Early 2008 Silverthorne release: new MIDs and UMPCs around the corner?
It’s no secret that I’ve shied away from the 2007 UMPC offerings. For my needs, I’m content with technology from 2006. That could all change after New Year’s Day, however. InfoWorld seems to think that Intel’s low powered 45-nanometer Silverthorne chipset will be introduced in early 2008. Intel has had working versions of the chipset since April, so my hunch is that InfoWorld is on target. Silverthorne is expected to offer a dual-core processor with low energy requirements which could boost mobile devices in both the horsepower and the battery life department. I usually don’t play a waiting game with my mobile tech needs, but this processor is one reason I’m playing it for now.
Menlow is due by the 4th quarter also and is based on Silverthorne. I’m waiting for some of these Menlow mobile based UMPC’s also in first Q 2008.
WLS, I hadn’t heard that the Menlow platform is due out in the 4th quarter and a quick Google didn’t turn anything up. Is there a link or announcement that I missed? That would be great news if true and might show some newly available UMPCs in 1Q 2008. My gut tells me that we’ll see demo units with the chipset at CES in January but few new devices will be readily available in the first quarter. I’m hoping to be wrong on that.
I read that Menlow is coming out late Nov, but I see it released early Jan.
Perhaps Intel hasn’t noticed, but Apple has mobile Internet devices ready for the 2007 holiday buying season. Rolling out new MIDs in 2008 will be a little late. But since Intel is inside Macs, maybe they could push an Apple UMPC into the works.
oh how you guys dissing the A1xx are going to live to eat your words. i am definitely going to get a good laugh when you all go out to buy these new 2008 devices.
you do realize that “Menlow” isnt going to be any faster than the current A1xx offerings right? if you dont believe me there are several other UMPC-specific bloggers out there that will confirm this. Menlow is just going to have an even smaller architecture & lower power consumption, but not faster.
even if this dual core pans out, once again it wont technically be any faster. it will be able to multitask better, but the speed itself wont increase.
from pretty much this point on, UMPC’s will NEVER have standard notebook processors again (except for a select few vendors). Intel was not able to cram ULV tech into a small enough, efficient enough, cool enough, package for the even smaller 4-7″ market. that is the reason they created this whole new subset of chips. by doing this it allows them to leave their current ULV notebook chips alone & keep building upon it because of the flexible nature of ultraportables.
if you cant except the A1XX offerings because of ill-perceived speed issues, then you will never own another UMPC again & will have to move up to the subnote/ultraportable category.
Kevin, what are you looking to do with your next gen UMPC? Honestly I’m sitting here with my Q1b waiting for something that really makes me say yes I will do more than use OneNote, IE, and the occasional Word Doc. I don’t use it for much media (video playback isn’t always the greatest) it seems to suit my uses without me wanting to buy the next best thing right now.
Sumocat, how can you say the 2008 platform will not perform any better than the ones out now?
http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/news.php?tid=777324&starttime=0&endtime=0
Menlow/Silverthorne CPU is said operate at 900 MHz to 1.8 GHz. The A110 runs at 800 MHz.
Maybe hardware designers will realize that what mainstream users want is not the Microsoft 7″ brick but rather a jacket size pocket laptop with a touch type keyboard.