The 500- Euro laptop has arrived in Europe. (Yes, you may laugh now if you're a North American consumer)

Through golem.de we have just learned that the laptop/notebook price wars in Europe are continuing and the price has just broken through the 500 Euro ($650) barrier.

This means trouble for the consumer UMPC market in Europe as the price differential between like-for-like spec laptops and UMPC's gets wider. In fact, the premium now stands at over 100%. Double the price!

The notebook in question is based on a Celeron-M at 1.3Ghz and the rest of the specs match or better those of the two Origami-based UMPC's available. For Samsung especially, this is bad news as their marketing strategy seems much more consumer oriented. The Paceblade Easybook and Tablet Kiosk eo, the other UMPC's on the market, are being sold through specialists to a narrower, more mobile-focused customer base and won't be affected so much.

The strategy for Samsung could go any of the following ways.

1. Introduce extra value to the Q1 by including accesories, software and content.
2. Increase marketing and sales training activities
3. Lower prices for the current Q1.
4. Introduce a low-end base-model UMPC.
5. Do nothing and pray for rich, mobile-aware customers.
   

Point 4 is particularly interesting because of the VIA-based $700 Samsung Q1 rumor.

If I was running Samsung Q1 marketing, i'd be thinking about adding a free docking-station and keyboard to the Q1 and then bringing in a low-end stripped down Q1 UMPC (no ethernet and vga-out ports) with a built in a digital TV module (as they do already in Korea) and inculude a digital TV contract. Sell for 400,- Euro plus 15,- Euro per month. Dare I suggest that they use a VIA chipset to enable hardware (low-power) MPEG2/4 decoding and tv-out port?

Steve / Chippy.

Labels: Report

This is more of a test post really, but i'm publishing here a short video sequence I made of the Paceblade Easybook P7. No commentary included!

Actually the video is pretty, no, make that 'very' boring but if you're thinking about buying the Paceblade, you might want to see the Paceblade on-screen keyboard, a video running and an old version of Need for Speed (was still fun!). The more entertaining bit of the video starts at 4:18.




I'm quite impressed with YouTube. Seems like a good way to share videos and save server bandwidth! Anyone heard any bad stories?

Steve / Chippy.

The summer of Ultra-Mobile PC's is hotting up despite the rain continuing to fall here in Cologne, Germany. Just what we need for the World Cup starting in just over a week! Having put the new portal live, its time to re-visit some of the rumours and teasers in the UMPC world and get my RSS filters set up! Here's the watch-list and some highly accurate guesswork (!) on the details.

New Nokia Internet Tablet.
This is the device that really could stir things up in the UMPC market. Nokia have actually spoken in public about this too so its highly likely to make it to market. I'm not sure how close it will be in specification to their communicator products but one assumes that if they dont put any 2G, GPRS or UMTS capability into it, it won't cut across the current communicator sales and they can get creative with keybaords, a bigger screen and a keyboard. Probability: 90%
Our guess on specs: Late summer release. $550. Slightly bigger screen. Better processor. Linux based. Keyboard.

Samsung Q1 with VIA processor.
This one is strictly a rumor (that no-one has formally denied yet!) I really cant imagine Intel (or Microsoft) letting Samsung simply drop a VIA onto the same UMPC motherboard and letting them compete head to head. No-one, even Samsung, is going to benefit from that. Its possible Samsung could remove some of the interfaces (VGA, Ethernet) and make a stripped down 20GB version I guess. We'll have to wait and see.
Probability 25%
Our guess on specs: Late summer release. $750. Via processor. Reduced Q1 specs.

Averatek AHI.
We havent heard any more about this since I4U carried the (now removed) news. Its an interesting product but I hope the design matures a bit from the 'UMPC-R-US' looks that it has in the preview images. Status: Rumor. Probability: 60%. Known specs are in the product portal.


Founder Mininote.
This one is acttually available in China now according to a forum post. It's rumored not to be a Microsoft UMPC but who cares, if its a an Ultra-Mobile PC, its a UMPC. Right?
Probability (outside China) 80%. Specs are already in the product portal.

Pepperpad plus.
The word is that there will be a Pepperpad plus and we hear on the grapevine that there may be an announcement due soon. The report seems to be reliable and if so, it will be the first AMD UMPC device on the market. Probability: 100%
Our guess on release date: Early Autumn. Journal entry. Product specs.


Flybook V33i.
This has already been confirmed. Availability is imminent. The V33 is a Fujitsu P1510-like convertable device with Pentium-M and GPRS-EDGE connectivity. The price looks like it's over 2000 Euro.
Probability:100%

DualCor cPC
Ho hum. I really don't know if i'm excited about this device or not. It seems to be trying to achieve too much. It looks like it will make it to market though. Another 3 months is the rumour.
Probability: 90%

Asus R2H
Another Origami-based UMPC looks likely with the Asus R2H. Its been held back for tweaking we understand but looks like it will be with us in the 3rd quarter. (Jul-Sept) Probability: 100%

Price wars.
Everyone can look forward to the results of more competition and market maturity as people start to learn and understand more about UMPC mobility. Better products and prices!

Finally, keep an eye on Carrypad. The journal RSS feed is available here.




Steve / Chippy.

I'm very pleased to be able to report that we've just launched a new portal and gallery for UMPC devices.


On the new portal you'll find easy access to all our previously published reports along with RSS and search facilites. (I'm still migrating some from the blogger journal into the new portal) Also available is the first of our UMPC reviews - The Paceblade Easybook P7 review.
Through the new front-end, you'll also be able to access the other areas of the site:




The journal will continue as a more informal and quick-hit channel. The gallery is a new feature that we hope to extend as time goes on, and the links and product portal continue as before.

Take a look at the new UMPC review, the site and the gallery and let us know what you think. I'm totally web-design-blind from the last months work so the feedback will be useful!

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Tags:
UMPC,Paceblade,Review

There's no point hiding information. Google will find it sooner or later.

With that in mind, i've decided to cut out the middle man and share my UMPC-related OPML file. For those that don't know what an OPML file is, its basically a list of RSS/Atom feeds in a file that you can import into RSS news aggregators. Its the list of feeds I watch to keep myself updated with news from the UMPC sector.

