New UMPC. Amtek T770 ‘Vistagami.’ Early image/specs revealed

Remember how the ‘Vistagami’ ultra mobile PC from Amtek was very nearly completely missed? If it hadn’t been spotted hiding in an Engadget video about the Medion ultra mobile PC or tracked down by Gizmodo to a broom cupboard somewhere in Vegas, we might never have had the glimpse that we did.

Today there’s no chance of missing it. We’ve received the OK to post information on it and can reveal that the default color won’t be that rather ghastly green shown on the CES prototype. In fact, it looks quite good with its silver trim. Much better than the T700. Here’s an image.

Spot the photoshop error! Click to enlarge.

Immediately you can see that they’ve added a directional pad to the frame switches and are obviously billing it as a Vista UMPC. Here are the specs (from an early marketing handout. Subject to change of course.)

• CPU: VIA C7M 1.2Ghz
• Chipset: VX700M
• Memory: 1 SODIM slot (max 1GB)
• Battery: 26W/hr
• HDD: 2.5″ 40GB
• Screen: 7″ 800×480
• Stereo speakers
• SD Card slot
• 1,3MP camera
• WiFi, BT2.0, 2xUSB2.0
• Cradle connector
• Weight 850gm
• Operating system. XP and Vista support.

Unfortunately there’s no word on whether the screen is a LED back-lit part which could enable 4 hours battery life. If not, its back down to sub 3 hours.

It looks like Amtek taken the T700 model and updated it with the new chipset, a faster processor, SD slot and webcam. Basing a design on this platform is no bad thing as, out of all the ‘Origami’ UMPCs, the T700 was about the only one that was built from the ground up as a tablet PC with the correct BIOS and driver design. It also means that there’s another VIA-based ultra mobile PC in town that thinks it can take on Vista. To date, there hasn’t been any news about Vista compatible VIA drivers for UMPCs and there are still outstanding queries as to whether this architecture can successfully run videos under Vista. A few people have already proved this to be a problem. Unfortunately VIA are not at CeBit but Medion are and if they don’t reveal the answers I’ll be beating them over the head with a damp copy of the CeBit catalogue.

The information on the T770 comes via Coxion who are planning to put the T770 into their professional sales portfolio.

Update: This ultra mobile PC is now being tracked in the product database.