Computex Day 1 – Netbooks are in apparently!

Listen, netbooks and ‘thin is in’ notebooks are cool and all that but can we have some MID and ultra mobile PC love please? ;-)

Day 1 of Computex went by in a flash and all I can see when I close my eyes are netbooks. Each one surrounded by eager digicams!

To be fair, day 1 was more of a warm-up for me having arrived fairly late in the day yesterday and struggling through a (very tasty) Taiwanese breakfast of soup, stir fry and something I really shouldn’t have put on my plate. I spent the morning scanning the WTC and TICC areas which, while central, isn’t really where the computing action is. The afternoon was spent with the Intel team, taking in the main keynote and mobility keynote sessions.

I did spot a rugged Atom-based ultra mobile PC from Arbor (7 inch, Atom, IP54) on my journeys but that was as close as I got to MID action today.

The Mobility keynote went well. Mooly Eden is a great presenter and it was enjoyable to hear him talk about the ultra-thin laptops, netbooks, to see HUGI in action (Hurry Up Get Idle the idea that a faster processor can get the work done and then go into instant idle having used less power than a slower processor) and to see a short demonstration of  Pine Trail-based netbooks in action. It’s real! In the following press conference Mooly wouldn’t give details about the architecture saying that all would be revealed at IDF in Sept.

There was a demo of Moblin and a demo of a runtime application that allows Google Android applications to run inside Moblin. Very interesting. I wondered if that was the new 3rd-party developer channel so I asked Doug Fisher, VP of Intel’s software and services group about the developer community for Moblin and it seems that they are aiming at more formal ISV process along with reliance on LSB and runtime apps like the Android app, Air and Flash. That’s fair enough but I still think Moblin needs an app store to tie it altogether.

JKK found a new MID Phone from DigiCube that looks OK (seen his blog for more info)so there’s hope for some in-depth blogging. In addition tomorrow we have a Moblin session, a rumor that the Viliv S5 MID will be running Windows 7 in the Microsoft keynote and, of course, the Nangang exhibition hall where most of the actions is here in Taipei. I also have a press dinner with some of the Execs. Pankaj Kedia of the Ultra Mobility group will be there so I’m planning on buying him a few Cognacs and asking him why Moblin 2 left-out the Menlow platform. On Thursday we have the  Ultra Mobility event and a meeting with Anand Chandrasekher, Senior VP and GM of the Ultra Mobility group, the highlight of my week here.

In perspective, there should be a ton of news in the next few days. The netbooks are free to take the limelight for a few hours!

Before I sign off though, a side note. My Gigabyte Touchnote 3G is working really really well. The built-in 3G antenna is pulling in signals like nothing else! Well done Gigabyte.