I have been surprised at the claims of battery life on Oaktrail devices this week at CES. Taking into account the marketing BS (and subtracting 30% and questioning people about how they tested) I’m getting the feeling that Oaktrail devices might be slightly better that I expected. Certainly in terms of sizing we’re seeing some really important improvements. The Samsung PC 7 / Gloria will probably blow the Dell Duo away in that respect and if you compare the Viliv X70 EX on Menlow to the X70 Slate on Oaktrail, you can clearly see the differences. Viliv have shaved the weight down from 660gm to 420gm and slightly improved the battery life at the same time. That’s a massive improvement.

Full specifications are in the product database.

I hear that the X70 Slate is getting good feedback from potential customers which is pushing it up in priority for Viliv. Although the X7 Android tablet with the same casing will come first, the X70 Slate is likely to follow soon after. March/April is the earliest we can expect it though and given the usual date slips, May would seem more reasonable if you’re planning ahead.

What I do like is that Viliv have put an optical mouse pointer and mouse buttons on the frame which is going to be a real advantage for many. I hope it works smoothly as I was unable to test it on the production sample at CES. Don’t forget that the Oaktrail platform includes 2X (theoretical) 3D performance over Menlow and HD 720p encoding. Memory speeds should be much faster too. A 2GB option is likely (1GB would be a show-stopper for many i’m sure) and 3G options are also going to be available.

Here’s a video of the X70 Slate. Apologies for the terrible lighting but at least I can report that we’re promised an early sample. That’s one I’m looking forward to.

I have been predicting a 20-30% all-round improvement in battery life with Oaktrail. I might be wrong. Viliv are showing their new Oaktrail-based X70 ultra mobile PC and it’s coming in at 420gm, with 6.5hr battery life. The previous X70 was about 650gm so that’s a great improvement. I’m hearing the same message all over.

It appears that all Oaktrail devices are going to be available earliest in March 2011 and the X70 is no different. I’ve got a video for you later so stick around for that.

Specs are shown in the image below.

What would CES be without a good tease? We don’t have any more information than in the pictures but we’re definitely meeting with Viliv at an early stage at CES to find out more about the X7 ‘Anywhere Connectivity’ Android tablet and the X10 and X70. We suspect the latter is a re-design of the original X70 EX using Oaktrail and Windows 7 but as we said, there’s no information available at the moment. The X70 EX was ultra mobile PC of the year for us over at UMPCPortal in 2009 so we’re expecting good things. The X10, a 10.2 inch Android tablet is touted as having ‘longest’ battery life and is likely to be a development of what we saw at Computex.

All will be revealed in the first few days of CES so keep it tuned to Carrypad.

In Mondays post I outlined the 1K challenge:

1000 Words written on a mobile PC setup weighing less than 1KG, costing less than €1000

I’ll be taking four rigs on the road over the weekend (Starting Saturday) and testing them to see what works best. We’ve got four sets of kit lined up for the test:

• Exclusive! Tega V2 Tablet PC arrives in Europe on Friday
• Toshiba AC100 ‘Smart Book’
• Viliv X70 7 inch Windows Tablet Winner of our 2009 awards.
• TBA

Call for help

As you can see, I’ve got one position open at the moment. I’m aiming for a lightweight 7 inch Android Tablet although the options aren’t too good at the moment. The Viewpad 7 and Camangi FM600 and Archos 70 aren’t available. The SmartQ T7 3G is here but the OTG option for attaching a keyboard isn’t working. I’m also looking at the ultra low cost Archos 7 HT, the Smartbook Surfer, WITS A81 and a few others includiong the Galaxy Tab which is available in Germany now. If anyone in Germany has got a 7 inch Android tablet they can loan me for the weekend (one that works with a USB keyboard) I’d be interested to hear from you.

Or should I just order a Galaxy Tab from Amazon? Anyone care to sponsor that ;-)

If I don’t manage to get a 7 inch Android tablet I have the Viliv S7 ready for action it’s still one of the best mini laptops around.

I’ve been messing around with Solar energy again today…

It turns out that the Viliv S10 has a 9.5v input. Having an input voltage below 12V is always an advantage for solar work and it’s even better when the X70 car adaptor works on the S10. I’ve connected the S10 up to a 24W solar panel and it’s charging the device even when it’s in-use. Given pure sun (2hrs either side of peak sun) it should charge the S10 in about 5 hours. That’s 10 hours usage in 5 hours charging. Unfortunately the S10, like all other PCs, doesn’t fast-charge so this solution would probably work exactly the same with a 12W panel as only about 7W-10W is needed in charging.

