We asked the question yesterday…is the Nokia Lumia 920 worth 600 Euro and picked up a few comments from Nokia PR in Europe. At first I thought they were suggesting the RRP (recommended retail price) would come in at under 600 Euro but a further message suggested that we should make a full test before making a decision about value for money. Fair enough but there are people waiting in line you know! Today we get confirmation that the price isn’t coming in under 600 Euro.

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We’ve just had a note from Toshiba Europe to say that the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J is now shipping in Germany, Austria and, I believe, the Benelux area. Specs are as we have then in the database (note it’s the Satellite and not the Portege in Europe…so far) and the official spec list confirms a matt screen. (Entspiegelt) Recommended retail price is €1099 but I see a number of retailers offering it for €999. Amazon for example. (Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J – aff.)

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Expected to be available later this month, the Acer Aspire S3 is likely to be one of the lower cost Ultrabooks and if the news from Hong Kong and Finland is anything to go by, one of the first to hit the market.

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Jkk points out that Motorola accidentally let slip a Milestone 2 video (the EU version of the Droid 2 [portal page])

No word on pricing or availability yet, but it looks like it’ll be identical to the Droid 2.

As the epicenter of Intel’s work on a mobile operating systems shift slightly towards Europe, being here as an Intel Insider becomes a major advantage. On Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending a tweet-up with Josh Bancroft in Munich and today, we’re the recipients of some live images of MeeGo 1.1 and the handset UX running on an Intel-based (Moorestown) phone from Aava. The team responsible for some of the technical aspects of MeeGo and mobile platforms in Europe is obviously working hard and we look forward to meeting them at the MeeGo Summit in November but in the meantime, they’ve been kind enough to send over some images of one of the phones they are testing.

It’s images only at the moment but if everything we might goes to plan, we’ll be able to give you something special next week. Stay tuned!

Click through for full size images of the home screen, dialer and applications switching. There’s a signature style here and I like the little MeeGo people! Once again, stay tuned for more next week.

Yes, its that time of year again where we get the first encouraging days of sunshine in Europe so I’ve been into the cellar and dusted-off my Sunlinq 24W solar panel.

 
Sun strength for the last 2.5 days.

I’m not planning a solarumpc tour this year but I am planning to get some use out of the panel. At the moment, the plan is to run a UMPC from the solar panel that could serve this blog. I doubt i’ll be able to do it 24/7 for the whole of summer but I’m running some tests on the Raon Digital Everun S6S at the moment to see exactly how much I could get out of it with the 24W panel.

The Everun, when configured for 400Mhz with WIfi and screen off, will consume a tiny 4W at idle and about 6W at full power which is about as low as you can go with a PC without having to switch to an ARM architecture. I don’t want to do that because the plan is just to install a basic Ubuntu image, fire up Apache and SSH and serve this blog as a set of static web pages. WIthout Mysql or PHP running it should keep the processor load down to a minimum although i’m not sure that Ubuntu will be able to switch the CPU into 400Mhz mode. It might have to stay locked at 600Mhz.

At 5W drain, the server would need 120Wh of energy to power it for a full day. With a 24Wh panel I’m only going to get about 80-100Wh per day on average (using the 4-hours sun/day  rule that applies to this part of the world) so at some point, back-up power is going to be needed. The problem is, how can I switch-over to back-up power (or gracefuly switch over to another server.) Switching the servers is OK but getting the Everun to shutdown when it reaches 5% power is impossible under Linux right now.

The Alternative is to shut-down the server between 0300 and 0900 every day and to try and regulate it that way or just keep topping up the SLA battery from other sources when needed.

I’m going to need a couple of new items for this project though.

1) Power usage measurement tools. I want to feed the data back into the website. Power used, power given by panel, current battery level. Any tips there would be much appreciated. Should I buy a dedicated data logging system with software or are there simpler ways to do this.

2) An ethernet port. The Everun only has a WIfi connection and that would take too much power so I’m looking at a USB to Ethernet adaptor. This one from SMC takes about 150mw which will be fine.

3) Bigger SLA battery. Rather than using the 56whr battery that I have, I should get one that takes about 200wh so that if we have two or three good days of sunshine, I can store the engergy and use it on days where the sun is weaker.

Solar panel positioning is going to be a major problem at my house which is badly oriented for a solar panel. I’m also a bit worried about loss along the length of cable I will need in order to position the solar panel correctly.

Over the next few weeks I hope to at least have a partial solar-powered web server running but if this blog disappears, you’ll know what’s happened!

I know that weather is supposed to be chaos but this is just silly. The most settled weather we’ve had this year was back in April and since then its been a real mess. It doesn’t look like it wants to change much either. The whole of central Europe is stuck in a mess of clouds that does not want to move and bizarrely, Helsinki, the place I’ve just come back from in northern (and generally colder) Europe is expecting a ton of sun!

Getting everything re-organised in another country is not something I really want to do to be honest. There’s a lot of cost and time issues that would make the project too much trouble for me and my sponsor, VIA Technologies so once again, I’m going to wait. The 9-day forecast takes me up to 18th August. After that point I have about 5 more weeks left in the summer before the sun gets too weak.

In a recent comment here, someone asked why the Lead-Acid battery was needed. Its probably not too clear in the video why I use it so I reproduce my answer (which comes from the best of my knowledge!) here.

There are two main problems with charging Li-Ion batteries from Solar panels.

Firstly, Li-Ion batteries (in notebooks and battery bank) charge using a constant current (stream) of power. For common notebook batteries and battery banks such as the Tekkeon MP3400, this is around 1A. A lot of the 12V portable solar panels only reach this power at high sun levels meaning you can only use them for a few hours mid-day. In fact a 12W panel might not be enough to even start the charging process. Secondly, if you have a huge panel that could deliver, say, twice as much power as needed, its not used. Only the power needed is taken. The rest is wasted.

These two problems can be overcome at the expense of weight with a lead-acid battery.
L-A batteries are more flexible. You can charge them with a trickle and also with a higher charge rate. They are much more suited to pairing with a solar panel. The problem with this solution is weight. Small 12v L-A batteries are over 2KG in weight!

What’s needed is a flexible Li-Ion battery charging solution. Currently there are no products on the market that can archive this but I’m searching hard!

In summary there are 2 solutions.
1 – Get a panel powerful enough to charge a Li-ion battery at 70% of its rated output. For example, a 25W panel and the Tekkeon MP3400 Li-ion battery. This will give you about 4 hours of charge time on a sunny summer day.  (Mid-Europe) This should be enough to completely fill up the Li-ion battery.
2 – Go for a heavier solution with a L-A battery and give yourself more charging flexibility.