I've posted the file and linked it on the Carrypad Links page. For other related feeds, go over to share.opml.org where there are some great lists.

Coming up in the next week we've got the Paceblade Easybook P7 full review, a Sharp Zaurus CL3200 full review and new additions to the portal including the Carrypad UMPC photography portal, a new reports portal (which will contain all our reports in an easy-to-access format) and the new logo! Thrill of thrills!


Regards
Steve / Chippy.

As I suspected after the collaborative testing effort with the Tablet Kiosk eo, one of the two battery life problems was related to hardware. John Tokash has reported that TK have found a problem:

we have identified a set of defective cords / capacitors on the initial production run causing the high power drain

Tracing faulty components is an extremely difficult task and as a reseller, TK will have had to work hard with the original design manufactuer to get this sorted out. Although it will require a hardware recall, TK say they will offer accessory discounts as compensation to affected customers.

I guess it will have a knock-on effect for all resellers of the Amtek 700 as the production schedule in China is re-organised to accomodate the recall. Paceblade must be thanking their lucky stars that the Easybook P7 was released without the problem in Europe.

So that leaves just the C3 sleep-state issue to fix now and then we'll be seeing something more realistic for battery life with this VIA-based UMPC. Having just read Ultramobilepc-tips latest post, I suspect that the 'other updates' mentioned are the sleep-state fixes that will help not only Tablet Kiosk but all the other resellers.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Thank goodness for fathers day! I was able to push everyone aside today and test the Paceblade Easybook P7 out to my hearts content. Which was fortunate because a (very) little package turned up the day before and distracted me somewhat.



More about that next week.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time chatting to various people about the battery life issues. We've pretty much exhausted the possibilities of further testing now. I did think about taking the Paceblade apart and doing some infra-red photography but thats going too far! Although there's the possibility of a firmware issues, I personally think its a hardware problem with the Tablet Kiosk Eo's. We've provided them with a lot of information both through the journals and via direct email contact with people in TK so it's in their hands now. I look forward to TK's response on this.

I got a chance to test out DVB-T TV again (it is fathers day!) and unfortunately I found out that the software provided with the MSI Mega Sky USB receiver doesnt take advantage of the VIA MPEG-2 hardware. The DVB-T streams are high-bandwidth MPEG-2 streams (depending on setup, the streams are commonly between 2 and 8Mbps.) and without any hardware decoding support, the CPU has to work very hard to decode them. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has found DVB-T software that can use the VIA Unichrome capabilities because it has the potential to save over 20% of battery power. VIA hardware support is becoming a recurring topic and if it doesnt improve, customers are going to be buying hardware that just doesnt perform as expected.


I was chatting to 'JKK', the Finlander that shocked us all with his good Eo battery life on the Origamiproject forums, and we were talking about the design of the Amtek 700 variants. I mentioned the 'nice' yellow protective bag that is rather embarassing to use and he told me about his home-made UMPC case. He's using a 2-high CD case. What a great idea. I reached over and picked up a CD case I had, pulled the inside out of it and hey-presto! What a fantastic idea. There's even space left over for your mobile phone. Try it out yourself!



As I reported before, UMPC's aren't that thrilling. There's no new software and certainly no new hardware to impress. It just 'works' and after a few days it was working in more places than I had imagined. Families might need two of these!

Barbie.com was the big hit this morning. I had a lovely hour of peace. I guess my daughter enjoyed the flash-loaded experience too! Need for Speed Road Challenge was fun (fathers day again) although it needed the CDROM to be attached while it went through the startup sequence. Its an oldie but a goodie! Linking up the mobile phone and the GPS receiver via bluetooth and running MeHere to show google maps in the car was a good technology test. Loading up Cubase VST was easy and very useable. As I mentioned before, I think musicians are going to love UMPC's

The sports training software that I wanted to try didn't load becuase it checks for a 1024x768 screen before installing. I found some other sports software though and had to wear a data recorder on my arm for the afternoon to test it out. It worked and its clear that health studios and personal trainers could gain a big advantage with this computing mobility. (Its also now clear from the data recorder that I need to get even more mobile myself!)



The rest of the time was spent on photography and I've got a lot of great photos for the full review coming up over the weekend (if that Sharp Zaurus doesn't distract me again!) I've taken a few videos too and will find somewhere to put those too. Anyone got any tips for video hosting? If not I guess i'll put them on YouTube.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

The 2nd day of testing the Easybook ended with a nice suprise but first let me give my Day 2 opinion.

It started with the realisation that UMPC's with Windows XP arent anything new in the software department. I think I was expecting some kind of 'upgrade' from XP but of course its just like logging into a normal windows PC. Quite boring really. I woke up and read my emails as I usually do. At breakfast I was able to check some RSS feeds which I also usually do with the Pocket PC.

I don't know why I expected to get more out of a UMPC. I have done enough of research on UMPC's to know what they are good for and I can tell you exactly why you might need one. Rich browsing, videos, photos, better input capabilities, and all the things that are on my favorite diagram. (below) I'd obviously assumed that having a new form factor would bring something very exciting. What it brings though is not so much excitement but useability and eficiency. Zero learning-curve for user interface and applications. The ability to do desk-based tasks in other places (traffic jams could become productive!) and portability of information, presentations and videos. Peace in the car for the kids (entertainment) and the married couple (navigation.)
Commuters are going to finally be able to play games, watch videos and then switch to Outlook when their boss walks into the same carriage. All standing up!





After an hour or two taking photos and videos, I concentrated a bit more on 'the diagram' and tried DVB-T with the MSI mega-sky card. (see pic below) which worked very well. Quite impressive actually. TV and videos are perfect on a 7" screen. Especially Waynes World which messed up my testing schedule! I tried out some MPEG-4 videos and one of the better quality ones, at 2Mbps, was no problem for the Easybook. Shame there's no video outputs on board.

Music creators are going to love UMPC's. Band-in-a-box music software worked well and was a lot of fun playing drums on the screen. The internal midi device is good enough to do composition on and I can imagine Cubase and a few VST software instruments working well. Winamp worked of course and using the Slimserver MP3 streaming software I was easily able to choose and stream tracks from my server into the Easybook.

