I knew Jenn liked the HTC Shift but I didn’t know she liked it that much!

It’s so easy, so versatile, and so much fun to use that I officially declare the HTC Shift X9500 as my hands-down favorite UMPC. It is the fifth ultra mobile PC I’ve purchased, the thirteenth ultra mobile PC I’ve reviewed/extensively used, and the one I like best.

Yes, Vista performs relatively smoothly on the HTC Shift and there’s no question about its looks. It’s a design beauty. The form factor is hands-down the most flexible you can purchase on the market today (and that includes all notebooks!) the quality of the 3G in terms of both reception and availability is second-to-none and I do agree, the case is the best I’ve ever seen on a mobile device. Viewers on the portal tend to agree too. It’s still at number 5 in the ‘charts’ after over a year and an amazing 132,000 individuals have viewed the product page nearly 200,000 times!

But 2-hours battery life Jenn. Is this a house pet?

I’ve laboured over the thought of owning an HTC Shift a number of times but I hate the thought of compromising on my Q1 Ultra 6-hours battery life, XP efficiency and 1024×600 screen but I would love to have the form factor back in my hands again. Here’s looking forward to a 1.8Ghz Atom Silvethorne-based HTC Shift 2 with 1024×600 screen and a minimum of 3 hours battery life. For that, I’d happily pay over 1000 Euros and possibly write as many articles about the device as Jenn has about the HTC Shift!

Give up my HTC Shift? Never! – Pocketables.

I have a feeling that today is going to be Atom-benchmarking day as we digest results coming from UMPCFever’s testing of the Aigo MID and now, some test results of a new MSI Wind PC (not notebook) that is based on the 1.33Ghz Atom (Z250) Silverthorne processor and not the low-cost Diamondvile part as you’d find in the MSI Wind notebook.

First point to note is that in this relatively open-enclosure design, the 1.33Ghz Atom doesn’t require active cooling. To achieve the same in a tightly enclosed MID will require some good engineering but its encouraging for those that like their devices to be silent.

There’s a full suite of test results too but the one I want to highlight is a PCMark 05 CPU result and comparison to the Eee PC running the Celeron at 630Mhz.

Atom 1.33Ghz: 1159 (Normalised 0.87/Mhz. Recalculated to 1.8Ghz, approx 1560)

Celeron 630Mhz: 997 (Normalised 1.57/Mhz Recalculated to 1Ghz, approx 1413)

This is a telling set of figures because it shows the result that we’ve been expecting and that is that, clock-for-clock, the Atom processors are less powerful than the older Celeron/Pentium devices but at 1.8Ghz, the Atom Silverthrone processor should be about 10% more powerful than a 900Mhz Celeron.

Is this good? Is this an advancement of processor technology? You might look at the results and say ‘No’ but there’s one important element that has to be taken into consideration. Power-usage. The 1.8Ghz Silverthorne/Poulsbo combo will return these figures with a platform TDP of about 4.5W. The Celeron at 900Mhz would require a platform with a 10W TDP. That’s a 50% improvement in platform efficiency and that’s exactly what we need to see for handheld Internet and productivity devices.

Performance details from PC-Watch. (Translation)

I suppose as someone who is somewhat well versed in the ultra mobile PC area, I should have taken a look at the Wikipedia page for UMPCs, but I’ll be honest I hadn’t until a few days ago. I found something rather surprising when I took a look at the page and it made me chuckle a bit.

As you can see in the image above, there are several warnings about the article placed at the top of the page. The first one states:

This article or section appears to contradict itself. Please help fix this problem.

I’ve never seen this warning on a Wikipedia article before and feel like this really says something important about the current state of UMPCs and the ultra mobile PC definition. Back in the early days, Microsoft created their own definition of a new class of PC which went by the name ‘Origami’. This is rather confusing because Origami turned into the touch screen software developed by Microsoft, and stopped being used as a term to define the group of devices. ultra mobile PC became the de facto term, partly because OEMs were not creating machines that fit Microsoft’s definition of an ‘Origami’ device. For example, the VAIO UX line which featured a 1024×600 resolution screen, was not considered by Microsoft to be a ultra mobile PC because it’s screen resolution was higher than the 800×480 that Microsoft had specified, even though it was smaller than many of the other UMPCs. For this reason, the Origami touchscreen software did not come included on the VAIO UX series of UMPCs.

