Archive for the ‘umpc’ Category

MWg (Mobile and Wireless group,) a Singapore-based company formed from the old O2 Asia company is coming to Europe with a new ‘connected’ Vista-based mobile device to be released in Q4 2008.

MWg’s entrance into the European market is backed by Expansys and was launched [PDF] last week in London where Modaco was present to capture the roadmap on video. They picked up on a Windows Mobile 7 device which could be interesting but the one that caught my eye was the MWg Walk which is supposed to be a ‘Shift-esque UMPC.’

Shift-esque + a mention of the word ‘MID’ + late 2008 launch smacks of a new HTC device running on Menlow which would be awesome (apart from the Vista part of course!) Check out the video below for images of the roadmap. The UMPC is mentioned in the last 10 seconds of the video.

Source: MoDaCo.

Via Solsie

What’s the best Internet-enabled sofa-centric device you can buy? Possibly the Hanbit Pad. It’s silent, semi-rugged, has a built-in consumer IR receiver and transmitter, well-backlit keys and a sturdy stand. It runs Windows XP Tablet, comes with Wifi, Bluetooth, 30GB hard disk and a web-cam, has about 3 hours of battery life and costs…well actually we don’t know how much it costs yet. Hanbit and their distributors are still working that bit out. In fact, I’d encourage your thoughts in the comments because Hanbit have sent this over for some feedback before they start distributing it in Germany and other countries.

You might recognise the device as the Pepper Pad 3. In terms of hardware, it is! The only changes are to the screen (LED-Backlit and very bright) and the battery compartment. Software wise though its completely different. Hanbit have gone for Windows XP Tablet edition on this model which I have to say, feels faster than the previous Linux-based device.

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A short while back, I came across a blog in my UMPC searches by Cristian Sorega, Ricoh-GR-Diary. The UMPC reference turned out to be a really interesting one because Crisitian is using the Q1 Ultra as a partner device for his digital camera. I use the same device myself now and find it perfect for either receiving images via Bluetooth from my N82 or simply for dropping in the SD card from the my Canon. I asked Cristian if he’d be interested in writing an article about why and how he uses the Q1 Ultra and a few weeks later, here it is. A million thanks Cristian. Its great to hear real-world usage scenarios so its over to you….

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45MB/s is as fast as any hard drive you’re likely to find in a UMPC so folks, consider this Transcend 300x card very fast indeed! It’s CF 4.1 compliant [PDF] and it’s got ECC (error correction) support. In something like the Everun S6S with the supplied CF card adaptor, it would be perfect and probably a lot faster than the internal on-board flash. At 229 Euro for the 16Gb version though, its certainly not a cheap option but I’ve found the 8GB version online for 80 Euros so I’ve gone ahead and ordered one. I’m looking forward to testing it with the Everun to see how fast it is and am even thinking of running an OS on it in the Q1 Ultra. Elmstrom, a member on the portal here, has already tried a similar project with a similar card and he reports "A lot more responsive system." After a bit of research, it’s clear that the Transcend CF cards up to 266x have wear-leveling support  which is very important if you want to use it as an OS drive otherwise otherwise swap/pagefiles can burn a ‘hole’ in the card very quickly. Unfortunately, there’s no data sheet yet for the 300x card so its possible that it doesn’t actually have wear-levelling. There’s only one way to find out!

Technical details: Transcend

Source: Golem.de (German)

Edit from Chippy: Thorsten, a new member of the team here takes on the R2E…

To date the R2E has not had a full review done on it and since I owned an R2H largely to my satisfaction for over a year I felt I was the best person in the team to take a good look at ASUS’s latest UMPC offering.

ASUS Holland were kind enough to provide a review sample for short term testing. Today’s report will not be a full review however. I will give a short overview and some first impression to give a general picture of what this machine is about and can do. Keep a look out for the full review in the next week.

