Chippy has a nice photoset of the upcoming Viliv S10 here in the ultra mobile PC gallery. Take a look. These were taken during Computex.

Update: Hands-on video and full specifications.

The title says most of what you need to know. Archos has announced the official launch for the Archos 9, which will be on October 22nd in two colors (white and black), and the unit will run $499! Here are the specs:

• Atom Z510 1.1GHz CPU
• 1024×600 9 inch resistive touchscreen
• 1GB of RAM
• 60GB HDD
• Windows 7 Starter
• 4 hours of battery life
• 800 grams

I have to say that I’m really impressed with that price. I couldn’t see the Archos 9 going anywhere if it were $600+, and $499 is a great surprise.

Check out Chippy’s recent hands-on with the 16mm thin device.

Chippy has posted a video of the Moblin 2.1  at IDF 2009. Moblin is Intel’s open source operating system project for MIDs and netbooks. While it is already up to version 2.1, it has seen very little adoption so far, but Intel is hoping to change that once Moorestown phones start coming to market. Anyway, peek the video below, and I don’t know if you’ll find it equally as funny, but for some reason, the giant cat monster terrorizing people made me chortle.

Chippy’s spent a lot of time bringing us some quality IDF 2009 coverage. In addition to a video-overview of each of these devices, he’s been able to sneak away and snap some nice pictures of each. Full Archos 9 set on MIDMoves

Full UMID M2 set on MIDMoves

I know I can. You probably read my recent opinion piece on the UMID M1 that I’ve been testing. Among other things, I found the device to have some serious usability issues due to the lack of mouse and the unsatisfying keyboard. While not everything on the M2 is new (it might better be called the M1.5), it definitely tacks on some much desired improvements.

The M2 that Chippy got his hands on is just a prototype at this point and may change somewhat from when the product launches (targeted for Q4), but here is what we know:

• optical mouse on the screen bezel as well as left and right mouse buttons, opposite the mouse (!)
• 1.2GHz and 1.6GHz Atom CPU options
• 1GB of RAM
• New casing, opens to a further angle
• No more proprietary USB adapters, there is 1x real USB plug on the right side of the device
• Windows 7

Have to say that I think the new hinge looks more attractive than the M1’s style, looking forward to seeing the M2 in matte as well. Here’s to hoping that the keyboard get’s some sort of upgrade before the unit gets finalized.

One of the more intriguing devices that we’ve been waiting to find out more about is the Archos 9 slate ultra mobile PC [Portal page]. Have a look at Chippy’s hands on, straight from IDF 2009:

Looks pretty darn slick if you ask me. I’m really happy to see the optical mouse; it will definitely improve usability over having just the touchscreen for input. Don’t forget this thing is running Windows 7. I’m pretty disappointed to see a lack of physical keyboard on the Archos 9. No keyboard physical means some seriously reduced usability for normal computing applications, but the nice inline stand could make this a nice table-top media device. If you carried this puppy around with a foldable BT keyboard, you’d have a very slick piece of kit for mobile computing.

I think I’d personally rather see this device running a custom OS with polished touch based software and a reasonable price. The price hasn’t been announced yet, but Chippy puts the unit around 600 Euros, available pretty soon. More info as we get it.

UMID pulled out quite the suprise at IDF. A refreshed M1 called the M2 which fixes many of the problems of the M1. 1GB RAM, reworked casing, USB ports that don’t require a dongle and a headset port. The M2 will also be available in 1.2 and 1.6Ghz versions and includes an additional optical mouse on the screen frame. Planned for Q4 (Nov/Dec) timeframe. Note that this is a sample device and the final product may vary from what you see in the video.

UMID M2 gallery available here.

I’ve got the Archos 9 in my bag and I’ll get some more content up on it later but for now I can tell you that it’s a solid device, looks great, has an accurate optical mouse (really necessary for a two-handed device) and appears to have more battery life than I expected.

On the negative side the HDD appears to be a bottleneck in performance with applications starting up slower than I’m used to on the SSD-based UMPCs and MIDs I’ve tested in the past. It’s also a relatively dense device in terms of weight.

More pictures in the UMPCPortal gallery

More details on the Archos 9 in the UMPCPortal database.