Last Friday I did something stupid. I exercised! I exercised too hard. It was too hard and too soon in my Solar UMPC training schedule and as a result I hurt my back. I spent the next three days either laying down or hobbling round like a on old man and finally today, I’m able to sit at my desk for short periods. [Excuse me while I go and get another cup of tea – I need to move about you understand.] During the time on my back I was pretty happy to have a couple of UMPCs around me. I used the Q1 (a bit too heavy to use while lying on your back) and the N800 (lighter but slower) but finally I settled on a common garden paperback book. (common garden UMPCs don’t exist yet as the screens aren’t bright enough!) The book is called Crossing The Chasm [aff.] by Geoffrey Moore and it will be familiar to many marketing people in fact I picked up the tip on this through ‘Brown Knows’, the blog of VIA’s Richard Brown. Its an amazing book. Not because there’s anything ground-breaking in it (I’m not formerly trained in any form of marketing but it all seems to make good sense to me) but because on every other page I’m hearing ‘UMPC’ in the back of my head. I’m only half way through the book but I guess I’ve had to stop 20-30 times to ponder on a paragraph or to make some notes related to UMPCs. I’ve expanded my notes and thoughts here into a fairly long post but as is often the case here, its a post that’s as much for myself as it is for others. I need to get these thoughts organised and writing a report is the best way I know of doing it. You might want to hit that PDF icon there and print this one out for the train home! If not, read on…

Brighthand are getting very excited about a new device from Palm [previous story] that we might hear more about next week. They’re calling it the Hawk after Jeff Hawkins, one of Palms founders and many of the Brighthand team have posted their thoughts on what it will be. The general opinion seems to be that it will be an UMPC-sized Internet focused device of some sort. A mobile Internet device which I guess is a fair bet these days!

It will need to have some distinguishing features if its going to compete in the consumer or business mobile Internet device market. Location based services perhaps? Instant-on full browser would be nice. Bundled cellular service with subsidised purchase plan. Or maybe just a lower price.

If Palm come to market before Linux-based MID devices then they better make it perfect or the RedFlag and Ubuntu guys are going to have a lot of great input for their development teams.

There are a many many cases of child abduction around the world every day. This is one case that’s fairly close to home for me so please think about taking 30 seconds to watch this video. Especially if you are in Europe. Thanks. Steve.

If you have any information please call Portuguese Police direct on 00351
282 405 400 or call Crimestoppers on (UK) 0800 555 111.

Por favor ajudem-nos a encontrar esta menina. Se têm informações por favor contactem
00 351 282 405 400
Nos ayuden a encontrar a esta niña. Se tienen informaciones, contacten el
00 351 282 405 400

I didn’t expect to see people getting hold of the Fujitsu so soon but I was wrong.  They say nothing except….’the review is coming’

Keep an eye on Akihabara.com

Fujitsu FMV-U8240 specs here.

Geekset.com has a nice video demonstration of the differences between a touchscreen and an active digitizer screen.

Its also worth noting that there are different types of touchscreen. A heavy-touch version which is good for writing with a stylus and avoiding errors (vectoring) caused by other parts of your hand touching the screen, or a light-touch version which is nice to use with fingers.

My personal favorite is the soft touchscreen as UMPCs are generally small enough that you don’t have to worry about other parts of your hand touching the screen. I’m also a believer that writing text with a stylus on UMPCs is not something most people in the mainstream markets would be interested in. Especially the markets where the lower-end and smaller devices are heading. For UMPCs, a soft touch screen will gain far more fans than ‘palm-rejection’ touchscreens.

Information on the types of screens that the various UMPCs have is in the product portal now. There are some devices that I don’t have the details for but most are covered now.

Who would have thought right?  After running some tests, and installing a game or two, it is possible to run games on a UMPC.  Using my Samsung Q1, I put it through several tests, all of which came out to be satisfactory.  The tests that I ran were 3dMark 2001se, 3dMark 2003, and then I decided to go ahead and try several different games.

