One problem with pro-blogging is that can be unhealthy, especially when you do it from home. I rarely get enough sleep. My breakfast is sometimes lunch. I don’t move around as much as I should and I’m surprised that I don’t have back and eyesight problems! I’ve tried a bit of Live Photo-blogging before and that’s been fun. My Wife is doing a good job of getting me out of the house too but I need to do more. My latest mad idea is to combine work, sport and UMPCs in a new activity called Jog and Blog. I’m sure this will be an Olympic sport in London 2012!

Today, over at Chippys ultra mobile PC Moblog, I’m running an experiment. Read all about Jog and Blog here!

I just cant wait any longer for that Kohjinsha SC3 to arrive. The videos and feedback from early tests have proven to me that this could be one of the best ultra mobile PC / mini-notebooks yet. Its tiny, light, well-specified and looks great. The question we are all asking though is…”How good will Vista run.” We’re one step closer to the answer today because I’ve just recieved a set of CrystalMark test results from DFJ. I believe this is the first ever set of test results for a production Menlow (Silverthorne/Pulsbo) device so lets take a quick look and I’ll make some comments below.

Detailed results here.

The tests were done on a stock device (Vista Home Premium. 1GB RAM) and overall, its looking good. The CPU figures are quite impressive. Better, in fact, than any other ultra mobile PC platform. Only the Intel notebook-based CPU’s used in the Q1 Ultra Premium and the Sony UX are better. Memory speed is also good. Top marks! Looking at the disk (Spinpoint N, HS06THB, 60G, 4200 RPM, PATA(ZIF), 8MB CACHE) I see a high average which, if you look at the detailed results, translates to a max read speed of 30MB/s and a max write speed of about 27MB/s. For a 1.8″ drive, this is about as good as it gets right now.

Looking at the graphics scores shows some very low-end results. They dont quite tally with the Vista performance score we saw so for anyone looking at gaming on this – dont! For the 3D components in Google Earth and Itunes, we’ll have to see how it performs when we do tests. I suspect it will be OK.

For a big list of comparable CrzstalMark results, see the list that Frank keeps over at Tweaks2K2.

Note that the CrystaMark test doesn’t show us any video performance results. The Poulsbo chipset contains hardware acceleration for many common codecs and we wont see those results until someone does tests with a media player. In theory, results should be good.

So will it run Vista? The jury is still out on that one. Ive seen Vista Home Basic running acceptably on the HTC Shift but it wasnt exactly fast.  With some optimisation, i think Vista is going to be acceptable for most people. For others, upgrading the RAM to 2GB might be the answer and for a few people, it simply wont be good enough. The flip-side of the coin is that we know it would run XP extremely well. I hope, after time, a downgrade to XP will be possible. Ive taken the precation to include Vista Ultimate in mz purchase so at least i’ll have the license when it’s a possibility!

Thanks to Direct From Japan for the test results.

Like most people, I’m a big fan of anything that will save time. I find that there are many shortcuts to assist us in the way we interact with our computers that will help us work more efficiently. Firefox is definitely my most used application and thus I utilize many of its tricks and shortcuts. A while back at MPCT, I shared a trick to help squeeze more bookmarks into your bookmark bar. This is especially helpful for mobile computers running at lower resolutions. Similarly, I hope this trick helps people increase the speed at which they can access sites from small computers, such as those with painful to type on keyboards… (continue reading)

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Remember the days when we thought 499 Euros was a great price for a mobile PC with 1.2 Ghz, 1024MB RAM, BT, Wifi and a 30GB drive? Three months later and the Packard Bell Easynote XS20 is now going for 349 Euro which is even better value but the amazing thing is that its probably not low enough for consumers. The Acer Aspire One with a better screen, 80GB drive, far better design and the new Atom processor with better video and graphics capability, is the same price!

As a consumer, I’m enjoying these low prices but I can see that the little guys are going to get squeezed out. Innovation, as we’ve seen it with UMPCs over the last two years, will become more and more difficult as people demand lower and lower prices. It’s almost sad.

Price source: Geizhals.

