The ‘Carrypad’ journal was born out of a desire for a mid-range ultra-portable PC. Something like the Psion Netbook perhaps. Or the Sharp Zaurus or the Nokia 770. We called it the Carrypad concept device and it goes something like this: 5-7″ 800×640 Touch Screen Mini Keyboard Wifi, BT2.0, SD slot, USB2.0 600mhz advanced processor 3 hour battery Min 10GB storage Reduced OS Price$600 As you can see. The spec is nothing thats going to flatten an Origami ultra mobile PC device but its what we consider to be the […]

[update: A lot of people have reported that the wifi becomes effiectively unuseable after doing this change. We have also found out the ‘JKK’ has a rather unique Amtek 700 in his hands. Even Amtek are suprised at his good battery life statistics and we have now put Amtek in touch with JKK so that they can work together to see why JKK’s Amtek 700 has such good battery life.] Top marks to Origamiproject forum member ‘JKK’ who posted that he was getting 2 hours web surfing without doing anything […]

The [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/11/AR2006051101865.html]Wahington Post[/url] just ran a story comparing the Q1 against the TabletKiosk eo and which is better.

The review starts out good enough just comparing the features and then the reviewer says, “The Q1 lasted only 1.75 hours on a single charge, and the EO lasted about 2.25 hours”. This is strange since so far the battery figures we’ve seen have been reversed with the Q1 getting better battery life than the eo.

They also say, “In addition, you can connect to a second monitor with either machine, which lets you extend your desktop, use the external display alone, or show the same screen on both displays” which isn’t possible on the eo right out of the box.

so I am assuming either they got the machines mixed up or they have a review system with a bigger battery and different options at the Washington Post. But besides that, it’s a nice feature comparing review.

[img]http://www.origamiportal.com/origami/images/themes/program_launcher_ipod_theme_small.jpg[/img]

I have been working over the past couple of days finishing the first theme for the forth coming theme creator.

The first “official” theme from us is an ipod type theme. For this particular theme I kept the default icon shadowing and changed every other component. We removed all of the default button outlining and added only blue highlighting to both the titlebar and applicaiton buttons to give it more of an ipod menu feel.

Here is a pic of the default Program Launcher theme for comparison with the new theme shown above.

[img]http://www.origamiportal.com/origami/images/themes/program_launcher.jpg[/img]

And with one of the default backgrounds during the animation:

[img]http://www.origamiportal.com/origami/images/themes/ipod_theme_green.jpg[/img]

As you can see, we are making headway in at least starting to see how we can create new themes and getting it running under the theme creator (which is more like a packager/emulator than a creator).

We have also been playing around with different button shapes for our next theme.

[img]http://www.origamiportal.com/origami/images/themes/differentbutton_shape.jpg[/img]

We will be releasing the ipod theme with the [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=74]Origami Theme Creator[/url] beta in the next week or so. It will have all of the included theme naming properties functional when it is released so people can tell where each new theme came from.
Until then enjoy the pics and thanks to [url=http://blog.tokash.org/]John Tokash[/url] for installing these themes and taking all of the shots.

Good news for Europeans looking for ultra mobile PC availablilty today. This morning, we had an email from UK-based Pocket PC Solutions confirming that they will be distributing Tablet Kiosk products in the UK. PocketPC Solutions is pleased to announce that it has been appointed the UK agent for TabletKioskâ„¢ USA, a leader in Tablet PC and exhibit-centric computing solutions. PocketPC Solutions will be responsible for marketing, distributing and enhancing the TabletKiosk range throughout the UK. All TabletKiosk products, including the newly announced eo v7110 Ultra-Mobile PC, are now available […]

Update: Since 2006 there has been a lot more Linux news on the portal. Click here to see all linux/umpc related news items. Well done Jtokash! John succesfuly booted Damn Small Linux on an Tablet Kiosk Eo last night and got the gui up and running.Unfortunately the gui didn’t scale well and a lot of hardware support was missing (USB mouse didnt work, touch didnt work) but it proves Linux boots and X runs. Since yesterday, we’ve found a new set of links that refer to linux-on-tablet sites. (see forum) […]

So after talking to some of the people that got a UMPC it seems that the next thing to conquer is getting Linux running on it. To help facilitate getting the community working on this we have opened [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=9]a new Linux forum[/url].

Steve at Carrypad.com has [url=http://www.carrypad.com/journal/2006/05/volunteers-needed-linux-on-umpc.html]some ideas[/url] on what we can try to get a full distro running.

Some of the different distros that may be a good start to ge tit runnig could be [url=http://www.pendrivelinux.com/]Pen Drive Linux[/url], [url=http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/]Damn Small Linux[/url] or [url=http://www.puppyos.com/]Puppy OS[/url].

Any other ideas or distros that may work, update us [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=9]here[/url] and check [url=http://www.carrypad.com/journal/]carrypad.com[/url] for more info on what Steve is trying.

So, now that we’ve got to the the bottom of the Eo power problems, we can let Tablet Kiosk and Amtek work on that one and move on to the next project. The problem is, we still dont have any UMPC’s available here in Germany and i’ve got lots of ideas. Frustrated. So I need some volunteers to test out my next theory.Is anyone with an Eo or Q1 prepared to do a bit of Linux boot testing? I’ve seen details of previous failures and have been discussing it with […]