It’s Friday and that can only mean it’s time to share my week with you. This week at Mobile Tech Manor a fun OS update turned a UMPC into a brick. I read a lot of e-books which was appropriate given the many e-book readers that were announced this week. I spent a lot of time carrying mobile devices around with me to work remotely. Come on in and share my week at Mobile Tech Manor.
I spent a good portion of this week with my sleeves rolled up, up to my elbows in one gadget or another. I started by installing Windows 7 on two UMPCs, at least that was my intention. The first upgrade was the Viliv S5 UMPC, which was harder than it should be.
I attended the GigaOM Pro webinar earlier (which was great) and then needed to get out of the office. I am in the coffee shop working away on the loaner Viliv X70 UMPC, now that it’s back running Windows XP after my failed attempt to put Windows 7 on it. I’ll detail that aborted process in tomorrow’s Mobile Tech Manor column.
The X70 is a stellar mobile desktop when paired with the Stowaway wireless keyboard and mouse. It’s so small for transport, yet the 7-inch screen is quite comfortable to use for extended periods on the table. I am flying through stuff with no feeling of compromise at all.
The e-book space has never been hotter with a new electronic reader seemingly announced every day. Amazon certainly has made the e-book game popular and everybody seems to be interested in it currently. I have been reading e-books since the early PDA days, and it is still common to see me sitting somewhere with a gadget in my hand, engrossed in the e-book of the day.
I read e-books on many different gadgets, from phones to UMPCs, and folks often ask me what gadget I prefer for reading. That is another one of those questions for which there is no easy answer, as there are many factors that enter into the equation. The size of the gadget is the most important, as it usually determines what particular one I am likely to have with me when an opportunity to read presents itself. The size also determines the quality of the reading experience, as screen size equates to page size in the e-book world.
Word about the next Nokia Internet Tablet has been bouncing around for a while. The rumors had the N900 firmly trying to straddle the smartphone/MID fence, with a full Maemo 5 implementation under the hood. The N900 is now official, with the company planning to show it at Nokia World next week. It is basically a modernized Internet Tablet with full 3G telephony thrown in for good measure. This puts it firmly in the smartphone camp, too.
The Maemo 5 operating system is a full Linux-based implementation that brings the MID experience to the N900. Nokia promises a Mozilla web browsing experience on the N900 that is outstanding, complete with Flash support. The 3.5-inch screen will display at a decent resolution of 800×480, and the sliding keyboard looks good. It also has a Carl Zeiss optics-powered 5 MP camera on board.
The Nokia N900 has all of the connectivity options covered, with Wi-Fi, TV-out, Bluetooth, FM transmitter, GPS and quad-band 3G. The 3G is complete with GSM/EDGE, 900/1700/2100MHz UMTS/HSPA covering all of the bases. The interesting thing about that 3G is the 1700 MHz band, which means the N900 can work on the T-Mobile USA network.
The ARM Cortex-A8 CPU will have 1 GB of application memory to work with, so the N900 should be no slouch in the performance department. All of this goodness should be heading to select markets in October for an unsubsidized price of 500 euros ($713). The N900 is definitely a MID, or is it a smartphone? It looks like both — which is likely Nokia’s intention.
I had a routine doctor’s appointment today and they actually got me in and out early! I can’t remember the last time a doctor got me out of their office even earlier than my appointment start time.
I was prepared though; I had taken the Viliv S5 UMPC along for the ride. I stopped off for a cool beverage (it’s 100 degrees here) and got some blogging done with the little rig. These opportunities are perfect for the little UMPC with the wireless keyboard and mouse.
I spent far too much time yesterday installing Windows 7 Ultimate on the Viliv S5 UMPC. It is now running perfectly, but it took a little bit of effort to get it to that state. Fortunately, there is good information on the web to help in the process and that’s what did the trick for me. The primary issue was the lack of Wi-Fi out of the box. Here are my brief impressions of Windows 7 running on the 5-inch UMPC.
I ended up installing Windows 7 a couple of times to get it right. I found out the hard way that there is only one way to deal with the S5. If you intend to install Windows 7 on your S5, get these instructions from a user on Pocketables, and follow them to the letter. You will need to download all of the Windows XP drivers from Viliv, and users have made them available as a single big (199 MB) download to make it easier.
Although a handful of enthusists have enjoyed using the UMID M1 pocketable computer, you don’t see too many of these devices in the wild. Steve at UMPCPortal checked in to see if the company was still around or went the way of OQO, Raon Digital and the dodo. UMID is alive and kicking, but has been slow to add more supply due to some LCD shortage issues. Maybe that’s a good thing because the company told Steve that an slightly updated product should be available in September. The portable PC will be available in a sleeker looking black model that addresses some screen angle issues found in the earlier product run.
Dynamism appears to be the solo U.S. importer of the UMID M1 at the moment. They currently offer two models at $599 and $749 and are expecting more supply in the final week of August, which jives with Steve’s report. The main attribute accounting for the $150 price difference is a bump of the Solid State Disk hard drive — the base model offers 16GB while the more expensive version offers 32GB capacity.
Both models offered by Dynamism share the vast majority of other specifications:
Fans of clamshell form factor computers ought to be checking out the UMID M1, especially if the company has addressed some early issues. Not that long ago, I would have been all over a pocketable PC with a full desktop operating system, but my move to web-based apps and services has tempered that desire. Well, maybe not completely, but the gadget fund is a little low now that I added a new netbook to the stable.
Customers who ordered a Viliv X70 UMPC from retailer Dynamism have received emails informing them of a delivery delay. Dynamism cites a component shortage by the manufacturer, Viliv, as the reason for the delay. That doesn’t provide much comfort for those anxiously awaiting the arrival of their UMPC, but we can assume the UMPC revival is solid if components are in short supply. Those who are waiting delivery of their new X70 can watch our video review of the UMPC to see what they are missing:
We’re all about small systems here on jkOnTheRun and so are many of the readers. We have previously published my “smallest desktop system” but reader A. Hammoud of Kuwait has me beat. He uses a Viliv S5 UMPC with 5-inch screen, a Stowaway portable keyboard and a Samsung MBP200 Pico projector to make what is possibly the smallest full-featured presentation system. He sent along some photos of his little system to share, and it will almost fit in a pocket for storage. Almost. Thanks for sharing, A. Hammoud!
While the UMPC market has faded over the past few years, a few companies have survived to offer useful handheld computers. Those who stayed in the market enjoyed the hardware, finally becoming capable of offering decent performance coupled with reasonable battery life. Raon Digital is one of those companies, and it creates devices like the Vega, Everun and Everun Note. The Everun Note (shown) is actually more like a netbook of today than a UMPC of yesteryear, but you can see the UMPC roots in it. But will it be around much longer?
Pocketables makes note of some tips that Raon Digital may have filed for bankruptcy. There’s no official word from the company at this point. In fact, if you gauge the company’s current status by its web site, it doesn’t look good. The site is showing an “unavailable” message, which doesn’t bode well. I have some feelers out for more information and will update if I hear anything. At this point, though, my gut says we may have lost another UMPC maker. That’s a shame if true, because the UMPC is making a small comeback due to innovative and useful devices like those from Viliv.
It’s Friday and that can only mean it’s time to share my week with you. This week at Mobile Tech Manor a fun OS update turned a UMPC into a brick. I read a lot of e-books which was appropriate given the many e-book readers that were announced this week. I spent a lot of time carrying mobile devices around with me to work remotely. Come on in and share my week at Mobile Tech Manor.