D.F.J – Direct From Japan, an exporter of mobile solutions direct from the Akihabara district have a Willcom D4, one of the neatest ultra mobile PC solutions we’ve seen yet. I’ve been in touch with DJF today and they’ve been kind enough to send over some first-opinions about the device. Before you read through them though, let me highlight one very important figure. Last week it was reported that the D4 was returning just 1.5 hours on the standard battery (7wh) DFJ report that this is under WWAN conditions. Running without WWAN and Wifi is a different story. We’re working on getting some better battery life reports out soon so don’t give up on the D4 just yet. Continued after the pic…

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Jumping on the jolly 3G Bandwagon (the more the merrier) along with ECS and Asus are Acer. A positive review at Chip.de mentions the following.

Im dritten Quartal folgen weitere Modelle mit UMTS/3G-Modul und den Farben Pink und Braun.

My translation: In the third quarter follow further models with UMTS/3G and Pink and Brown colours.

This is excellent news because, apart from a lack of Bluetooth and touchscreen, the device is shaping up nicely as an Ultra Mobile solution. With the 6-cell battery you’ll reach 6 hours battery life (possibly more when Linpus switch over to the Moblin core) in a smaller package and 30% lighter weight than the MSI Wind with 6-cells. Chip.de are reporting a bright screen and quiet fan too. If the 3G version comes with 8Gb of fast flash then it’s even better!

Via EeePC News.

Two of the hottest upcoming netbooks have been taken apart and had their insides revealed. If you are the kind of person who likes to mod your computers, be sure to check these out so you know what you have to work with.

The MSI Wind (portal page), which was taken apart over at bit-tech.net, has no external access slot to upgrade RAM. In order to upgrade your RAM, you’ll need to open the Wind up, while normally this would void your warranty, it appears as though MSI understands that users want to upgrade their RAM and request the following:

“If a customer wants to upgrade the memory in their Wind that they register it with the MSI Notebook support team and MSI will send them a special warranty sticker to place back on their Wind”

It is good to know that MSI is paying attention to the details; I’m sure this will please some future Wind owners. Bit-tech says that contrary to the Eee PCs, there is very little room for modding due to an intricately designed interior.

The Aspire One (portal page) had its dis-assembly shown over at itechnews.net. The site didn’t really provide any commentary on the cracked open unit so garner what you will from the images.

[via Engadget]

Yes the ridiculous acronym of ULCPC (Ultra Low Cost PC) which mostly means netbook, was a term defined by Microsoft not too long ago. They said that devices which qualified as ULCPCs would be able to get discounts on XP installations, making OEMs more likely to make their hardware fit Microsoft’s ULCPC criteria so that they could receive the XP discount. One theory explaining the XP discount move and associated ULCPC definition is to keep a Windows OS on emerging netbooks, and of course prevent Linux environments from ruling the space. The hardware limitations are possibly meant to make sure that netbooks don’t encroach on Vista’s regular home computing space. Otherwise you would have OEMs offering XP as an install option on new desktop purchases and other hardware while MS is trying to convert everything to XP.

From InfoWorld on XP pricing: “The documents show that for developed markets, Microsoft charges $32 to install XP Home Edition on standard netbooks, and $47 for netbooks with the larger screens. PC makers who meet certain requirements in Microsoft’s Market Development Agreement can get a discount of as much as $10 on those prices, the documents show.”

Many people however, myself included, were a bit upset with Microsoft for making a pretty stupid definition of the ULPCP. Microsoft said that units over 10.2″ screen size, 80GB HDD, and those with touchscreens could not qualify as a ULCPC and thus would not receive the XP discount. Maybe this is why nearly every netbook has an 8.9″-10″ screen and doesn’t have touch input?

Whatever the case, it looks like Microsoft is easing up the criteria it laid down previously. Now MS is saying that a ULCPC can include a screen up to 14.1″, and it can be touchscreen. Additionally, the 80GB HDD cap has been raised to 160GB. This is nice but there are still more restrictive limitations in place such as the CPU which MS says can only have one core and run at no higher than 1GHz, or how about the 1GB of RAM cap? If MS didn’t have some sort of super strategy behind all of this I think that defining something as a ULCPC just by its price would work fine and would not be in the way of low cost computers becoming more main stream. I wonder what MS would think about a computer running a Core Solo CPU, which is actually a Core Duo with only one functioning core…

[InfoWorld via GBM]