It’s been known for a while that VIA would likely air their first Nano-based products at CES and Lunch@Piero’s is their traditional venue. VIA confirmed all this in a post recently and so it didn’t take much to throw all the keywords together and come up with this product that will be launched on the 8th. Its the Dr Mobile Freestyle Mini, an 8.9" screen device that you will probably recognise as the VIA Openbook reference design. 

It uses the VIA Nano (clock unknown) with the VX800 chipset with integrated video decoding which is an advantage over the Intel netbook platform. You’ll be able to get this with 3G/Wimax options. Availability is ‘now’ according to the website but we suspect, that Dr Mobile has put this page up a few days too early!

Obviously there are going to be comments about the keyboard not being optimal, battery life (the 4-cell battery appears to be very low capacity for a netbook) and questions about the 3D performance (it should be a lot better than the old VX700 chipset as it uses a new engine) but as with most of these netbooks, it will come down to price and availability.

The most interesting aspect for ultra mobile fans is to find out what sort of power drain the VIA platform has. Could it be used in smaller form factor devices like 7" slates to enable a fast Windows 7-ready platform for pro-mobility users? Could we see low-cost UMPCs performing like the Q1 Ultra Premium? Fingers crossed for some quality hands-on soon.

Dr Mobile is here (where you’ll also find an interesting 11.6" mini laptop)

You can find out more about the VIA Openbook through this page.

Why are we all so interested in Android on netbooks? Personally I think its the possibility that a major Linux distributor with a big ecosystem and a strong following and brand power could finally push through a useable alternative to XP on the low-end netbooks, UMPCs and MIDs. Intel are working on the same with Moblin and arguably have more resources working on it but it doesn’t have a single brand, it doesn’t have a distro-wide app store, hasn’t received the same media attention and it hasn’t passed into the hands of hundreds of thousands of, mostly very happy, owners yet.

Here’s another look at Android on an X86 platform. It’s a VIA-based HP 2133 mini note. We’ll all ask ourselves ‘why’ again but I think if Android carries on getting this much attention, it won’t be long before we say ‘when?’

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The blogosphere tends to be fairly polarized in terms of netbook reporting. In the western world, where most of the English-speaking bloggers, readers and advertisers are, we have a slick range of style-oriented designs that are mostly based on the Intel Atom processor. In other parts of the world, the situation is rather different. The focus is on functional, simple and extremely low cost PCs.

In developing countries, where SMS’ are used to agree contracts between remote communities, the idea of a 10" screen with a keyboard alone would be something new. It wouldn’t matter what’s inside it as long as it provides a basic computing experience and that’s why many people believe (including myself) that the big wave, the big sales numbers, will be in China, India and Africa.

VIA already does good trade in these areas with simple designs based on what we consider to an be ‘old’ C7-M processor. Microsoft already does trade with starter editions of XP, again, something we consider to be an old OS but it looks like the two companies want to get together, with a bunch of others, to really optimise their products and marketing for this segment with a new initiative called the Global Mobility Bazaar.

VIA Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the’Global Mobility Bazaar’ (GMB), an innovative industry infrastructure program aimed at driving the rapid global adoption of affordable mobilecomputing devices.

Through the GMB program, VIA is partnering with over 15 GMB manufacturers and infrastructure partners in China on the development of a wide variety of mini-notes, netbooks, and notebooks based around VIA’s ultra low power processor platforms.

Equipped with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, these systems will deliver an optimized mobile computing and Internet experience across a variety of form factors with screen sizes ranging from 7" to 15".

[full press release. Website]

There are two things to note here. 1) XP looks like it will live on and in this program, you can bet that its being given away for next to nothing. 2) This looks like an X86-only initiative that will be used in positioning against ARM-based netbooks.

I spoke to VIA about this program yesterday. They are obviously excited about it and rightly so. They’ve seen what happened with sales of cheap mobile phones into developing countries and they want to stimulate the same thing with low-end portable computing devices. Sandisk, AMI (BIOS) and other partners are involved and we should be seeing the first netbooks becoming available at the end of December, they tell me.

Article 1 – Digitimes reports that HP ordered 500,000 VIA C7’s and also placed an order for Nano CPUs.