The S10 has 3G built-in, a fast SSD and a great keyboard. It’s turning out to be a great solution for working completely off the power and wired networking grids.

I’ve written up some more details over at my little solar computing blog.

Warning: Direct solar charging without a regulator and a buffer power store is always a risk to your devices.

I’ve just done an interview with the  HomeofSolarEnergy website which I guess will be posted soon. The best thing about it was that it got me unpacking my solar panel and thinking about a simple solar powered computing solution again.

Update: The Interview on Home Of Solar Energy is available here.

I mentioned the Viliv S10 in an article about solar-powered computers for 2010 and it turns out that it has the same 9.5v input as the Viliv X70 tablet. Having an input voltage below 12V is always an advantage and it’s even better when the X70 car adaptor works on the S10. I threw out the panel, connected it to the car adaptor and S10 and we’re away. I now have a 3G-capable, Windows 7 convertible netbook running directly from the sun.

Read the full story

Related article: Kindle for (UM)PC now available.
Related article: What’s the best PC for the Amazon Kindle PC software?

I doubt many of you will be spending $599 on a ultra mobile PC just for the Kindle PC application but if you’re thinking of a mobile tablet PC anyway, here’s my top tip for a good PC-based ebook reading experience. The Viliv X70 UMPC. (Video after the jump.)

I won’t claim that this is a perfect e-reader device (see this article for an idea of the ideal PC for ebook reading) and as the Kindle software is locked-down to the Amazon store, it’s hardly flexible but considering I can run Mobipocket, PDFs and practically every other format of ebook known, it works out to be quite the flexible solution. Oh, and it’s a PC!

For those that aren’t familiar with the X70, it runs an Intel Atom at 1.3Ghz with a fast SSD drive and has a battery life of up to around 7 or 8 hours. It weighs 660gm and you can buy it with an optional built-in 3G module. More information here.

Make sure you watch the video in ‘HQ’ mode (button bottom-right) for the best quality.

This question just cam up on Twitter and I think I know where Daniel Blake, the CEO of TinyChat, a web-based Webcam-enabled chat system is going with this!

It’s a subject very close to my heart and so I’ve decided to answer it in more than 140 characters.

The requirements are:

• Small device
• Webcam
• Mic
• Wifi
• Flash 10

First of all, let me highlight my recent article about the Mobile reporting solution version 6. It’s a 3G-enabled solution with an external cam but the core, the Viliv X70 UMPC, can actually run with its own webcam. The X70 is probably the best long-battery-life mobile (and 3G capable) solution out there. But that’s no what Daniel was asking. He just wanted something small with Wifi.

In my experience, the quality of the webcam depends on the software drivers behind it. For example, the very small, very light Kohjinsha SK3 has an awesome 3mp, auto-focus webcam on a swivel screen but the video drivers are so damn heavyweight that the results are just not up to scratch. On the other hand, the lower quality Clevo TN70M with the 800×480 screen is a much better solution. I’ve done WiFi-based Skype on this for long periods and the quality is excellent. The best thing is that it’s available without an OS so you can drop Ubuntu on it and have a sub-1KG portable web chat system for under 400 Euros.

Looking at the product database (and sorting by weight) I see some other solutions too. The smallest and lightest solution there is the UMID M1 at 315gm / 11oz.  We’ve done a full review of this one and here’s what I said about the cam.

The quality of the webcam is good for such a small device. Recording using Movie maker at a relatively high 1mbps bit-rate resulted in better-than-expected results. It also works with Skype although you will be hitting CPU limits that will keep the frame rate down. Streaming with Ustream again returned better than expected results.  Not totally smooth but certainly acceptable for a quick broadcast.

Remember it’s running the same CPU as the Clevo and X70 I just mentioned and it’s also available in a very nice black finish too. Ben is testing that one right now.

In summary then. Here are the top three choices.

• UMID M1 UMPC. *smallest lightest) 315gm
• Viliv X70. (also comes with cam post-processing effects software, Youcam) 660gm
• Clevo TN70M. Swivel screen. Low cost. Available without OS. 990gm

Devices based on the Intel Atom 1.3 or 1.6Ghz version e.g. the T91, the U820 (available with a 2.0Ghz Atom!) and some of the lighter netbooks, are all worth looking at. Also keep an eye on the Archos 9.  If its small and light that you want though, the UMID is unbeatable for the occasional web-cam chat session.

Let us know if you do any tests Daniel.