhone is here and playing on Center Court against HTC, Moto and Nokia. Origami is playing a different game in a different place to a different crowd.

This diagram might help to explain what I mean. Its something I made in Feb 2006 to prove to myself that there is no possibility of converging everything on one device. You see that the iPhone (lets put it in the 4″ bracket) and UMPC (I called it a Carrypad back then) fit into two different categories. See how the functionality differs. There’s quite a number of differentiators there. Browsing, quality video, TV/IP, video conferencing, games, note creation, emails. (Click to get PDF)

If Jobs had launched this…

Credit: Engadget

…then the Rob Enderle comparison would be valid. But he didn’t. So maybe MS weren’t so stupid after all. I think Rob spotted that at the end of his article. There’s a new opportunity forming.

Microsoft probably made a good choice to pull back on Origami marketing when they got the feedback from Amtek and Samsung that the 7″, keyboardless, 2 hour UMPC was a bit difficult to sell and when they realised that perhaps the hardware was not mature enough.  Apple are going to throw a lot of money into convincing people that they need the mobile Internet. When people start to get get pissed off with trying to browse ad-rich Web2.0 sites on a 480-wide screen with no keyboard there will be space and a chance for someone to step in with 5-7″ keyboarded modular PC’s (Rob already identified that modular computing is a winner) with super-efficient x86 processors, better graphics processors and the huge choice of application that Vista, Linux or even OSX will offer. It might just be that Jobs does that in 12 months time of course and then MS will be in trouble but they still have a little time. And Vista.

Steve.

The S-Xgen is going to be launched at CES in just a few days. They are entering a tough market and although they mention UMPCs in their marketing, its the communicator phone segment that’s going to be the battleground for them. I’ve got a few opinions about devices in that business-user market.

If you had to choose between these two would you choose the S-XGen or the HTC Athena?

I know what I’d choose. its all in the screen size for me. The bigger browsing space wins every time because I’ll be accessing most of my applications through it.

On the left you have 4″ 470 x 280  on the right 5″ 640×480. Its literally a huge difference. Over twice the number of screen pixels.

They both run Windows Mobile and have hard drives (20 vs they both have keyboards and integrated 3G.

There’s only the price to consider and guess what, when I walk into a Vodafone shop and see the Athena at 350 Euro on a 2 year contract, I’m probably going to make the final decision there and then.

The S-Xgen will probably only be available in the US too. I can’t imagine them going through RoHS and CE certifications, translations and setting up multi-lingual sales and support processes. The market isn’t big enough for that. HTC already have it in place.

The other non-windows options are the Nokia E90 (rumor) or the ROAD. These two are in the same segment at the $1200+ mark. The ROAD ‘Handy PC’ is a German product and may not cross over into the US market.

This sector of the phone market is going to become more important as sensible data contracts start to kick in and browser access becomes more critical for end users. My feeling is that anything under 640 pixels wide in this category doesn’t really stand a chance.

John Tokash makes a lot of sense to me in his recent post about the Nokia 770. He writes about how it fulfils the tasks he requires.

“…the tasks he requires.”

That’s the important bit. He analysed his requirements and found a device to suit. He didn’t do what most people do and dream about high-end gaming or whine about the lack of 3.6mbps cellular data connectivity because he knows that its not part of his requirements.

I really wish more people would be honest with themselves and analyse exactly how they use their computing devices. Do you really need a web-cam when you don’t have anyone to talk to. (For example!) and do you really need Vista to browse websites and read email? Do you really need MS Office to create simple documents? Being honest allows you focus on the capability you really require and potentially save money too.

John’s requirements is very similar to mine and breaks down into three parts. I quote:

The Mobile Phone/Email device (LG CU320, no email, now, but hopefully a smartphone soon) is something I need to have with me at all times to keep track of projects while away from the office and while in meetings. The Mobile Internet Tablet is something that I like to carry with me throughout the day to meetings, errands, etc, but the required screen size makes it something I can’t have with me ALL the time (was Palm TX, then TK eo UMPC, now: Nokia 770). The Mobile Workstation (Dell Inspiron 6000d) is with me at work and at home, carried to some meetings.

I agree. The mobile phone is with you all the time. If you can handle having a PDA-sized device on your belt then that’s even better. The mobile Internet tablet (I’d call this the ultra-mobile PC class.) is the middle ground and the workstation is a semi-permanent installation. This could be a desktop PC for most people.

Read Johns blog entry to find out why his chosen device was the 770 Internet Tablet and remember - be honest with yourself or the marketing machine will get you!

Steve.

I was just reading VentureBlog (no, I’m not getting funding, I got distracted on a browse-fest from Techmeme.) where David Hornik said he’d rather give up his TV than his Internet.

That’s an easy choice as far as I’m concerned. The TV would go straight away. I’d probably give up the car before I gave up my Internet connection too. Not sure what my wife would say about that but she’s sitting behind me right now updating her blog. Lets ask her….

…she said ‘Car.’

What a Wonderful Wife.

Steve.