I'm not that impressed with the looks of the device. It's a little industrial for my liking. It needs to have some flair if it wants to compete with the Samsung. Pulling a white book out of a yellow protective bag is not want I want to be doing in public either! I'd have to go for the black version. The build quality seems very good and I love the button layout. It works really well. The mouse stick with push-click is a real advantage. The stand, just like the Q1 stand, is low-quality and is not easily collapsable.

'Ink' is not my strong point but I gave it a good try. After 30 minutes trying to write, I gave up and went back to the on-screen keyboard which was fine until I wanted to write an email. At that point I plugged a USB keyboard in. This point has been brought up time and time again and I really understand why the mainstream reviewers keep mentioning it. They are mainstream people and representative of the mainstream target market that these devices are being pushed into. Live messaging, detailed emails, quality blogging and document creation are all going to be a problem for most people without the keyboard. Its an engineering challenge to include a keyboard and could push development costs up but I personally think it will be worth it to embrace keyboard users and open up the possibilities for the devices and bringing more justification to the current pricing.

Finally I sat down and started some battery tests. And this is where the suprise came in. The Easybook P7 doesn't seem to suffer from the same battery problems as the Eo. 2 hours seems to be no problem for the Easybook P7. 3 hours low-screen useage (wifi off) seems highly possible which makes the Easybook a pretty good contender now against the Q1. The VIA chipset can process MPEG-2 in hardware which means you could potentially stream an MPEG-2 film over wifi (try VLC software for that) and get well over 2 hours. Thay will also apply for DVB-T which is streamed in MPEG-2.

In summary then, the Easybook P7 software is XP and you need not worry about compatibility or having to waste time learning a new system. Screen resolution toggling is painless with the hardware button. The hardware itself seems solid and well built. Switchgear is very good especially the mouse button. It gets very warm on charging but not so bad under battery power. Wifi works well. It passed my '2-wall test' but its not in the upper class of Wifi power. Bluetooth with my 3G Nokia 6280 worked very well. The sound quality of the built-in speaker and headphones is pretty bad. Normal headphones work with the device though and that, or external speakers, will be the answer if you need good sound quality.

The device has very clear advantages for people who's time is money. Its easily worth the money if you want to grab another 10 minutes productivity a day. It has advantages for the family too. As a second PC its perfect for use around the house, car and on holiday. Its not, however going to wow! the twentysomething consumer sector. Style is lacking. Whether Paceblade needs to attend to that at the moment is another matter. UMPC manufacturers will want to sweep up the early adopters, some high-margin niche markets, wait for better core hardware, and stimulate the aftermarket product manufactureres before it's re-positioned into mass-markets.

Today i'll be trying out a few games (an old version of Need for Speed will be first up.) and also trying out some health testing software and hardware. More photos, some MPEG-2 streaming and some more general useage scenarios. Maybe coffee and an Easybook too!

Steve / Chippy.

After a long wait for the Origmi UMPC's to go on sale in Europe its finally happened. Today I recieved an Easybook P7 from Paceblade for review and testing over the next 3-4 days. Its the first UMPC to be released in Europe.

The Paceblade P7 (click for specs.) is a version of the Amtek 700 which is also being branded by Tablet Kiosk in the U.S. and UK.

Ignoring the battery issues that we know are being investigated, it impressive! I'm also quite suprised at how small it really is. We've seen a lot of pictures but it still feels smaller than I imagined. Its responsive too although somehow, fresh windows installs always seem quick until you've installed all the extra software you need.

Screen definition is excelent and i'm impressed at how good the non-native resolutions are (800x600, 1024x600.)

Paceblade have added a full-screen keyboard to the software bundle and this should enable more reliable on-screen typing. The touch screen is 'palm resistant' which also means you need to touch it with fingernails or the pen. We'll be 'living' with all the input methods over the next three days to see what the advantages of each are.

The orange mouse pointer is nice to use and as a left-handed writer it works out extremely well to have the mouse going in one hand and writing or pointing in the other.

First reaction from my wife was 'its not that pretty is it.' which was followed shortly by 'wow, its a full PC!" My daughter was rather excited too when I showed her Barbie.com in all its flash-enhanced glory!


Over the next few days I'll be using it in as many situations as possible from the early morning bedside email check to watching digital TV in the garden via a USB stick. I'll try it out in the car, boot linux, stream music and videos and take a lot of pictures! I'll also try and work out what it means to the home user and the business user.



Regards
Steve / Chippy.

It looks like Pepperpad have been listening and watching the UMPC market very closely. The Pepperpad Plus has been spotted and its more than just a software update on the original Pepperpad.

Patron emailed me with a link to the forums over at Mobiletechreview where Lisa G, the editor, has posted information.

The most significant thing about the Pepperpad plus is that it uses an AMD processor. Its the AMD Geode LX800 processor - a 500Mhz 3.9W TDP device presumably developed from the National Semiconductor Geode range that AMD took over. We'll take a good look at this processor now and report back in another post.

The Plus is smaller than the original Pepperpad, with a 7" screen. It has a new keyboard (no more rubber keys), new Wifi hardware, BT hardware, camera, updated Linux kernel and well, pretty much everything that it needed to bring it right into the middle of UMPC territory. In fact, if the mention of $500 retail price is correct, this makes it a very attractive Ultra-mobile PC. Launch is expected in the Summer.

If Nokia release a new tablet device as they've been saying, its going to go head-to-head with this device. Nokia had a clear territory in the $400-$600 range but the first challenger is already on the field.

We've added the "plus" to the product portal here so take a look at the specs and watch the RSS feed for new info links that we'll add as we see them.

This matches the Carrypad concept specification almost perfectly and becuase of that, we obviously think its going to hit the sweet spot nicely. I wonder if we can re-badge them and sell them as Carrypads. I'll have a word with Pepperpad!

Regards
Steve / Chippy

Tablet Kiosk partners in the UK - PocketPC Solutions - have just emailed me to say that the Tablet Kiosk eo MIC driver update is available on their website.

