RedFlag appear to have reached developer release stage for their Midinux MID-optimised operating system. A new website outlines the operating system features and advantages and offers customization possibilities for hardware vendors. We should have a developer version to play with in the coming weeks and I’m excited to see if they’ve got the right balance of ease-of-use, features, look and speed.

More mobile-optimised news comes from Canonical (Ubuntu) who have been talking about Ubuntu Mobile to Computex visitors. Release is still scheduled for October and “Ubuntu Mobile will aim at a full Internet experience, with video, sound and fast and full-fledged browsing on the MID platform.” Full Internet experience is a strong term but I know they’re working with Mozilla on a Firefox branded browser so again, it will be interesting to see what balance of specifications they go for.

Midinux website.
Ubuntu Mobile wikisite.

The Amtek U560 gets my award for the prettiest ultra mobile PC of Computex and looking at some of the blogs on it, many other people feel the same. But lets be pragmatic for one second. This is a device that doesn’t fit in a pocket. (Christoph tried and said that you might get away with it if you’re a cargo pants fan but otherwise its too big) so that means you need to carry it. Which means you have to have a bag which then means that umpc sizing […]

This picture of a rugged UMPC, “the worlds first”, has been posted by Chaorock to Flickr.  Its VIA-based with a 7″ LED-backlit screen and 6 hours battery life. Fanless too.

I guess this is being shown by the Industrial PC group from ASUS. They were the ones showing off the T83 convertible at CeBIT.

Info via jkkmobile.

I’m still trying to work out details on this one but its potentially quite big news.

AMD have announced a low-power version of the ‘Bobcat’ processor and a version called ‘Griffin’ aimed at UMPCs. It looks like it will be launched in 2008.

I’m working with a translation from Impress.jp as there doesn’t appear to be any English language content on this yet. Stay tuned while I work this one out.

Update: Others are reporting this now although everyone is working from the same source. I’m trying to find out information from AMD about what was actually said. If AMD are entering the UMPC CPU market in 2008 then its another sign that theres money going into the segment and another sign that the sector will heat-up during the later part of 2008.

It looks like we’ve got another live one! This is the UMPC that was used for a MidLinux publicity shot back at IDF. I wasn’t too impressed with the design to be honest. It follows the worrying trend of 70’s style ‘home of the future.’ That said, I’m always pleased to see a new option. I had dismissed this as an early prototype but it looks like its part of Intel’s line-up of concepts that could be licensed out to become real devices.

Here’s the Donley concept shown running MidLinux and here’s a shot of it running XP.

Aving.net have some more images and a one-line which doesn’t give any hints about the status of the device.

Intel introduced a 5-inch portable concept PC ‘Donley’ during Computex Taipei 2007. It features 5-inch LCD, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and wireless WAN.

Source: Aving.net
Intel, mid, umpc, concept

I’m a big fan of the Pepper software and the Pepper Pad 3 hardware. For me, it represents one of the first real attempts at filling the software void that exists between smartphones and notebooks and it does a good job. The Firefox-based browser works well, the user interface does exactly what it should and its simple to use. This software gap is something Kevin Tofel was talking about and something that I believe needs to be sorted out before the new wave of device hardware hits the market in 2008. Until now, Pepper have been focusing on the AMD Geode hardware which, as we’re seeing in more and more devices, is lending itself well to low-end Internet devices. However with Intel’s focus on a new, dedicated, MID platform, its clear there’s going to be a lot of Intel hardware flying about. Ubuntu, Gnome and RedFlag are already in the game and it makes sense for Pepper to re-build their software (and nice back-end update architecture) for the Intel hardware. I’m not sure that they’ve joined Intel’s MIDIA group but the press release certainly feels like its got the Intel stamp of approval so I guess that means they’re contributing to the whole piece. Which makes sense. There only needs to be one Linux core distribution but there’s probably opportunities for many different flavored user interfaces. Expect the new distro shortly after the summer.

EB (formerly known as Elektrobit) have launched a UMPC hardware platform that is one of the first to be built around the Intel Menlow platform. The device will run Linux (presumably one of the distributions that comes out of the Intel MIDIA project) and will contain advanced communication hardware such as Mobile WiMax and HSDPA. GPS will also be thrown in. It has a 4.8″ ‘high resolution’ screen.

Menlow is the 2008 platform for UMPCs that will use a processor called Silverthorne and a chipset called Poulsbo. It will be the first silicon platform developed purely for the UMPC. It is said to enable UMPCs with sub 4W average drain which means much longer battery life! When compared to some of the Intel prototypes we’ve seen in the past, this appears more stylish (doesn’t surprise me coming from a Finnish company) and possibly the closest thing yet to my Carrypad concept. If anyone has a million or so dollars laying about that they’d like to invest, email me. I have a nice web-based marketing channel for it.

Info on the MIMD (Mobile Internet Media Device) is on the EB website.

Here’s another round of proof that VIA have sorted out their drivers for Vista. We’ve seen it running on the Medion and the Amtek T770  but until now I hadn’t seen it running well after Vista was installed as part of an upgrade. There’s an issue with the touchscreen drivers still to sort out but having seen everything working well on the Amtek T770, I’m sure that it won’t be a problem for long. The video and some supporting notes about the upgrade process can be found on the UltraMobileGeek blog.