Ever since the TabletKiosk eo came out we have been having a big discussion about the battery life and benchmarks [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=334&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0]in our forums[/url].

[url=http://www.carrypad.com/journal/2006/05/eo-and-q1-power-information.html]Steve from Carrypad.com[/url] and [url=http://ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com/]Frank from ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com[/url] have had a lot of info to contribute to the post.

Steve has been summarizing the posts for us and the latest one can be found [url=http://www.carrypad.com/journal/2006/05/eo-and-q1-power-information.html]here[/url].

The biggest issue with the power drain is caused by an issue where the USB devices get polled and the CPU never gets a chance to go into power-saving C3 state. The current fix is to disable the USB device (which effectively removes all extrnal components) until there is a bios update or patch from TabletKiosk.

One good thing though is that TabletKiosk is looking into it. I was talking to DocBliny on our [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=75]IRC Channel[/url] and he pointed me to an email he just got from TabletKiosk that he posted over on [url=http://origamiproject.com/forums/5185/ShowThread.aspx#5185]OrigamiProject.com[/url]:

[b]Thank you for contacting TabletKiosk Technical Support.

We acknowledge that there is room for improvement with the eo v7110 battery life and heat dissipation; and our engineering team is working diligently to resolve these issues.

Please know that our user base will be notified as soon as we have determined the solutions for these issues.

[/b]

So at this point everyone is waiting patiently for a patch and in the meantime have figured out how to make the battery last a little longer.

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

According to [url=http://www.gottabemobile.com/DualCorCPCToBeShippingWithin90Days.aspx]gottabemobile.com[/url] the [url=http://www.dualcor.com]DualCor cPC[/url] is going to be shipping in 90 days.

For any who don’t know what the DualCor is, it is a UMPC that has both both an Intel PXA263 400 MHz Embedded Processor and a VIA C7-M 1.5 GHz x86 and will be running both Windows XP Tablet/Edition 2005 and Windows Mobile 5.0.

There is more info [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=92]here[/url] and on [url=http://www.dualcor.com/details.php]DualCor’s official site[/url]

The collaboration continues!Now that the Q1’s have turned up, people are also reporting their battery life figures. Summary info from the last 24hrs: Ctitanic found a great software tool for measuring battery useage. (Notebook Hardware Control) Q1 battery – 29W/hr rating. (as marked on battery pack. Reported here.) Eo battery – 26W/hr rating. (as marked on battery pack. Reported here.) Eo idle battery drain (USB bus disabled) – 13w (2hrs/ 26W/hr battery). Reported here. Eo idle battery drain (USB bus enabled) – 17w (1.5hrs/ 26W/hr battery). Calculated from multiple reports. […]

Following on from yesterday’s post about Eo battery issues, it was nice to wake up and see that Mgadget found out something interesting! We had identified two issues: 1 – Why are Eo’s appearing to drain more power than a 1.5ghz laptop with 12″ screen? (18 watts)2 – Why arent we seeing the processor drop into power saving modes at idle. We’ve identified the cause of the bad idle battery life. Its a known USB and power-saving bug. (USB devices get polled and the CPU never gets a chance to […]

[img]http://www.origamiportal.com/origami/images/samsung_q1_bestbuy.jpg[/img]

BestBuy has shipped the Samsung Q1s from their first batch and it looks like they started arriving in buyers hands today. People have started posting in our [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=8]Samsung Q1 forum[/url] saying that they just received the new devices.

As people start running tests on this device, we will update the info here so people can see how the two current UMPC devices stand up against each other.

As for those unlucky ones who didn’t purchase one yet, according to BestBuy.com they expect to ship more within the next 1 to 2 weeks.

So if you didn’t get one from the first batch you can help support this site by purchasing a Samsung Q1 through Best Buy. BestBuy also has the black organizer case and UMPC keyboard for sell.

They also have a Hewlett-Packard 16x External USB 2.0 Double-Layer DVDRW/CD-RW Drive listed on their UMPC page so you can install software on the device.

It looks like the first batch of UMPCs was successful, and hopefully this trend continues.

Now that the first [url=http://www.tabletkiosk.com/config/pc/viewCat_P.asp?idCategory=35]TabletKiosk eos[/url] have been shipped and people have been using them. New benchmarks have appeared online and one of the most interesting ones so far has been about battery life. Ctitianic from [url=http://ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com]ultramobilepc-tips.blogspot.com[/url] has started posting his benchmarks from the battery life and it started a big thread in the [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=334]forums here[/url].

The current consensus is that it is being caused by the VIA not going into C3 power sving mode even when all of the external devices are disconnected and WiFi is turned off.

Our resident VIA lover Chippy, has been in contact with some people about the problem and wrote up a nice recap of some of the tests and info on [url=http://www.carrypad.com/journal/2006/05/eo-battery-isses-being-analysed.html]CarryPad.com[/url].

This is obviously a problem that we hope can be easily solved and hopefully will soon find out exactly how much battery life is possible with the devices.

So if anyone has any advice about how to get better performance out of these particular devices the original discussion is [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=334&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0]here[/url] or feel free to post more info in our [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=7]TabletKiosk eo forums[/url]

I can’t seem to get away from this obsession with power utilisation on UMPC’s. Its worrying me! I might have to take my mind off it with one of these babies.Liquid cooled. Low power. Great for complex calculations. However, until I get to the bottom of this issue….. Ctitanic broke the news that he’s only getting 1.5 hours from an Eo battery and that PCMark and 3Dmark tests results were very bad. The processing power tests are a bit suspect but we should always expect the VIA to underperform against […]

[url=http://www.newspaperdirect.com/]NewspaperDirect[/url] announced in a press release today that through a relationship with Microsoft they will be offering their newspapers on demand service to the UMPC devices.

NewspaperDirect has a large offering of newspapers available for download (a [url=http://www.newspaperdirect.com/newspapers/titles.aspx]full list can be found here[/url]) and allows you to download the news to your computer for viewing while on the go.

The company also runs a website called [url=http://www.pressdisplay.com]PressDisplay.com[/url] which allows you to view popular newspapers online in a news print format.

Full press release below…