This is the same driver update that John Tokash succesfuly tested for TK on Friday.

The driver update is available here.

Now all we need is that damned elusive power patch. PocketPC Solutions have a placeholder on their web page for the patch - keep a lookout for changes!

Steve / Chippy.

Microsoft have issued a patch that fixes a battery drain problem on portable computers running Windows XP SP2.

Dailytech have reported it here and Microsoft give the details on this knowledgebase article here.
There's no specific talk about VIA or UMPC's on the MS posting but it could cover the USB-related CPU state problem we've seen on the Eo. Unfortunately you people with Tablet Kiosk eo's in the U.S. seem to be asleep as I write this so I can't get it tested. (Paceblade Easybook P7 ships in Germany today though!)

I know there's a few owners watching this journal so please, if you're reading this and you have an eo, try this patch and let me know if 'perfmon' reports C3 states on the VIA processor. Check your battery life in idle to. This fix has the potential to take an Eo from 1:20 to nearly 2hrs lifetime at idle.

[Update: This fix does not work on the Eo. Test and reports on this here. ]

Thanks to rainwalker for posting the info in the Origamiproject forums.

Keywords: UMPC, Eo, Power

This weekend was a good one for UMPC fans. Especially keyboard loving ones like us!

Eo battery problem fix?
Firstly there was the news from TKK in the Origamiproject forums that he's getting much much better battery life from his Amtek-unbranded Eo/Easybook UMPC. It looks like Amtek have provided him with a device that is either modded or updated becuase he's having no problem getting over 2 hours with normal use. Discussion and comparison of drivers and hardware details continues on Origamiportal.com. This is great news for Eo owners because there's now a possiblitly of a swap-out rather than just having to return the device. It also good news for us here because it means our UMPC power predictions and VIA C7 power analysis was correct.

New Carrypad-like device.
Secondly, I was speaking to the CTO of Coxion in Finland who, apart from making me jealous with his talk of cheap 3G unlimited data plans, was telling me about the existing CE-based WebBook (pic above.) Its aimed at 'vertical markets' but the core design is even closer to the Carrypad concept than the Clio NXT which we were investigating. He might have also whispered in my ear that they were looking into an XP version of this which puts it right in the middle of the Origami camp - with a keyboard!

Nokia, Google and Tablets.
The third great bit of news, and this is really significant for the consumer market, is that Google is teaming up with Nokia to provide 'a version' of the Nokia 770 internet tablet with Google Talk software pre-installed. The Nokia 770 has been knocked for being underpowered in the past and Nokia have, for a long time, been public about the fact that they are looking at bringing a new internet tablet to market with a keyboard. Could this be the upgrade that will boost the Nokia 770 into more advanced UMPC territory?


Sony UX teaser video.
Finally, and again very significant news for the consumer UMPC market, is that Sony have a new UMPC device in the wings. With a keyboard and a smart design!
Its a Sony Vaio UX and it looks stunning. There's no specification available yet, so everyone is watching the Sony website and teaser video for more information. Jkontherun is watching closely too.


The new devices will go into the UMPC product portal today and of course we'll be updating it with important news links as we get them. The all-product RSS news feed is available here.

The 'Carrypad' journal was born out of a desire for a mid-range ultra-portable PC. Something like the Psion Netbook perhaps. Or the Sharp Zaurus or the Nokia 770. We called it the Carrypad concept device and it goes something like this:

• 5-7" 800x640 Touch Screen
• Mini Keyboard
• Wifi, BT2.0, SD slot, USB2.0
• 600mhz advanced processor
• 3 hour battery
• Min 10GB storage
• Reduced OS
• Price$600

As you can see. The spec is nothing thats going to flatten an Origami UMPC device but its what we consider to be the sweet spot in the market now that smartphones are becoming more popular and pocket PC's become less useful.

One device that's been in the pipeline for a while is the Clio NXT window CE device. It comes very very close to the Carrypad concept and on top of that, the award-winning design looks pretty good too.

The Clio NXT is a re-design of the original Vadem Clio by the new owners Data Evolution. Its been in developement for a very long time but the specs still look like they have a chance against today's low-end laptops and UMPC devices if the price is right when it's released.

Included are all the wireless connectivity options you'd expect (take note DualCor,) a keyboard (should keep newspaper reviewers happy,) a good sized screen (slightly bigger than the Carrypad target size of 5-7") and instant-on operating. It runs Windows CE.Net 5.0 which does include native Word and Excel file support. There's no hard disk included but as 4Gb SD cards are so cheap now, you need to think hard to find situations where you'd need more.

On the negative side we have to say that playing videos could be a problem on the
Intel PXA255 processor at 400 MHz. You'll get a 320x240 Divx at about 800kbps running (VHS quality) but nothing more than that.
It also looks like the price won't be right either as, having read a number of forum threads, it looks like its being aimed at 'vertical markets.' Target price at the moment seems to be around $1000 which won't work in the consumer world.

Its dificult to talk negatively about such a great design but in our opinion it needs to be 20% smaller all round, have a better processor (624Mhz Xscale would be fine thanks!) and priced at the $700 mark to have a fighting chance in the current market.

Steve / Chippy.

[update: A lot of people have reported that the wifi becomes effiectively unuseable after doing this change. We have also found out the 'JKK' has a rather unique Amtek 700 in his hands. Even Amtek are suprised at his good battery life statistics and we have now put Amtek in touch with JKK so that they can work together to see why JKK's Amtek 700 has such good battery life.]

Top marks to Origamiproject forum member 'JKK' who posted that he was getting 2 hours web surfing without doing anything except enabling power-save mode on the Wifi hardware. He didn't need to disable the USB bus as we'd been doing in previous tests.

I went straight onto the Origamiportal IRC channel as soon as I saw the post where I spoke to John Tokash. He has just finished a set of tests and sure enough, it worked! Its reduced his battery drain at idle down to 13watts (from 17Watts) giving him about 20 mins extra battery life at low-use.