Article 2 – Mobile-ITX is on target for Q4 2008 or Q1 2009.

I’m afraid the source trace ends at Digitimes for this story and there’s really not much detail here. The Nano order could be for Notebook PCs or it could be for a new HP2133. It’s anyone’s guess. As for the Mobile-ITX news, it’s just another target date. Sit-back and keep waiting with your fingers crossed!

It takes some courage for a small company like VIA to go head to head with Intel so you have to hand it to VIA for putting this video out. Apart from the fighting-talk in the first 30 seconds, it shows the 1.3Ghz Nano (I have this confirmed) against the 1.6Ghz Intel Atom (Diamondville.) in a 1080p HD video test. I recognized the video being used (Try it – Robotica) and checked it out on my Akoya/Wind. Sure enough, it doesn’t play perfectly. Not surprising as it’s about 9Mbps of 1440×1080 video.

If the Nano is doing this in CPU-alone then I’m really impressed because the 1.3Ghz Nano is perfect for 7" UMPCs.

Here’s the video. Meet you all outside for the fight later :-)

More info on the Nano range and performance here. Information on the VIA Openbook, the reference design that the Cloudbook Max is based on, is available here.

Many of us have been anxiously waiting for news about the VIA Nano (formerly Isaiah) processor from VIA. Previous leaked info indicated a 2-4x improvement in processing power for a similar power drain over the older VIA C7 processors and with the Atom processors barely improving on the previous platform in terms of processing power, pro-mobile users were looking for something to fill the high-end gap.

Eeepcnews.de have been testing, (yes, they had one in their hands!) a 1.8Ghz version of the Nano CPU which isn’t the CPU we’d be looking for in UMPCs but the results give us some new data points. Firstly, here’s the model range. (test results after the image…)

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It looks like Engadget had a slow news day on Sunday as they highlighted the full-fat video presentation I’d prepared for the visitors here. “Gigabyte M704 unboxing video excites reviewer, may put you to sleep” was the title. The cheeky monkeys! Fortunately, people that are actually interested in UMPC’s appear to have got something out of it and see that it’s quite an interesting UMPC. The refresh over the U60 has turned this tiny 7″er into a rather useful and good-value device. Where the 1st-gen Gigabyte U60 had an 800×480 screen, this one has a far more useful and much brighter 1024×600 screen and where the mouse pointer on the U60 was difficult to use, this one is far more useable. Add the noticeable performance improvements that the 1.2Ghz CPU brings over the former 1Ghz version and the device has turned from borderline option to serious top-5 ultra mobile computing choice.

I’ve been using the M704 non-stop for the last 3-days and can’t really find any show-stopping problems with it. The fan could be quieter, the keyboard could do with a backlight, a little more styling would help and a weight reduction down to sub-600gm would help with the long-term two-handed use that is often the case due to the nice split-keyboard but that’s about it. The XP-based system (it’s a special Gigabyte build optimised with larger font sizes and pre-installed software which, as I understand it, means it can be sold until Jan 2009) is swift enough for all browser-based work and most media files. I was surprised to see a 6mbps WMV file playing with very few frame drops in the Nero8 demo software. Battery life is a true, working, 3 hours. The slider mechanism seems to be tighter than the one I tested on the Medion ultra mobile PC (version) the WiFi is strong and with the docking station, it turns it into quite a nice low-end home PC. I’d even argue that the M704 is more suited to netbook-style operations than netbooks themselves as it’s half the size, 75% of the weight and is far, far more fun although that really depends on how much typing you want to do.

Old and new. Gigabyte U60 and Gigabyte M704. Note the control key changes.

In Europe, the pricing seems to be very competitive. Certainly in Germany, if you buy an M705, you’re getting a device that’s more useful than a Q1 Ultra for about 75% of the cost but it’s double the cost of most netbooks here Sure, you get the touchscreen, 60GB disk, XP, Bluetooth and ability to add the GPS and DVB-T modules and docking station, but you’re still paying a few hundred Euros for the extra portability and niche nature of this device. As for U.S. pricing, we’ll have to wait and see what the local pricing is.

I’m continuing to add my testing notes and thoughts to this forum thread but the video, while long, probably gives you a better overview. [Click through to full article]