Category: Tablets

Soon after releasing the 10-inch Acer Aspire One, Acer may be now working hard on a MID with a pretty sizable touchscreen. The unit also seems to have a dock connector at the bottom to connect to other peripherals. The little hole looks like to be a 3.5mm headphone jack.

There is no other information like the type of processor it will be using and the amount of storage space. But, if we follow the market trend, all the latest MIDs are coming with Atom processors, which also opens the possibility to use Desktop-class operating systems like Windows XP or Windows 7. So, it will likely have an Atom processor. [electronicpulp]

Midmoves have posted some great pictures of the BenQ S6 MID. For those who don’t know about this little MID from BenQ, it is a Mobile Internet Device (MID) with built-in 3G, 2GB SSD, 512MB RAM and a 4.8-inch WVGA display (800 x 480).

We have heard great things about it including it’s great browsing capabilities along with breezy HSDPA’s 7.2 MBPS speeds, it surely can be the best MID of all times. Again, my major complain is the poor screen resolution. You can get the resolution in a much smaller Windows Mobile devices these days like HTC TOUCH HD (review) and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1(review)

Keep an eye on midmoves for the full review of the BenQ S6 MID.

Atom powered MIDs seem to be on the rage now! Viliv has unveiled another MID based on Atom platform. It appears that most of the companies are now jumping from Arm-based architecture to Atom-based architecture.

It comes with Intel Atom Silverthorne (Z520) processor clocked at 1.33GHz and a 7-inch WSVGA display (1024 x 600). Although, it sounds a little odd, when engadget is calling this MID a handheld.

Here are it’s specifications:

• Atom Silverthorne 1.33GHz processor
• choice of SSD: 8GB/16GB or HDD: 30GB/60GB
• Windows XP or Linux
• 1GB RAM
• optional WiMax module (mobile broadband)
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and WiFi b/g (no ‘n’)
• Weight: 660g
• built-in GPS (Sirf Star 3)
• SDHC slot
• dimension: 210(w) x 117(h) x 22.5(d) mm

It is nice to see that Viliv is giving Windows XP as an option unlike the Gigabyte M528, which has been giving a headache to it’s users in getting the XP working. Also, folks at Viliv claim that X70 would give upto 6 hours of battery life. That would be quite difficult to achive considering the fact that it is running on Atom processor and not on a ARM based platform, which is much more power-frugal. The inclusion of SDHC slot and Sirf Star GPS are nice additions.

[myviliv]

midu over UMPCportal has found that the Kohjinsha Japan has posted a new BIOS and official production release of Intel graphics driver for the Kohjinsha SC3.

Click here to go to Kohjinsha Japan webpage (japanese)

thanks to Minnie for the tip

Fujitsu U810 has been around for almost 1.5 years. Windows Vista on it’s 800MHz processor was not amazingly fast. This forced many people to switch to Windows XP or XP Tablet. Andre from katastrophos has posted the steps to install the Windows 7.

First of all, you need to download the Windows 7 BETA from Microsoft. Then, burn the ISO to a DVD and use an external DVD drive to install it via USB.

The Setup.exe on the driver CD will complain that the operating system is unsupported. To circumvent this problem, just start the setup in Vista compatibility mode:
Right-click on “Setup.exe”, “Properties” -> “Compatibility” -> “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” “Windows Vista”.

Install the drivers and utilities in following sequence:

Drivers
04. Button Driver
05. Camera Driver
07. Fingerprint sensor (driver)
08. FUJ02B1 Device Driver
09. FUJ02E3 Device Driver
11. Pen Driver
12. Pointer device driver

Utilities
03. Button Utilities
07. Fujitsu System Extension Utilities

The Auto-Rotation is not working at the moment. You have to do that manually. After installing Windows 7, you will get a Experience Index of 1.5. That is due to the processor. Score of rest of the components are ok for UMPC.

The OQO Model 2+ was revealed at the CES 2009. The best thing about the OQO Model 2+ is the use of the fastest Atom processor so far, the Atom Z540 CPU running at 1.86GHz. OQO also beefed up the RAM to 2GB, which made everything even more smoother than before.

Jenn, over midmoves have done some benchmark tests on the new OQO 2+. Here is the screenshot of Windows Experience Index. It is quite odd on the Windows Vista’s way of judging  the base score by taking into account the lowest score rather than taking the average score into consideration. Nevertheless, we can easily make out that Vista seems to be quite usable on the little machine from OQO.

Here are the scores from the CrystalMark, which are not shabby at all comparing to the other UMPCs and Netbooks in the market.

Benchmarks aside, the main aspect of the OQO Model 2+ that stops me from getting one is the low resolution WVGA display, which can natively show only 800 x 480. Folks at OQO should have put in a minimum of 1024 x 600 pixel display which is more common on the netbooks and UMPCs these days. A WVGA display can ruin the whole user experience if you are running a lot of applications concurrently or you are running a lot of tabs in firefox/IE/Chrome.

Fujitsu has introduced a limited-edition LifeBook U820 tokidoki-branded mini notebook. It is being priced at $1,124 for the base configuration model. On the other hand, if you want to go with the standard cover, it would cost you $1,049 for the base configuration model.

Whether you buy with the standard cover or the tokidoki cover, the configuration won’t change. The Fujitsu Lifebook is one mightly little premium-quality UMPC with ultra-high resolution at 1280 x 800 on a small 5.6″ display.

Visit Fujitsu U820 webpage

OQO model 2+ claims to be world’s smallest Vista running PC with OLED screen. The new model 2+ comes with a much faster 1.86GHz Intel Atom processor and 2GB RAM unlike it’s older sibling OQO model 2, which ran a VIA processor and 1GB of RAM. According to the folks at OQO, the new OQO model 2+ offers performance up to twice as fast as its predecessor. It also comes with an embedded passive touchscreen for easier input. This will allow you to use your hands to use the touch screen and you won’t have to search for the stylus just to tap on something on the screen. It comes with inbuilt 3G, thus giving you great speed wherever you get mobile coverage.

So, with the newer model, you get the fastest available Atom Z540 CPU running at 1.86GHz. Since the RAM in the OQO is non-upgradble, it makes sense to give the users as-much RAM as possible to make the Vista experience better. The display is still WVGA (800×480), but the colors look great thanks to the OLED display. The white color looks whiter and black color looks more dark. The model 2+ supports large external displays up to 1920×1200 with HDMI/DVI and VGA interfaces. The keyboard has not change as it was already very usable in the original OQO 2.

Also, ApoTheTech was also able to gather information about it’s ability to provide hardware video decoding. Hi-def H264 video plays fine on the OQO 2+. Also, since it provides hardware video decoding, it does not burn a lot of power while running CPU-intensive videos.

Regarding battery life, you will be able to get nearly 3.5 hours of juice before the OQO 2+ shuts down. This means that with extended battery, you will be able to squeeze nearly 7 hours of battery life.

OQO 2+ official webpage

Looks like the CES is going to more goodies than I personally expected. GBM has received an email from the Digital Experience people, which says that at CES, the OQO is going to unveil an Intel Atom processor version of the OQO. It will also have 2GB RAM and an OLED display! Here is the actual of the email received:

OQO, Inc. announces the new model 2+ with the Intel® Atom™ processor, the world’s first PC OLED display, and worldwide 3G capability. Based on the 1.86GHz Intel Atom processor and 2GB RAM, the OQO model 2+ offers performance up to twice as fast as its predecessor and includes an embedded touchscreen for easier input.