Tablet Kiosk aren't off the hook yet though as there's still a few issues with this 'fix'

As far as we can see through our testing though, enabling this setting reduces the Wifi power so you might lose range. John also had an initial problem seeing his wifi networks after a reboot (and again after rebooting with the power-save turned OFF again) but after removing and re-enabling the hardware, it seemed to work OK. We tested standby and that worked too. The other issue is that we still don't see the important CPU C3 sleep state being used.

John is now going putting is Eo through a long-term battery test with the Notebook Hardware Control program. NHC is showing 13.2W drain with a lifetime of 1:44. JKK has also told us that he's not seeing C3 states but he's getting 2hrs.

Here's the details on how to apply the fix:

Right click on your Wireless Network Connection, choose Properties. In the Properties dialog, choose Configure. Choose the Advanced tab of the Configure dialog. Set Power Save Mode to enabled. Hit OK.

Thanks once again to JKK for posting and John Tokash for testing and as always, there will be updates if we make significant steps forward.

Regards
Steve.

Good news for Europeans looking for UMPC availablilty today.

This morning, we had an email from UK-based Pocket PC Solutions confirming that they will be distributing Tablet Kiosk products in the UK.

PocketPC Solutions is pleased to announce that it has been appointed the UK agent for TabletKiosk™ USA, a leader in Tablet PC and exhibit-centric computing solutions. PocketPC Solutions will be responsible for marketing, distributing and enhancing the TabletKiosk range throughout the UK.

All TabletKiosk products, including the newly announced eo v7110 Ultra-Mobile PC, are now available at PocketPC Solutions, www.pocketpc-solutions.co.uk, with prices for the eo v7110 UMPC starting from £699.99.

The price shown is inclusive of UK VAT.

I understand that they have the first Eo to arrive in Europe at the moment but the Eo stock has not arrived yet. Its possible that Tablet Kiosk could hold back on delivering more stock until they've got a plan for tackling the battery life issues but the latest info is that the devices will be delivered by 'mid June.'

Cross-border sales within Europe should also be possible.

Steve / Chippy.

Update: Since 2006 there has been a lot more Linux news on the portal. Click here to see all linux/umpc related news items.

Well done Jtokash!

John succesfuly booted Damn Small Linux on an Tablet Kiosk Eo last night and got the gui up and running.
Unfortunately the gui didn't scale well and a lot of hardware support was missing (USB mouse didnt work, touch didnt work) but it proves Linux boots and X runs.

Since yesterday, we've found a new set of links that refer to linux-on-tablet sites. (see forum)

At the moment, i'm waiting for someone to take the first screenshot and also try to run knoppix with these boot options:

knoppix nomce fb800x480 xmodule=fbdev

Its known to work on some tablets while booting from USB.

Further info in the Origamiportal linux thread and thanks to Origamiportal for the cool Linux-UMPC graphic!

Regards
Steve / Chippy

So, now that we've got to the the bottom of the Eo power problems, we can let Tablet Kiosk and Amtek work on that one and move on to the next project.

The problem is, we still dont have any UMPC's available here in Germany and i've got lots of ideas. Frustrated.

So I need some volunteers to test out my next theory.
Is anyone with an Eo or Q1 prepared to do a bit of Linux boot testing? I've seen details of previous failures and have been discussing it with friends. The problem before was that everyone tried standard live-cd's from the USB CD-ROM. Most (in fact probably all of them that have been tried.) don't boot from USB-CDROM.

So, what someone needs to do is take one of the links below and see if it works.
In fact, the best place to start is probably pendrivelinux

If I had a UMPC in front of me now id try Damn Small Linux It has boot-from-USB-stick capability and also an install from windows option. How-to here. This is probably the most developed of the boot-from-stick distributions.
You could also try Puppy Linux which is a small one that should boot from a USB CD-ROM.

These two distros are reduced versions that have most programs you need on them but are probably best only used for the proof of concept we're doing here.

If they work (and hardware is recognised) you could move on to try Knoppix. There's an FAQ available on how to change it to boot from USB-CDROM. You'll need another Linux box and some Linux skill to create the new ISO but if it works you'll have pretty much a full Linux instalation.

I'm not aware that any of the main distributions have boot-from-USB-CDROM capability but i'd be tempted to try Suse 10.1 which has just been released.

Lets see if we can enhance the market for these UMPC's. If the linux crowd get on board, we could see the market grow which will benefit everyone.

Any takers?

If so, Origamiportal.com have started a new Linux topic area where i've created a new thread.

Regards.
Steve / Chippy.

The collaboration continues!
Now that the Q1's have turned up, people are also reporting their battery life figures.

Summary info from the last 24hrs:

• Ctitanic found a great software tool for measuring battery useage. (Notebook Hardware Control)
• Q1 battery - 29W/hr rating. (as marked on battery pack. Reported here.)
• Eo battery - 26W/hr rating. (as marked on battery pack. Reported here.)
• Eo idle battery drain (USB bus disabled) - 13w (2hrs/ 26W/hr battery). Reported here.
• Eo idle battery drain (USB bus enabled) - 17w (1.5hrs/ 26W/hr battery). Calculated from multiple reports.
• Q1 idle battery drain - 10w (2.9 hrs / 29W/hr battery). Calculated from the report here.
• Playing a MPEG-2 on the Eo (with USB bus off and hardware acceleration turned on in WinDVD) - 13.5W. reported here.
• Known USB/power registry hack didnt work as reported here.

Those battery drain stats are significant - they show that even with the higher power Celeron processor, the Q1 design is far far more efficient. The only good result to come out was that the Eo can play MPEG2 quite efficiently. Just under 2hrs worth of MPEG-2 is possible.

One point of note: Although the Eo battery is rated at 26W/hr, the Notebook Hardware Control Tool shows only 24W/hr full capacity. Its also possible that the Eo is switching off before the battery is really empty. More testing is needed here.

Test update:
- Contact Tablet Kiosk and raise a ticket. No update yet. (Over 24hrs since the first contact was made.)
- Measure current drain from the battery during full-power. - Software tool (Notebook Hardware Control) is helping here.
- Measure playback performance / drain with screen off. No update yet.

We're waiting from feedback from Tablet Kiosk now to hear if they have software fixes available for the USB bus issue. As for the design itself, I hope that Tablet Kiosk and Paceblade will be going back to the designer and asking for improvements.