The postman delivered the R2E to my door exactly 20 minutes before I had to leave for work. It is annoying how these things go but all I had time to do was look at the contents of the package and hook up the R2E to the mains in order to charge. Inside I found,

• The R2E, 800MHz A110, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, GPS, HSDPA
• Battery (2Cell)
• Battery (4Cell)
• Charger
• Car-Charger
• USB Mini-Mouse (Logitech)
• Foldable keyboard (Targus)
• VGA-Out Cable
• GPS Mouse
• USB to USB Sync cable (very handy)
• Mini USB to USB cable
• Spare Stylus
• TV-Out cable
• Network Cable
• Cleaning Cloth
• Cable Tie
• Six CD’s/DVD’s including recovery disk and Microsoft AutoRoute2007

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After delaying the launch of XP Service Pack 3 for an indeterminate amount of time just a few days ago, Microsoft surprised me this morning with the message on my Everun that SP3 was ready for download on Microsoft Update. I took the plunge and after several hours of struggling and one system hang-up SP3 is now installed. Not a lot has been changed but SP3 does contain all previous patches and some smaller new features that in Microsoft’s own words, “do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system”. You can read about the changes or head over to your windows update if you want to download the 65MB patch.

I surprised myself yesterday morning when I managed to get live digital TV working at 120kmh. I had heard reports that the dual-tuner DVB sticks in ‘diversity’ mode were good but never expected it to be this easy to get live TV working in the car.

I was using a Terratec dual-tuner diversity DVB-T USB stick connected to a Wibrain B1H UMPC for this test. DVB-T is an over-the-air (terrestrial) digital TV standard that is common in Europe (not in the U.S) and without any real testing of antenna positioning inside the car was able to get a smooth signal at all city speeds. On the autobahn I was up to about 80kmh when it started to drop out but by moving one of the antenna I was getting a good signal at 120kmh. Of course, reception quality depends on where you are in relation to the transmission tower but even so, I didn’t exactly do much to optimise the antenna positions and I dare say that I could have got things working even more smoothly if I’d have tested out a few more positions. For under 100 Euro, this is a great way to add TV to the car if you already have a CarPC, UMPC or Laptop. Taxi and mini-bus drivers take note! More notes and a video after the pic…

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I just wanted to clear up a story that appeared on Engadget this morning. Yes, Flipstart are retreating from the UMPC market. I heard from a contact back in Jan that the Flipstart UMPC production was going to be reduced, sales and support handed over to Dynamism and that Flipstart were going to re-focus on MIDs and smartphones.

Based on the current pressure in the mininote market, it’s probably not a bad move for a small company.

Danmiddle2 over at the Micropctalk.com forums has come up with a very clever controller solution for making mobile gaming on his VAIO UX more practical. Using a “Genius MaxFire Pandora Pro Foldable Mini USB Gamepad for PC”, Dan connected the two halves of the USB controller back to back. He then mounted the connected pieces to a dummy CF card (pictured here), using the CF slot as the mechanism in which to secure the controller. The controller then conveniently plugs into the USB slot right above the CF card slot. As you can see in the video below, Dan is able to play Unreal Tournament 2004 very effectively, using the front face of the controller to move his character, the back to shoot and jump, and the mouse pad on the UX to aim. Very ingenious! Head over to the original thread for more details.

Jenn from Pocketables.net got to preview Origami 2.0 while playing with her new HTC Shift. The Shift is the first UMPC to ship with Origami 2.0, which is otherwise not released to the public at this point. If you will recall, the first Origami was essentially an application launcher and media manager designed to be finger optimized for small first-gen UMPC screens. It was met with a mixed reaction, some people enjoyed the interface while others found it useless. Back in January, the Origami Project blog announced Origami 2.0, which aims to increase functionality and usability by adding additional applets and features. Most notable are the web browser, feed reader, Picture Password, and context sensitive information page (weather, traffic etc.) all designed to be finger friendly.

Just a few days ago, the Origami Project blog announced that they were working on a final download package, and Origami 2.0, or OX2 as they are calling it, will be released “very soon”. If you can’t wait, be sure to head over to Pocketables.net to check out Jenn’s experience with Origami 2.0. One thing that looks interesting about Origami 2.0 is that if will provide you with different information depending on the time of day, and your location. It would be great to wake up in the morning and have your UMPC know that you want to see the weather and traffic before you leave for work!