A few short months ago, I bought Samantha, my Samsung Q1P, for $1,299. She came with XP Tablet Edition 2005 pre-loaded but today, her Vista siblings can be had for $100 less. An eagle-eyed reader tipped us last night that Best Buy shows the Q1P with Vista for $1,199 right now. I just verified on-line and the site shows that they’re in stock. I’m not sure how this compares with the other ‘usual suspects’, i.e. Fry’s, CDW and such, but that’s not a bad deal. Thanks for the tip, Mitchell!

Given the recent announcements of the Q1P Ultra and HTC Shift, is there still interest in the Q1P with Vista? Bear in mind, we don’t yet have firm prices on either of these units.

What’s the first thing you usually do with a new device? I do what many others do: I start looking at all the cool settings to see what I can tweak! That’s what a new Q1P owner from the UK did as well, and is often the case, a setting got hosed:

"I’ve been messing around with my new toy, and I’m pretty sure tap and hold worked as right click earlier today, and now it has gone. No idea what I have done. The tablet settings in the control panel suggest it should be turned on."

If the Tablet PC settings are right, then what could be preventing the right click function on the Samsung Q1?

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If you focused on the Samsung Q1 Ultra news at CeBIT, you might have missed the US 70x UMPCs that are due out late this year or early next year. If these devices got by you, now’s your chance to peep ‘em thanks to JKK’s video of both units. One is a pure slate design that’s all screen. Folks that want a convertible Tablet / UMPC will likely drool over the sibling device; it looks like a very thin screen attached to a small keyboard. In the video, you can see the person using the keyboard more like a thumb-board, so it’s likely smallish (or he has ‘Andre the Giant’ hands) but usable for touch-typing. Well worth watching the five minute hands on, but not too much new in terms of specs. These look to be running a Celeron M at 1.0 or 1.06 GHz, which is about the only technical difference I could find during my quick browse.

I’ve been following the UMPC community with great interest as they try every trick in the book to get Vista drivers for the XP Tablet Edition based Samsung Q1s. I don’t begrudge anyone the right to run whatever operating system they want on their device; heck, regular readers know I’ve spent hours, days even, trying to get Vista up and running on my Q1. I’ve gone as far as I can go without officially supported Vista drivers and that’s good enough for now.

Today I see that folks tried the HID drivers from the Q1P for Vista on older Q1s but to no avail. I’m going to make a bold statement and in reality, I hope I’m wrong. Really, I want Samsung to prove me wrong on the following: I suspect we won’t see HID drivers for the original Q1s. There’s a few reasons on my guess, and it’s just a guess….

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Over at Gotta Be Mobile, Warner’s been arm-wrestling with trying to get the new Vista drivers up and running on his Asus R2H. I’d liken his approach to my ‘brute force’ method on the Q1 last year, but he’s got the benefit of drivers from Asus. In part one of his Vista excursion, he covers the list of drivers which is good, but there’s little documentation from Asus that provides insight as to what is what. Truth-be-told, Samsung could improve in this area as well.

Part two covers some utilities that Warner hasn’t installed just yet, but at this point, he should have a fully functional Vistagami device. Unfortunately, there’s a few remaining issues; two of which are similar to what I’ve seen on the Q1 as they both revolve around the display: screen resolution switching and a timeout on the digitizer. Perhaps there’s a registry key for the Asus similar to the Q1 that will help?

If this morning’s Samsung Q1 Ultra news roundup didn’t whet your Origami whistle, check out these bits from Infoworld as there’s some additional info on the Ultra and sales numbers on the original Q1 series. First up: Infoworld mentions a May release for the Q1 Ultra, which confirms what others have heard. Next on the docket: Samsung indicates they’ve sold 100,000 units of the original device; I’ve seen numbers batted around before, but I’d consider this one legit. Lastly, there’s two nice tidbits to wrap up: Samsung plans for hybrid hard drives in the Q1 (not sure when) and is also considering a second, lower cost version called the "Samsung Q1 Nearly-Ultra". OK, I made up the name, but the second version is for real

I’m a bit behind due to a heavy workload and a not very local viewing last night; always hate to see a friend lose a parent. Now that I’m up’n'atem with a cup of WaWa in hand, I see there’s a multitude of pics, specs, thoughts and more on the Samsung Q1 Ultra. I figure my first official act of the day, after the coffee-making of course, is to provide a roundup on all things "Q1 Ultra", so here you go! Oh, and be sure to hug a parent today if you can….

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Thank goodness for Twitter! It’s so "instant" that I didn’t have to wait for my RSS feeds to show that Steve has pics of the Samsung Q1 Ultra! He didn’t get too many as the CeBIT Cecurity team ushered him on, but there’s enough to call it a successful mission!

Looks like the Q1 Ultra isn’t as flat as the original Q1 series; the sides seem to flare towards the user a little, which should make for a nice holding and thumb-board angle. I like the fingerprint reader and the appearance of what looks to be a left and right mouse button as well. Zooming in on the spec sheet under the unit also confirms HSDPA and Wibro. Nice job Steve; any word on price?

UMPC News found an image on Samsung’s Taiwanese site that indicates the "Q2" might really be introduced as the "Q1 Ultra" at CeBIT. The image on Samsung’s site looks identical the new Samsung UMPC that will sport a higher resolution screen (1024 x 600 native), a dual-camera solution, the addition of integrated 3G wireless and the split thumb-board.

We’ll have to wait and see in a another two days or so; my educated guess would be that this unit will cost in the $1599 to $1999 range. I’m solely basing that on the price of a Q1P, which is around $1299 right now and adding in premiums for the additional components and functionality. I have no direct knowledge on the product or price specifics.

Over at The Origami Project team blog, Ross provides some useful insights to UMPC battery management; the approach is really geared towards Vista machines, but you can certainly apply the concepts to UMPCs running Window XP Tablet Edition 2005. Ross also created a Vista Sidebar gadget to help you get a better read on your battery life; you can download that right here.

Some personal modifications to Ross’s great thoughts: I routinely keep my screen backlight to the lowest setting that I can use. I also take advantage of different power settings between an AC profile and a battery situation. If I know I’m not going to use my Bluetooth keyboard for any length of time, I’ll actually disable the Bluetooth radio in Device Manager. I set my power button to put my device in Standby and I use it often. What tips would you add?