In no particular order, thanks to:
docbliny, MrGadget, JeffGr, ctitanic, John Tokash, marix, Roy and all the others that are posting information on Origamiproject.com and Origamiportal.com forums.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Following on from yesterday's post about Eo battery issues, it was nice to wake up and see that Mgadget found out something interesting!

We had identified two issues:

1 - Why are Eo's appearing to drain more power than a 1.5ghz laptop with 12" screen? (18 watts)
2 - Why arent we seeing the processor drop into power saving modes at idle.

We've identified the cause of the bad idle battery life. Its a known USB and power-saving bug. (USB devices get polled and the CPU never gets a chance to go into power-saving C3 state.) The Wifi and SD card slot are actually USB devices (I guess this saves developement costs and makes motherboards more generic.) and you have to disable the whole USB bus before the power-saving modes are reached.
Of course, this is not a practical solution. However, it proves that there's a fault there. We're hoping that this could be fixed with a BIOS or even driver updates.

We're still waiting for some more Eo battery life tests (with USB bus off) to determine the exact advantage of turning the USB bus off. (It looks like it will increase idle/low-power battery life by 30% though which is very significant.)

The second issue - overall power drain - is still being queried and tested. I'm not aware that Tablet Kiosk have given any feedback on the ticket raised yet and I know that no-one has done the battery drain measurements and screen-off performance testing.

Test updates.
- Disable USB bus (if possible) from the BIOS. Test complete
- Contact Tablet Kiosk and raise a ticket. No update yet.
- Measure current drain from the battery during full-power optimisations. No update yet
- Measure playback performance / drain with screen off. No update yet.

One aditional bit of information is that PowerDVD (version 6) is able to use the MPEG2 hardware decoding on the VIA chipset. We still have to confirm the quality of the output (one report said it was jerky) but it looks positive. I'm interested to hear other reports of people running MPEG-2 video on PowerDVD. Was it smooth? What was your battery life?

More updates, of course, as we get them!
Live updates in the Origamiportal forum

Regards
Steve / Chippy

I can't seem to get away from this obsession with power utilisation on UMPC's. Its worrying me! I might have to take my mind off it with one of these babies.
Liquid cooled. Low power. Great for complex calculations.


However, until I get to the bottom of this issue.....

Ctitanic broke the news that he's only getting 1.5 hours from an Eo battery and that PCMark and 3Dmark tests results were very bad.

The processing power tests are a bit suspect but we should always expect the VIA to underperform against the Celeron. Espicially for 3d graphics.
The battery life figure suprised me the most though.

A group of us are currently collaborating on tests, ideas and discussion about the problem to identify if there is a real issue here. If so, we'll need to go back to Tablet Kiosk and get some action becuase as it stands currently, people are getting some very bad battery life figures.

Before diving into the problem with the battery life, I went over my pre-launch power analysis for errors to see if i'd missed anything but all the cross-checks I can do seem to be OK. The battery life issues being reported look like a real problem.

To re-cap slightly, I predicted 18watts at full-load for a UMPC (and 14 watts for a VIA following Van Smiths C7-M ULV test results ) and as a starting point, lets note that the battery capacity on the Eo is 26W/hrs.

Ctitanic's figures (below 1.5 hours playing a Divx video file) suggest a power-drain of nearly 18 watts. Thats much more than I expected and in fact more power drain that Van Smith got on a 12" 1.5ghz VIA C7-M laptop. How can we explain that one?

More posts on the forum followed!

In the meantime, I went back over Van Smiths VIA C7-M ULV review and then contacted him. He very kindly offered some tips. Firstly, that we should be using COSBI OpenSourceMark to check and compare processing power. He's worked on more than one benchmarking application and knows his stuff so I trust him on that one.
Secondly, he explained how we could check the speed-stepping was working correctly. Finally he suggested that the CPU might not be entering low-power states due to BIOS or other reasons (specifically a USB device might be preventing it. Apparently its a common problem.)

Firstly Ctitanic checked the stepping - its is working on his device. Then he ran the COSBI OpenSourceMark tests. The results tell a different story. Much better for the VIA. Then Ctitanic found through 'perfmon' that the CPU was not switching into C3 power-saving states. Even at idle.
To ensure that the USB wasn't the cause, Ctitanic ran the video again from the HD. This made no difference. But why was the device not going into C3 power-saving state at idle? The reson for this is still unknown. We've got a few more tests to run there.

Having seen that speed-stepping was working, we went back to the issue of Divx run times. Ctitanic ran some more tests which showed that the CPU was running at 75% with WinDVD player with the VIA optimisations turned on. (55% with VLC player which is an interesting result.) It was clear that the UMPC was running close to full power running the video which explains why there was no power-saving going on with the CPU. At that point I remembered that the VN800 doesnt have any Mpeg-4 hardware optimisations and therefore the CPU utilisation was to be expected.

A quick Unichrome re-cap...
...that is part of the VN800 chipset (that accompanies the VIA C7-M ULV processor.) straight from the VIA website:

The VIA UniChrome Pro IGP graphics core also integrates the Chromotion CE Video Display Engine featuring an MPEG2 Decoder, Adaptive De-Interlacing, Video Deblocking, and a comprehensive range of hi-def outputs.

So, the key point there is that the VN800 can only decode MPEG2 in hardware (and therefore gain a power advantage.) Given a MPEG-2 stream from, say, a DVD VOB or relaying the Divx through a VLC server, converting to MPEG-2 and picking the stream up via Wifi (If that works, it could be a good trick for VIA UMPC owners when at home.) you should see the C7-M drop into power-saving and low-clockrate settings bringing a big power-saving advantage. (I know - it doesnt really help for on-the-move video watching though. I wouldn't like to have to convert and carry MPEG2 films either. There are versions of the VIA chipset that have MPEG-4 hardware decoding so lets look forward to that!)

But we're still left with the two problems
1 - Why is Ctitanics Eo draining more power than a 1.5ghz laptop with 12" screen?
2 - Why arent we seeing the processor drop into power saving modes at idle.

