So after talking to some of the people that got a ultra mobile PC it seems that the next thing to conquer is getting Linux running on it. To help facilitate getting the community working on this we have opened [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=9]a new Linux forum[/url].

Steve at Carrypad.com has [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/journal/2006/05/volunteers-needed-linux-on-umpc.html]some ideas[/url] on what we can try to get a full distro running.

Some of the different distros that may be a good start to ge tit runnig could be [url=http://www.pendrivelinux.com/]Pen Drive Linux[/url], [url=http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/]Damn Small Linux[/url] or [url=http://www.puppyos.com/]Puppy OS[/url].

Any other ideas or distros that may work, update us [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=9]here[/url] and check [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/journal/]carrypad.com[/url] for more info on what Steve is trying. Read the full story

So, now that we’ve got to the the bottom of the Eo power problems, we can let Tablet Kiosk and Amtek work on that one and move on to the next project.

The problem is, we still dont have any UMPC’s available here in Germany and i’ve got lots of ideas. Frustrated.

So I need some volunteers to test out my next theory.
Is anyone with an Eo or Q1 prepared to do a bit of Linux boot testing? I’ve seen details of previous failures and have been discussing it with friends. The problem before was that everyone tried standard live-cd’s from the USB CD-ROM. Most (in fact probably all of them that have been tried.) don’t boot from USB-CDROM.

So, what someone needs to do is take one of the links below and see if it works.
In fact, the best place to start is probably pendrivelinux

If I had a ultra mobile PC in front of me now id try Damn Small Linux It has boot-from-USB-stick capability and also an install from windows option. How-to here. This is probably the most developed of the boot-from-stick distributions.
You could also try Puppy Linux which is a small one that should boot from a USB CD-ROM.

These two distros are reduced versions that have most programs you need on them but are probably best only used for the proof of concept we’re doing here.

If they work (and hardware is recognised) you could move on to try Knoppix. There’s an FAQ available on how to change it to boot from USB-CDROM. You’ll need another Linux box and some Linux skill to create the new ISO but if it works you’ll have pretty much a full Linux instalation.

I’m not aware that any of the main distributions have boot-from-USB-CDROM capability but i’d be tempted to try Suse 10.1 which has just been released.

Lets see if we can enhance the market for these UMPC’s. If the linux crowd get on board, we could see the market grow which will benefit everyone.

Any takers?

If so, Origamiportal.com have started a new Linux topic area where i’ve created a new thread.

Regards.
Steve / Chippy.

Ever since the TabletKiosk eo came out we have been having a big discussion about the battery life and benchmarks [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=334&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0]in our forums[/url].

[url=https://www.umpcportal.com/journal/2006/05/eo-and-q1-power-information.html]Steve from Carrypad.com[/url] and [url=http://ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com/]Frank from ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com[/url] have had a lot of info to contribute to the post.

Steve has been summarizing the posts for us and the latest one can be found [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/journal/2006/05/eo-and-q1-power-information.html]here[/url].

The biggest issue with the power drain is caused by an issue where the USB devices get polled and the CPU never gets a chance to go into power-saving C3 state. The current fix is to disable the USB device (which effectively removes all extrnal components) until there is a bios update or patch from TabletKiosk.

One good thing though is that TabletKiosk is looking into it. I was talking to DocBliny on our [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=75]IRC Channel[/url] and he pointed me to an email he just got from TabletKiosk that he posted over on [url=http://origamiproject.com/forums/5185/ShowThread.aspx#5185]OrigamiProject.com[/url]:

[b]Thank you for contacting TabletKiosk Technical Support.

We acknowledge that there is room for improvement with the eo v7110 battery life and heat dissipation; and our engineering team is working diligently to resolve these issues.

Please know that our user base will be notified as soon as we have determined the solutions for these issues.

[/b]

So at this point everyone is waiting patiently for a patch and in the meantime have figured out how to make the battery last a little longer. Read the full story

[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/dualcor.jpg[/img]

According to [url=http://www.gottabemobile.com/DualCorCPCToBeShippingWithin90Days.aspx]gottabemobile.com[/url] the [url=http://www.dualcor.com]DualCor cPC[/url] is going to be shipping in 90 days.

For any who don’t know what the DualCor is, it is a ultra mobile PC that has both both an Intel PXA263 400 MHz Embedded Processor and a VIA C7-M 1.5 GHz x86 and will be running both Windows XP Tablet/Edition 2005 and Windows Mobile 5.0.

There is more info [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=92]here[/url] and on [url=http://www.dualcor.com/details.php]DualCor’s official site[/url]

Read the full story

The collaboration continues!
Now that the Q1’s have turned up, people are also reporting their battery life figures.

Summary info from the last 24hrs:

• Ctitanic found a great software tool for measuring battery useage. (Notebook Hardware Control)
• Q1 battery – 29W/hr rating. (as marked on battery pack. Reported here.)
• Eo battery – 26W/hr rating. (as marked on battery pack. Reported here.)
• Eo idle battery drain (USB bus disabled) – 13w (2hrs/ 26W/hr battery). Reported here.
• Eo idle battery drain (USB bus enabled) – 17w (1.5hrs/ 26W/hr battery). Calculated from multiple reports.
• Q1 idle battery drain – 10w (2.9 hrs / 29W/hr battery). Calculated from the report here.
• Playing a MPEG-2 on the Eo (with USB bus off and hardware acceleration turned on in WinDVD) – 13.5W. reported here.
• Known USB/power registry hack didnt work as reported here.