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Focusing on the ‘high-end’ of the market, the Fujitsu U2010 that was announced in Korean today will be an Atom-based (we assume Silverthorne/Poulsbo) ultra mobile PC running Windows Vista and including GPS and 3G. One of the problems of the previous U1010, the multi-function keys, might have been solved in this model as there’s a 6th row of keys on the device. Weight is an impressive 610g. Screen is 5.6" at, we assume, 1024×600. I also see a fingerprint reader and SD card reader.  There’s no word on processor speed but we can assume that this will be running 1.6 or even 1.8Ghz and a few quick calculations based on a small 20wh 2-cell battery as seen on the U1010 returns a potential in-use battery life of around 3hr which would extend to 6hrs with the commonly used 4-cell battery pack.  A local Taiwanese price of $1300 puts it into the middle of the ultra mobile PC pricing along with other 3G-enabled devices like the Q1 Ultra HSDPA and a July launch ties-in with the expected availability of the Intel Menlow platform.

Its good too see some more pro-mobile devices appearing but the success of this little baby will largely depend on how Vista performs so keep any eye out for reports from Computex.

Source: Digitimes. Via JKKMobile

The M700 I previewed earlier looks like a normal 7″ slate ultra mobile PC but it’s got quite a few unique features that set it apart  from the average UMPC.  It’s aimed at mobile media usage and includes the VIA 1.2Ghz processor with the new VX800 chipset which has Chrome 9 graphics and video decoding hardware in it. The main feature though is the docking station which is ‘IPTV’ capable. That is, it has a digital TV decoder in it (the type will obviously depend on  the territory that the device is being sold in) and is said to be able to convert and relay video back out via an IP connection. The outstanding question is, does the dock act as a standalone ‘head-end’ streaming device or does it require the M700 to be in the dock. It would be a bit silly to have to leave the M700 ‘Mobile’ PC in the dock when you go mobile but maybe Gigabyte are counting on you buying two M700’s! Methinks not. There’s an IR receiver on the dock as well as an optical drive slot and an SD card slot. On the back you’ll find TV signal inputs (the device I saw at CeBIT had digital cable inputs) and a plethora of audio and video connectors. I wish I had an image of the back of the dock but I’m afraid that’s a photo that I didn’t take.

The ultra mobile PC itself looks quite slick. Its very light and has an optical mouse, capacitive scrollbar, GPS and a 1024×600 screen. Gigabyte has included an on-screen keyboard and there appears to be some TV control software included too. Details of this aren’t clear at the moment. The other thing that isn’t clear is the price and the sales package. Is the dock included or do you have to buy it separately. Gigabyte are aiming to get this one out in Q3 so expect more details and a full review towards the end of summer.

In the video below I’ve put together some clips that JKK and myself took at CeBIT and an interview session we had Gigabyte. You can also find  some images detailing the ports and features of the device in the M700 gallery.

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The 901 is ussemed to be the Atom-based version of the 900 which makes sense but isn’t 100% confirmed yet. There aren’t any more details to accompany the images either but I feel sure we’ll see more of this and many other Atom-based devices at Computex in a few weeks. It looks nice apart from the shiny plastic buttons up by the battery. I’m sure it’s going to look even better in black though.

Blogeee.net have a whole load of images so check out their site.

Gigabyte are getting a good slice of the news cake this week! Tucked inside a marketing PDF received the other day were more details about the new Gigabyte M700.

This one is going to take a little explaining because the M700 isn’t just a slate UMPC, it’s part of a mobile media system that Gigabyte have created by building a special IPTV-capable docking station. Think of it as a souped-up Slingbox with client player included.

I have a presentation video from CeBIT that I’ll put together with a more detailed article later today. In the meantime, take a look at the specs. It’s expected to launch at end of Q3. Pricing unknown but Mobilx are taking pre-orders so if you want to queue up, I’ve added an affiliate link to Mobilx in the product page.

While we fuss about MID pricing, the cost of UMPCs is dropping quickly around us. The Q1 Ultra EL which comes with the 800Mhz processor, 1GB RAM and 40GB drive but leaves out the Bluetooth and cameras is available for $659 at Buy.com right now. With the lowest pricing in Europe at around 1500 dollars I’d recommend everyone in Europe who wants a Q1 Ultra to make friends with someone in the U.S. and get them to ship it over. Even after paying the tax, you’re going to save over $600.