Creating content couldn’t be simpler. I just had 20 minutes between tasks here so i decided to transmit and record a little video directly on the Everun Note. This whole post has been done while standing up too!

More info on the Everun Note here!

Update: Full review now available.

Its here. Its small. Its powerful and it, according to my daughter, looks like a Nintendo DS for Daddys! Its the Raon Digital Everun Note that arrived just a few hours ago.

I’m currently setting up for the live session and so far everything is going smoothly. I’ve already run a 7.5mbps WMV HD video, played Unreal Tournament, Skyped and am currently running 3DMark2001. THis little bad boy can really push the bits around! The only thing I’ve found disappointing so far is the optical mouse pointer which doesn’t seem to be working well. Its could be a broken one as the one I have on the original Everun is much nicer. Its not as bad as it sounds as the touchscreen is just wonderful! Anyway, all will be revealed later and in future posts!

YouTube version here. HQ WMV version here. Full specifications, news and gallery through the Everun Note info page.

If you’re following the Raon Digital Everun Note (due here in a matter of hours now) then you’ll be aware that there’s an external battery charger/pack and, although this isn’t yet confirmed, a large capacity external battery pack. Mobile users are going to want something a bit more portable than that though so here’s what Raon Digital have come up with. Its a large-capacity internal battery with 45% more juice. It comes with 4 new feet to provide the necessary clearance but from the images below, you can see it only adds 2-3mm extra thickness. If Raon’s battery life figures of 2-3hrs are to believed, the extended battery will take you into the 3-4 hours range. You’ll also have the standard battery as a spare when you buy this so in effect, you end up with a potential 7-hours in under 900gms and total mobile flexibility. Don’t expect the battery to be cheap as, like the rest of this device, it’s pushing the envelope on miniaturization but at least the option is there for those that need it. Planned for shipping in October.

More images in the gallery.

Its these little features that make mobile computing so much easier. External battery chargers, flexible CPU and GPU configurations, desktop-quality processing power. Unlike some of the UMPCs of the past, the Everun Note looks like it could work out well as a 2-3 year investment.

Live session with the Raon Everun Note is planned for 2100 CET (GMT+2) start time here at UMPCPortal/live although the cam is likely to be on while I do the unboxing video so I’ll keep an eye on the chat session there and try and answer questions as I go along.

Following on from yesterdays shockingly popular (read: Almost took my site out at one point) post about the Everun Note, I’ve got some new information pertaining to availability and have a copy of the manual that exposes some good information.

The first shipments should go out on Sept 19th with resellers being able to get them to customers the following week. 4-weeks to wait if you’re interested in this one. I have only heard from one reseller so far (Mobilx) but I’m sure there will be others. [Resellers. If you’re going to stock this, I’ll be happy to relay the information in the official Raon Digital forum we have here.]

I’ve also got a copy of the manual which I’m not going to post just yet as I haven’t been able to check if its final but there are a few interesting items in it that I will air. The first thing that caught my eye was some information about how to use Avivo which is ATI’s hardware accelerated video engine. They include a video conversion tool which I assume just uses the hardware-accelerated decoding features of the GPU but this is something I had not considered before, its got hardware video acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and WMV. Its good and bad news because it means that video performance will be top-notch [Raon provide details of how to enable the hardware encoding in KMPlayer] but it means that any battery life figures for video playback might not have any relevance to browsing use. Its a shame there’s no HDMI output on the Everun Note as this is going be one amazing PMP. [article continues…]

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IDF, the Intel Developer Forum was held a few weeks ago and through the generosity of readers I was able to attend, listen, contribute and learn from the experience. Here’s the report that went out to my sponsors last week. Slightly abridged but containing all the important info.

If I was asked to summarise IDF from the ultra mobile angle I would probably say just one thing – software. Intel’s ultra mobility group have been working hard to bring in a number of important ISVs and IDF was the place they wanted to show it all off. Gypsii (A GPS-enabled social networking and POI network), Fring (Single client IM and social networking interface) Adobe (Flash 10 beta I assume they are working to get hardware video decoding in there) and Move networks (intelligent multi-protocol video streaming solution with H.264 hardware decoding support) were at the fore and Intel say that now have 60 ISV’s working with them. The software ecosystem was highlighted in both ultra mobility keynotes and appeared to take precedence over hardware announcements.
The other feeling I got was that things are taking off in Asia. This shouldn’t be a surprise to us considering past success of small mobile computing devices. Intel may be taking advantage of this by responding to Asian demands and I heard a number of people say that big hardware announcements would be made at IDF in Asia next spring. [Report continues below]

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Update: Full review now available.

“This new machine from Raon Digital is designed for power users like you, not for children.”

So say Raon Digital’s marketing people via the sales brochure I just received for their new dual-core AMD-Turion based Everun Note . There’s nothing new in the brochure apart from new images showing the underside of the device (memory, disk and PCI-express mini accessible) and a revised weight (down to 748gm)

This balance of leading-edge power, battery life and miniaturisation doesn’t come cheap but in the world of pro-mo devices, this is really on-the-mark. The recommended sales price is $879 (US, before tax.) which means its way, way cheaper than the other high-performance UMPCs, the Sony UX and the Q1 Ultra Premium and it includes a 16mm pitch keyboard and easy 3G upgrade path. With Windows XP Home (yes, I know some of you would be looking for TE or Vista) it will really fly.

They are definitely targeting the pro-mo set and what better place to be sending a product sample than to Chippy at UMPCPortal. Yes, there’s one in the post and as I said before, when it arrives, you can expect a very long live session with it!

So what do you think of the price/feature balance? End users will be paying over $900 including tax and postage so it’s not cheap. Many of you will question why someone needs anything other than an Eee PC 901, why its been given a touchscreen and why there’s no mousepad (its an optical mouse) and you’d be correct in assuming that most people won’t be able to justify the cost of this but there are a great many people that need the power and are happy to pay for a 30% weight reduction, a 50% reduction in total volume and nearly double the raw processing power.  Does it resonate with you?

All four pages of the PDF are now in the gallery and I’ve updated the database to reflect the latest information.

Note: exact availability is unknown at the moment.

As I was writing up an IDF summary report for you all today (which will be posted tomorrow) I realised that I hadn’t published the Digifriends presentation video I made. Here it is!

HQ WMV version is here. Specifications and links to to other digifriends news available on our product info page.

The device is planned for Q4 2008 and is targeted at a $700 price. Full and final details aren’t available on the device yet (they are still presenting the information that you can find on their website) but I managed to squeeze some more details from the helpful Digifriends people on the stand at IDF as you’ll hear in the video.

Full specifications and links available in the product page.

To help you edge yourself into another working week, here are a few news items from the weekend.

Fujitsu P1630 appearing at FCC. It looks like Fujitsu might introduce a Montevina-based, Dual-Core 1.4Ghz version of the well-respected P1620/P1610. Its getting a new chipset too which includes the GMA X4500 GPU, a much more powerful option than the previous GMA950 which includes better video playback quality. It also means you can play those business-related shoot-em-ups and flick through cover-flow that much faster in your meetings! No words on price or availability on this, the most powerful 8.9″ convertible seen yet. I’ve added a P1630 product page.

Toshiba SD Multi. An interesting dual-screen portable device designed for editing content on SD cards. Which is a strange focus as the device is also said to be able to surf the internet which means its at least Wifi-capable. No word on OS which gives us no clues about processor which gives us no clues as to whether this is at the high or low-end of the mobile internet scale. At a target price of $300 though, I suspect its not the FIE.

The Techcrunch Tablet. I respect anyone that publicly goes for a big project like this… [article continues]

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