Further testing going on at the moment:
- Disable USB bus (if possible) from the BIOS.
- Contact Tablet Kiosk and raise a ticket.
- Measure current drain from the battery during full-power optimisations.
- Measure playback performance / drain with screen off.

We want to test these possible theories:
- The BIOS requires updating to support the power-saving modes of the CPU.
- A built-in USB device is being polled preventing the CPU from entering power-saving states.
- The battery is sub-standard.
- The battery or bios reaches low-power capacity trigger before the battery is empty.
- There's something else in the hardware thats draining the power. (Cheap LCD screen is one possibility.)

Keep tuned or feeback at the Origamiportal forum where we're exchanging new information as we go along.

Thanks so far to Ctitanic, Marix, Van Smith and JeffGr who are all contributing.

If TabletKiosk are reading, please can you contact me via email or in the forums. Maybe we can work on this together.

Until later... Steve / Chippy.

I promise i'm not really obsessed with battery life and power utilisation on UMPC's but ever since I made predictions I've been interested to see how close i've been.

Today, it appears I missed the mark with my predictions on battery life while watching films. Not just by a little bit, but by a whole hour! Ctitanic posted the results of his film duration test in his blog and he says that he only got 1:25 with wifi off, BT off, 50% brightness and playing from Flash disk.
This is even worse than the rather dissapointing result of 2hrs that came from a Japanese report.

I mentioned it to VIA a few weeks back and I was told that to extend the battery life and get the most advantage out of the VIA's unichrome video chipset while watching a film, you need to use a player that is optimised for the VIA platform. WinDVD and PowerDVD are two examples. If you're running linux already (anyone?) then there's a VIA-supported and optimised version of Xine available.

It remains to be seen what the advantage of these programs will be but i'm a bit sceptical now that we're going to reach 2.5 hours for a film. It also calls into question the rest of the battery life predictions. I'll be watching closely for more test results. specifically, these tests:

• Watching a film with screen off (!) and calculating the screen power drain.
  
• Battery capacity testing (do the batteries need conditioning?)
• Checking cpu utilisation during fim watching with and without a VIA-optimised video player.

If anyone can, is planning or has run these tests, let me know and we'll see if we can work out the best UMPC setup for video watching and some final real-world battery life results. Or maybe I should just ignore battery life altogether as the 'low battery' warning has just popped up on my laptop here. Its a sign!

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Thanks to our friends at The Tablet Store for understanding my terrible German and confirming availability and price info for the Paceblade Easybook P7 and for providing us with the first confirmation of a retailer, dates and end-user prices for the German market.

As previously reported, the Easybook P7 European manufacturers price will be 1090,- Euro. The Tablet Store tell us that the German launch date is 22nd May

The Tablet Store will be selling for an inclusive price of 1250,- Euro.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Und auf Deutsch:
Das Paceblade Easybook P7 UMPC wird in Deutschland erst ab dem 22. Mai 2006 verfügbar sein. Endkundenpreis liegt bei 1090 zzgl. MwSt.
Es wird bei The Tablet PC Store (Muenchen, Deutschland) für 1250,- Euro incl. MwSt. angeboten.

Danke an The Tablet Store.

Steve / Chippy.

I've just read a very good article on the Linuxdevices.com website written by David Wood, co-founder and executive vice president of research at Symbian. David talks about convergance and how the migration of applications is tending towards smartphones and why smartphones have been a success. David is obviously somewhat biased being a leading figure in Smartphone OS developement but I concur with pretty much all he says and dont class the article as just propoganda.

In the Carrypad journal, I have already written about a lot of what David has said in the (pdf) convergance diagram and journal entry I made back in Feb. So the reason for this journal entry is not just to link and promote Davids and my ideas, but to learn from some of the important things that David has written and try to apply them to the UMPC market.

Important points to consider.
There are 4 points in his article that are very relevant.

Smartphones are an evolution of an existing device that is already highly popular

What can we say about the UMPC? There's two angles. Firstly, we could assume that the UMPC is a new device in a new segment. In that case, the UMPC needs to have a lot of developement and evolution. Secondly, we could assume that theUMPC is the evolution of a not-too-popular tablet PC or PocketPC/PDA. On this point, i'm afraid the UMPC fails. We need to consider the UMPC as a new device in a new segment for it to move forward.

Mobile phones have been steadily improving in functionality, while (on the whole) retaining their core simplicity and utility.

UMPCs devices are in their early stages and so the improvement still needs to happen. However, the important point here is that mobile phones have core simplicity and utility. This is where I believe that Microsoft made a big mistake with their UMPC. They took a complex operating system, with all it's hardware requirements and heavyweight do-it-all user interface and squeezed it into a consumer marketed package. That, in my eyes, was very wrong. Not only becuase they committed themselves to a tough hardware spec. but also becuase simplicity is key to consumer success. Microsoft should know that by now. They've been burned before and they don't seem to be learning. A half-hearted touch-pack software layer is not the answer.
Simplicity is a nut that still needs to be cracked with UMPC's. It won't be done with a desktop-version of XP and it won't be done with a desktop version of Linux. In fact, it won't be done with any desktop operating system at all. It needs someone to take a core system and build a dedicated user interface around it. Microsoft have done it with Windows Mobile 5 and maybe they should have come in from that direction by re-developing it and offering native Word and Excel document support. They could have sat it on top of an Xscale processor architecture and ended up with a far more efficient platform. Nokia seem to be doing the right thing. They've taken a core Linux kernel and reduced distribution and are wrapping a dedicated user interface around it. Its not perfect by a long shot yet but look at the price point they have achieved by using that method. Here in Europe I can buy 4 Nokia internet tablets for the price of a UMPC! That gives Nokia a lot of price headroom in wich to bring out an updated product.

David uses the failed Apple Newton as an example in his next point. He says that the Newton was too expensive (I've heard this comment somewhere else recently!) and that smartphones used a price subsidy model to help get over this problem.

