It seems like half a year since I added the HSDPA-capable CMXP version of the Q1 Ultra to the database. Oh, it was!

Samsung have finally announced it in the US but unfortunately the price seems to have risen to $1449 which I find a little but over the top for a year-old, $1000 device that many people have already retro-fitted with a $150 HSDPA card.

It’s almost the same story with the Q1 Ultra premium. It’s been available for months with XP but only now have Samsung decided to announce it. Maybe Kevin Tofel’s reports convinced them.

Now seems a good time to mention that the Q1 Ultra with XP is a good performer, has excellent battery life and can be upgraded a home-built SSD drive. I’m still using mine although I am missing the keyboard that I’ve had on the M704 and SC3 recently.

Via Engadget.

Unrelated to the earlier story about a possible MID platform from NVidia is this story that first surfaced about a month ago through Digitimes. They reported on an agreement between VIA and NVidia to co-operate on a low-cost notebook platform and according to research presented by EeePCNews last month, the VN platform would combine a ‘C8′ Isaiah and an Nvidia chipset to form a low-cost notebook platform. According to an Nvidia-sourced slide it looks like the initial aim is a Vista-capable netbook. While a screemer of an XP machine would be my preference, as we move forward and past XP end-of-life dates and towards a Windows 7 product, higher-powered netbooks will become more important. A higher processing power is also going to enable lower-cost primary notebook PCs for many and not just a ring-fenced class of Ultra Low Cost PC (ULCPC) devices. Low cost 1st-tier notebooks could impact the notebook market in a far more serious way than the 2nd-tier Eee PC did.

Image from a ComputerBase article. 12th April

CNet report that an announcement will come from VIA just before Computex which starts on the 3rd June. I could be wrong but its seems obvious to me that the April news and this announcement are one and the same thing.

Via will provide the central processing unit and motherboard, plus the core logic (chipset) solution, while Nvidia will provide the graphics processing unit, said Drew Henry, general manager of Nvidia’s platform products division.  Nvidia will offer standalone “discrete” graphics for both notebook and desktop platforms using the Isaiah chip, Henry said.

Note that this is a ‘discrete’ GeForce graphics solution so the size of the motherboard and the power drain will be relatively high (compared to UMPC and MID platforms.) ‘Cheap’ ‘Vista’ ‘Notebook’ seem to be the keywords here and while this might not be that interesting for the UMPC market at the moment, the Isaiah technology is an important one and will filter into the UMPC market as it is refined. These early products will give us a good idea of performance.

Once again, we sadly have to report that OEMs are trying to squeeze Vista on low-end UMPCs. I’m also hearing that ‘unoptimised drivers’ excuse again… [Deep breath...Gooosefrababa]

Akihabara have done some testing on a Willcom D4 1.3Ghz Atom-based UMPC which they say has a "Beautiful design, ergonomic, a well thought out keyboard, multiple positions, touchscreen…"

The device appears quite large in comparison to say the Gigabyte M528 MID and reminds me of the Raon Digital Everun which isn’t a bad thing because I’d be extremely happy with an Everun that used this design and ran Windows XP. Vista, however, is just going to end up embarrassing Sharp and Intel as it appears to do in the video that Akihabara have produced.

You can check it all out at Akihabara. Willcom D4 specs and links are in our database.