Those battery drain stats are significant – they show that even with the higher power Celeron processor, the Q1 design is far far more efficient. The only good result to come out was that the Eo can play MPEG2 quite efficiently. Just under 2hrs worth of MPEG-2 is possible.

One point of note: Although the Eo battery is rated at 26W/hr, the Notebook Hardware Control Tool shows only 24W/hr full capacity. Its also possible that the Eo is switching off before the battery is really empty. More testing is needed here.

Test update:
– Contact Tablet Kiosk and raise a ticket. No update yet. (Over 24hrs since the first contact was made.)
– Measure current drain from the battery during full-power. – Software tool (Notebook Hardware Control) is helping here.
– Measure playback performance / drain with screen off. No update yet.

We’re waiting from feedback from Tablet Kiosk now to hear if they have software fixes available for the USB bus issue. As for the design itself, I hope that Tablet Kiosk and Paceblade will be going back to the designer and asking for improvements.

In no particular order, thanks to:
docbliny, MrGadget, JeffGr, ctitanic, John Tokash, marix, Roy and all the others that are posting information on Origamiproject.com and Origamiportal.com forums.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Following on from yesterday’s post about Eo battery issues, it was nice to wake up and see that Mgadget found out something interesting!

We had identified two issues:

1 – Why are Eo’s appearing to drain more power than a 1.5ghz laptop with 12″ screen? (18 watts)
2 – Why arent we seeing the processor drop into power saving modes at idle.

We’ve identified the cause of the bad idle battery life. Its a known USB and power-saving bug. (USB devices get polled and the CPU never gets a chance to go into power-saving C3 state.) The Wifi and SD card slot are actually USB devices (I guess this saves developement costs and makes motherboards more generic.) and you have to disable the whole USB bus before the power-saving modes are reached.
Of course, this is not a practical solution. However, it proves that there’s a fault there. We’re hoping that this could be fixed with a BIOS or even driver updates.

We’re still waiting for some more Eo battery life tests (with USB bus off) to determine the exact advantage of turning the USB bus off. (It looks like it will increase idle/low-power battery life by 30% though which is very significant.)

The second issue – overall power drain – is still being queried and tested. I’m not aware that Tablet Kiosk have given any feedback on the ticket raised yet and I know that no-one has done the battery drain measurements and screen-off performance testing.

Test updates.
– Disable USB bus (if possible) from the BIOS. Test complete
– Contact Tablet Kiosk and raise a ticket. No update yet.
– Measure current drain from the battery during full-power optimisations. No update yet
– Measure playback performance / drain with screen off. No update yet.

One aditional bit of information is that PowerDVD (version 6) is able to use the MPEG2 hardware decoding on the VIA chipset. We still have to confirm the quality of the output (one report said it was jerky) but it looks positive. I’m interested to hear other reports of people running MPEG-2 video on PowerDVD. Was it smooth? What was your battery life?

More updates, of course, as we get them!
Live updates in the Origamiportal forum

Regards
Steve / Chippy

[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/samsung_q1_bestbuy.jpg[/img]

BestBuy has shipped the Samsung Q1s from their first batch and it looks like they started arriving in buyers hands today. People have started posting in our [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=8]Samsung Q1 forum[/url] saying that they just received the new devices.

As people start running tests on this device, we will update the info here so people can see how the two current ultra mobile PC devices stand up against each other.

As for those unlucky ones who didn’t purchase one yet, according to BestBuy.com they expect to ship more within the next 1 to 2 weeks.

So if you didn’t get one from the first batch you can help support this site by purchasing a Samsung Q1 through Best Buy. BestBuy also has the black organizer case and ultra mobile PC keyboard for sell.

They also have a Hewlett-Packard 16x External USB 2.0 Double-Layer DVDRW/CD-RW Drive listed on their ultra mobile PC page so you can install software on the device.

It looks like the first batch of UMPCs was successful, and hopefully this trend continues. Read the full story

Now that the first [url=http://www.tabletkiosk.com/config/pc/viewCat_P.asp?idCategory=35]TabletKiosk eos[/url] have been shipped and people have been using them. New benchmarks have appeared online and one of the most interesting ones so far has been about battery life. Ctitianic from [url=http://ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com]ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com[/url] has started posting his benchmarks from the battery life and it started a big thread in the [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=334]forums here[/url].

The current consensus is that it is being caused by the VIA not going into C3 power sving mode even when all of the external devices are disconnected and WiFi is turned off.

Our resident VIA lover Chippy, has been in contact with some people about the problem and wrote up a nice recap of some of the tests and info on [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/journal/2006/05/eo-battery-isses-being-analysed.html]CarryPad.com[/url].

This is obviously a problem that we hope can be easily solved and hopefully will soon find out exactly how much battery life is possible with the devices.

So if anyone has any advice about how to get better performance out of these particular devices the original discussion is [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=334&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0]here[/url] or feel free to post more info in our [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=7]TabletKiosk eo forums[/url] Read the full story