The lower purchase cost of mobile phones to end users means they are much more affordable than the Newton. One reason for the lower cost price is a business model that was never feasible for a device such as the Newton: operators frequently subsidise part of the purchase price

Subsidising the cost of these pieces of leading edge technology (they're not running at high Ghz but the thermodynamic problems associated with UMPC requires leading edge technology.) is an option that needs to be considered and is, in-fact, possible. Origami's have a screen-size advantage over smartphones which means that they're able to offer video/tv capabilities that can not, because of current physical constraints, be migrated to smartphones. The Newton had no feature that allowed a subsidy model to work but with UMPC's we have Video and TV content available to us. Can you imagine the ad targeting that can be done by a TV/IP provider knowing the location of its end device and its google profile? Its an advertisiers dream. Actually its probably Googles dream. The biggest hurdle here however is content rights. The distribution technology (internet) is pretty much in place but its only the real heavyweight players that will be able to offer the content and if they do, they'll have a business model that no-one else will be able to match. Apple are sitting in a very comfortable position right now with regard to UMPC's and content.

The huge size of the mobile phone industry means that strong learning effects and economies of scale operate, driving down costs even further

This is a simple one. Once, the device starts getting good market momentum, research momentum increases, the sales predictions rise and production volumes go up resulting in good economies. At this point in time, a few other factors also contribute to cost reductions. Competition, consumer education and content availability. The whole machine starts to turn at a very fast pace and not much more effort is required to oil it.


The rest of the article is also worth reading. David goes on to talk about Ipod functionality being migrated to the smartphone and lists a number of other migrating applications. Ipod fans won't like that bit and although its technology possible, the ipod is a not just a device, its a technology, software and content suite that needs to be replicated with mobile phone carriers before it happens.

A message to marketing managers!
I'm not a marketing expert so I could be missing important points here but taking what Daivd has highlighted and adding my interpretations, here are some UMPC marketing tips to help achieve mass-market consumer success.


(1) UMPC's need constant development. Don't give up at the first hurdle. (2) UMPC's need to be simple - Don't build them on top of desktop operating systems. To help achieve the critical mass, a subsidy model is needed. Sell through channels that will add video/TV content to the mix and subsidise the purchase cost.
You won't see smartphone levels of sales (there's only one device format that you can take everyhere!) but you could reach that important critical mass.

Thanks to David Wood for some good pointers. I hope someone is listening to him (or me!) out there and David, if you're reading this, i'd love to hear your views on the UMPC market. How about enhancing the Symbian plaform to cover the requirements of a UMPC device? Maybe Nokia will use it for their next tablet device!

Steve / Chippy.

Labels: Report

The UMPC product portal gets many daily updates, tweaks and enhancements but yesterday, we finished setting up a really useful UMPC product tracking feature thats worth posting about.

Using a normal RSS 2.0 feed reader, you can now subscribe to updates from all or any of the products in the UMPC product database. Currently, the feed includes reviews, comment, rumor, pricing and availbility links that we add into add the product datasheet from our hand-picked sources. (Many of these are in our link list.) Soon it will be enhanced to include manufacturers pricing and availability information. All links are reviewed and only added if relevant so you can be sure of a quality (although possibly not the fastest-available) feed.

The all-product RSS feed is available via Feedburner. Go to the product pages to see the individual product RSS feed links. It looks stable from here but if you see any issues, let us know.

If you have important product-related links that you think should have been published (give us 48hours to capture new links) or you run a good source of information that you think we should be tracking or adding to our link list contact us and we'll do our best. email to productupdates@carrypad.com
Links and sites need to be relevant to the UMPC market which we, at Carrypad, define as a portable computer at 1kilo or less with a screen size between 5" and 10". There are of course exceptions to this rule. One of which could be the Sharp Zaurus CL3200 which is now being imported into Europe. We'll be reviewing this device in the next week or so to find out if it's worthy of going into the product database!

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

More news for our UK readers on UMPC availability.

We've seen on the Camtechsystems website today that the pre-ordering has started for the Paceblade Easybook P7. The price is £934.12 which is, as always, higher than prices over the pond.

Details on the Easybook P7 (aka SmartCaddie), a device from the same mould as the Tablet Kiosk Eo, including images, notes and review links can be found in the Carrypad product portal here.

Steve / Chippy

Going though some draft posts I found this article, written on 7th March 2006, that I hadn't finished. Its about the market segment of the UMPC and its been discussed many times before. While we are waiting for the first UMPC's to be marketed though, it still seems a very valid summary.
-----------------

I read this post recently. [March 2006] from Palmaddict. Here's a quote:

Too big to put in your pocket while not big enough to truly replace your laptop or Tablet PC, a device without an identity.

Its a response to seeing the form factor of the Origami project devices. Palmaddict questions the market possibilities for the UMPC form factor. Like a lot of other peoples comments i've read, he thinks it sits in an ineffective middle-ground between a smartphones, pocket PCs and laptops. Its partly true, it does sit in the middle ground. But its a middle ground thats becoming bigger and less populated as smartphone functionality develops and PDA's become less useful. If you're in the same boat as Palmaddict and wondering why a UMPC has been brought to market, here's my thoughts about the UMPC market position.

Its a tough question to resolve: Will the UMPC end up as a niche device like the tablet PC? Will it replace the low-end laptop? Its not a black and white situation and everyone has different requirements and preferences. I've been trying to define my own portable-pc situation for months after my search for a new smartphone resulted in too many overlaps with the things I used my laptop and pocket PC for. I had a lot of frustration at not being able to migrate all the things I did on a PDA to a smartphone, and at not being able to do all the things that I do on my laptop on my PDA. In the end, i worked out that its all to do with the physical limitations and I needed to find a new class of device. [see footnote]

If you take a look at the growth of the 'smartphone' and the functions that are migrating to it, you'll see that there arent many 'general use' apps that are left for the PDA. When I say 'general use.' I mean functions like email, web browsing, voice over ip, digital photography and others. [edit: since writing this, I summarised the uses and positioning of mobile devices in this diagram.]


Many of you reading this are classed as advanced users but within a year or so, the same thoughts will be valid for many mass-market customers as they consider their portable computing requirements. A lot of people will really be asking themselves why they have a pocket PC in the car, a laptop in their rucksack, a phone in their pocket and why the hell they need a UM