We mentioned a few weeks ago that the Wibrain i1 was being re-born as the EKing i1 and that some people had ordered via Ebay. [Their first impressions and discussion here.] We also managed to collect comments from a number of people that wanted to order the Eking i1 through a group order. Based on that (we like to think!) Mobilx, the ever UMPC-loving resellers from Hungary have negotiated a shipment and price.

513 Euros (including EU taxes, about 430 Euro for exports) will buy you the i1 with the 1.33Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, 60Gb drive and the big 5hr+ battery life. Unfortunately the device is without 3G.
Update: Note that the price is excluding Windows XP.

Having done a lot of testing with the Wibrain prototype version of this I can tell you that not only is the battery life huge but the usability is fantastic. The mouse pad is superb and the keys are slightly improved over the B1 version that Wibrain sold in 2007/8. You’ll have to put up with 500gms of weight, a non-pocketable form factor and, lets be honest, not the most stylish of designs but its excellent value.

• UMPCPortal Eking information page. (including links to my in-depth hands-on Review and Gallery)
• Mobilx EKing information and order page.

Timescales should be 2-4 weeks but keep an eye on the Mobilx info page for more details on that.

I’ve had unconfirmed and insider reports for months now that Wibrain (or rather NeoSolar, the owners) had sold the WIbrain operation to China-based E-King. The E-King website has been up for a while but it now looks like they’ve gone into production and are starting to sell the E-King i1 UMPC. That pretty much confirms all the rumors!

Two UMPCPortal readers have taken the plunge and bought one on Ebay. User ‘hansonweb’ has already received it and started to feed-back first impressions.

“It comes with 60gb hdd, z520 processor, 1gb memory. XP pre-installed…It came with a DVD with drivers. Hdd has two partitions, 20gb and 40gb. 40gb seems to have a restore image.
I like it so far. The only problem I have is it does not come with a vga or video adaptor. Their dm sheet says that it comes with a MicroSD, but it is actually a standard SD card slot.”

The i1 is certainly a great device [my review] and at 504 Euros including delivery, the Ebay-cost (non 3G version) isn’t bad but do watch out for support issues when buying from Ebay. Returns can be costly and take a long time.

I spoke with Mobilx this morning about the i1 and we couldn’t really come to a decision about whether importing it would be commercially viable. On one hand its a fantastically productive little UMPC but there’s obviously some risk where support is concerned. E-King is also unknown as far as build-quality goes. We could certainly try to put a group order together if people are ready to go forward with a purchase though. Let us know in the comments below and if there’s a lot of interest i’ll give Mobilx a call.

The Eking-i1 is now in the database.

Forum – WiBrain – Eking I1 available from manufacturer and maybe on eBay within a month… – UMPCPortal.com.

This week it’s been my great pleasure to be testing another UMPC based on the Intel Menlow platform. It’s not my first as I’ve had the Gigabyte M528, Aigo MID and Kohjinsha SC3 but there’s a couple of things about this Wibrain i1 UMPC that are worth talking about and one of them is a real first in the mobile computing world and has got me all fired-up about UMPCs again. I’m not talking about the competitive pricing, hi-res touch screen, usable keyboard or built-in 3G. I’m talking about the battery life.

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