It is nice to see a ultra mobile PC in the recent sea of netbooks. UMPCPortal forum user SlickRick has come across the NOVA Side Arm 2 (Chippy jokes in his mini blog, “…not ARM based!”), a new ultra mobile PC which easily reminds me of the Panasonic CF-U1. It looks thinner than the CF-U1 but I still wouldn’t call it pretty; it is certainly an industry machine rather than consumer, which makes it odd that some of their photos have a high-school-age girl showing off the product. The keyboard actually looks pretty nice, as long as your thumbs can cover the whole thing. Check out the full specs page, the important stuff is below:
- 800 x 480 7″ palm rejection touch screen
- Intel Atom 1.1 GHz Z510 with US15W chipset
- 1GB/2GB of RAM
- 4GB disk on module, Micro SD card
- 8GB/16GB/32GB DOM solid state storage optional per slot (2 slots)
- 60/120GB HDD or 32/64GB SSD
- PC express card
- 2 USB 2.0 ports
- SD card slot
- GPS
- 802.11 a/b/g
- Bluetooth V2.0
- 3G (optional)
- Up to 10 hours battery life
I can’t say the 800×480 resolution is very thrilling, but for an industry computer with lots of proprietary software I guess it isn’t that big of a deal. The rest of the specs look pretty good, especially 10 hours of battery life, but this may be with a secondary battery attachment, as it sounds like this will be a module oriented UMPC. With integrated GPS and 3G this could be a great geocaching device.
Such OQO alike devices share the same major limit: they are handtop only, not laptop/notebook. The productivity and usability is very limited by the thumb pad. A small thumb pad is ideal for smartphones for one-hand convenience such as the Palm Treo, but not for Windows, especially when it is such wide – too large for thumbs and too small for all fingers.
If you guys are old enough, you know the very first smallest PC is an IBM, made from its Japan branch. It is very much like this Arm. It was a nice toy that’s never got popular beyond collectors’ garages. Inspired by it, Toshiba, then the #1 laptop seller, created the very popular Libretto with a touch-type-able keyboard, like the new Everun Note.
Believe me (my collection of UMPCs are more than your age), if you want the smallest computer that can still do work for you other than a nice toy, you need something like the Everun Note or Fujitsu U820, not one of these.
The IBM I was talking about is IBM PC 110. Its keyboard is actually much better than this Arm’s. But the keyboard on Libretto 100/110 (very similar to Everun Note) is the smallest that’s still truly touch-type-able for daily primary computing. I have written thousands, thousands lines of C++ code and 30 some published scientific/engineering papers on the Libretto keyboard. The keys on the Everun Note are much bigger than Libretto’s even though the former is 1 cm smaller on both dimensions. The keys on the Fujitsu U810 (I have not touched a U820 yet) is almost the same size of Libretto. So both Everun and Fujitsu should do better for smaller and lighter than the Libretto.
Note: I’m not talking about the Libretto U100 which is nothing like the adorable 100/110CT but a crap.
I have no idea where such handtops can be used. They are too expensive and too rich for the blood of UPS/FedEx drivers. Even the Libretto was too small to find a market, where is the market for these?
dimensions?! weight?! – this is umpc site!
true…
welcome to UMPCportal!
the motto of this site should be:
you don’t like UMPCs? they are niche products? they have no market? well, leave us alone then and never come back… :-D
if it says7″ screenI guess your thumbs must be able to touch all keys..
Not my thing though…
This one states one handed keyboard design so it looks like they are looking for this to be held in one hand and typed on with the other. Completely agree, you cannot thumb a keyboard in a device this size so it looks like they took an alternate approach to it. They also list a two hand type able version on their business unit.