Starting with 3dMark 2001se, the frames that I was getting were right around the 30fps mark.  Though this is acceptable, its not great.  Some of the more graphical intensive tests, really pushed my Q1 to its limits.  The score that I managed to get was not bad however:

As you can see from this, 3051 3DMarks!  This is using DX 8.1 technology though.  So if you have some older games you want to try and throw on here, they will work just fine!

Using 3d Mark2003, the scores that I got were not as good.  The ability of this machine to run games that use DX9.0, is not as good.  You can see this from the scores:

The FPS for most of the tests were extremly low.  Trying to run this benchmark on high showed where this system is lagging.

Now, for those of you who want a little nastgalia in your life…forget it.  DOS Based games will not work on this machine.  I think this might be due to a resolution switching issue.  Same goes for a few other games I tried to throw at this.  Even on my main machine, I wasn’t able to get those old DOS based games to run properly due to issues with device drivers.

What I was able to do was to create an ISO of MegaMan X8 (2Disk), using Alchohol 120%, and move the images to my Q1.  Doing so I was able to install them using a virtual drive.  I was worried about whether or not the Q1 would be able to handle the game as the requirements called for a 1GHz PIII, 256MB RAM, and a 64MB 3D Card.  I gave it a go anyway…

As you can see…I got the game to run.  Surprisingly enough it worked great!  Just as good as it does on my main machine.  What is the catch?

At first I used my Logitech dual action game pad.  Game play was smooth, and easy.  What is my problem with this?  Its not really a truly portable solution.  I went ahead and remapped the controls to work using the buttons on the Q1.  Sadly, there are not enough controls for this game to work to its fullest.  So advancing to the higher levels will be almost impossible…

Here is a link to a video of MegaMan X8 in action on a Samsung Q1.

If you purchase a UMPC that has more buttons then what is on the Q1, then gaming can become more of a reality.

Final Verdict:

Although gaming on a UMPC is possible, it is just not probable.  Without the use of added accesories such as a USB game pad, or a mouse and keyboard, I just do not see it as becoming a reality.  I would also like to note that games were not designed to run at these resolutions, and they were not designed to be run on a UMPC.  The hardware is almost there to run some games, however not all.  Modern games could probably be run on a higher end UMPC, though very laggy.  I have seen WarCraft III being played on these though the frame rates were not there to make the game enjoyable.

Update: Pricing has been posted on the Dynamism site: $2099

Is it really worth that without Bluetooth? Remember this is an import price though and I dare say that there will be people prepared to pay this.

It looks like the men with the fingers in all UMPC pies, the Dynamism gang, have secured a deal for the Fujitsu UMPC. I’ve just seen the info come through on their RSS feed. They will be offering two versions of the Fujitsu UMPC from Japan. One with XP Pro (English) and one with Vista Business (English.)

It will be available in June with either 20 or 40GB HDD (depending on which part of their site you read!) but there is no pricing yet. I assume this will be a Japanese import and will be offered with pricing that reflects the import and software re-install costs.

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Two people have asked me if I have any take-away banners that can be used on other sites. Sure! I’m happy to let people take info from the portal as long as it’s always linked back. Here’s a few dynamic GIFs (via feedburner) that I knocked up this morning but if you have a background image and you want me to overlay the news (either general or device-specific) send me the gif and i’ll create a dynamic banner. The banner gets updated with the RSS feed so its always up-to date.

 ↑ Grab this Headline Animator  

I like this idea! I’ll look into creating top5 devices, new device or even user configurable banners. If you’re interested in re-using portal information (how about having an up-to-date UMPC device list on your website?) then let me know and I can create the code for you.

↑  Grab this Headline Animator

↑  Grab this Headline Animator

Feel free to create your own images using Feedburners Publicize feature: Headline Animator. Just grab one of the site RSS feeds with your account and get creative!