As I suspected after the collaborative testing effort with the Tablet Kiosk eo, one of the two battery life problems was related to hardware. John Tokash has reported that TK have found a problem:
we have identified a set of defective cords / capacitors on the initial production run causing the high power drain
Tracing faulty components is an extremely difficult task and as a reseller, TK will have had to work hard with the original design manufactuer to get this sorted out. Although it will require a hardware recall, TK say they will offer accessory discounts as compensation to affected customers.
I guess it will have a knock-on effect for all resellers of the Amtek 700 as the production schedule in China is re-organised to accomodate the recall. Paceblade must be thanking their lucky stars that the Easybook P7 was released without the problem in Europe.
So that leaves just the C3 sleep-state issue to fix now and then we’ll be seeing something more realistic for battery life with this VIA-based UMPC. Having just read Ultramobilepc-tips latest post, I suspect that the ‘other updates’ mentioned are the sleep-state fixes that will help not only Tablet Kiosk but all the other resellers.
Regards
Steve / Chippy.