I missed this story in the ‘My Vega’ blog recently. Whoever owns the blog seems to be getting much more info than me as they’ve found out the the new Vega will have WiFi (huzzah!) Bluetooth (whoop!) and an LX900 (jolly good show old bean!)

What were the biggest complaint about the current Vega? WiFi, Bluetooth and CPU power!

The LX900 won’t solve the 3D graphics support issues (which doesn’t help Google Earth at all!) but it will definitely spice up an already impressive little 5-hour sub-umpc package. ‘Snave’ says that the unit will be ready for the summer and it could have a little surprise up its sleeve! 3G? GPS? laser projector? I’m all RSS-ears Snave.

Frank (CTitanic) has uncovered some great news about Vista on the R2H and Q1 UMPCs.

He’s found a BIOS upgrade for the R2H and reports on one for the Samsung Q1 too.  Both have notes of Vista goodness but no-one has confirmed that it solves any of the Vista problems. It looks like more drivers are needed. Which brings us to  this post from matt Faulkner that talks about Vista drivers being available soon for the R2H. Tracing that story brings as back to Frank again. That guy is doing a damn fine job! Someone throw him a few more UMPCs for  goodness sake!

Remember how the ‘Vistagami’ UMPC from Amtek was very nearly completely missed? If it hadn’t been spotted hiding in an Engadget video about the Medion UMPC or tracked down by Gizmodo to a broom cupboard somewhere in Vegas, we might never have had the glimpse that we did.

Today there’s no chance of missing it. We’ve received the OK to post information on it and can reveal that the default color won’t be that rather ghastly green shown on the CES prototype. In fact, it looks quite good with its silver trim. Much better than the T700. Here’s an image.

Spot the photoshop error! Click to enlarge.

Immediately you can see that they’ve added a directional pad to the frame switches and are obviously billing it as a Vista UMPC. Here are the specs (from an early marketing handout. Subject to change of course.)

• CPU: VIA C7M 1.2Ghz
• Chipset: VX700M
• Memory: 1 SODIM slot (max 1GB)
• Battery: 26W/hr
• HDD: 2.5″ 40GB
• Screen: 7″ 800×480
• Stereo speakers
• SD Card slot
• 1,3MP camera
• WiFi, BT2.0, 2xUSB2.0
• Cradle connector
• Weight 850gm
• Operating system. XP and Vista support.

Unfortunately there’s no word on whether the screen is a LED back-lit part which could enable 4 hours battery life. If not, its back down to sub 3 hours.

It looks like Amtek taken the T700 model and updated it with the new chipset, a faster processor, SD slot and webcam. Basing a design on this platform is no bad thing as, out of all the ‘Origami’ UMPCs, the T700 was about the only one that was built from the ground up as a tablet PC with the correct BIOS and driver design. It also means that there’s another VIA-based UMPC in town that thinks it can take on Vista. To date, there hasn’t been any news about Vista compatible VIA drivers for UMPCs and there are still outstanding queries as to whether this architecture can successfully run videos under Vista. A few people have already proved this to be a problem. Unfortunately VIA are not at CeBit but Medion are and if they don’t reveal the answers I’ll be beating them over the head with a damp copy of the CeBit catalogue.

The information on the T770 comes via Coxion who are planning to put the T770 into their professional sales portfolio.

Update: This UMPC is now being tracked in the product database.

According to UMPC France , Gigabyte will be introducing the Arima ULV650 OEM device as the U60 UMPC . Medion have some competition now as this is exactly the device they will be introducing soon . There´s no price or availability info but it looks like they will be presenting it at CeBit in a few weeks time and it will be interesting to see if they have the optional docking station, DVB-T module and GPS modules that are not in the Medion version of the device. It will also be interesting to see if it comes with Vista or XP.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the delivery times for the Medion UMPC. Its been sitting at the 20 day mark for a while. Yesterday it dropped to 14 days signaling the start of the countdown and a very likely availability date of the first day of CeBit. At around the same time as writing the ‘its coming’ post. I received confirmation of a meeting at CeBit with the UMPC product manager and in my reply I mentioned the availability date. Alas, just a few minutes later and just seconds after I had hit the publish button on the ‘its coming’ story, I had a reply saying that the data on the website was wrong. Screeeeeeeech! Unpublish. Just in time. I don’t think it got into any RSS feeds.

Today I got a bit of clarification on the issue. Apparently there have been a large number of orders and the stockpiling is taking longer than expected. Medion Germany will wait for a second shipment of devices from the OEM to ensure a smooth flow of deliveries at launch date. It makes total sense I suppose but its really frustrating. I first reported on the Arima OEM device at the beginning of November last year.

I’ll try and get down to the nitty gritty on the Medion at CeBit. Is the keyboard good or bad and will the VIA C7 be able to handle Vista Media Center!

The German website ‘counter’ has been reset and its now stating ‘more than 20 workdays.’

Guess how much?

This is a the new Sony MEX-BT2500 Bluetooth enabled head unit and not only is it Bluetooth enabled for hands-free mobile phone operation but it supports the A2DP profile which mean that you can stream your music and navigation output from your UMPC straight into your head unit in high quality and without wires. This is something I’ve been looking for for a while but have only seen the Parrot and Pioneer head units. I had no interest in them because they were damn expensive at over $400. The Parrot unit has since come down in price but this new Sony one looks a whole lot nicer. Especially at 185 Euros. That’s a great price for Europe. (found on Amazon.de.)

It has a ‘super sensitive’ mic that can be used for hands-free mode (I wonder if it can be used for speech input on a UMPC via BT?) and there’s a front mounted Aux input for traditional audio connections. Apart from that its a fairly standard unit. It’s not known if it supports track control via a Bluetooth remote profile. (AVRCP)

Its available from the end of March in the UK and European-wide pre-ordering seems pretty easy to find. Info at Sony.co.UK. I’m not sure about the U.S which already has the MEX-BT5000 at around $300 which, now that I’m looking is actually available in Europe at something in the region of $400. Applying the usual crooked mathematics associated with pricing of products in the UK and US and you come to a figure of under $200 for the MEX-BT2500. A complete bargain and wireless freedom.

Like other Fujitsu P1610 owners, after upgrading to Windows Vista I was disappointed that Origami Experience would not run. After a bit of surfing on the Internet I have found a solution. This will work on any computer, and it will be quick and painless, I promise. Read on…

Note: We updated the article with a way of obtaining the Orca Editor directly from Microsoft. It turns out the previous way was violating some terms. Sorry!

This is reaching the far far corners of geekyness. Someone just emailed about a new model number for an ASUS R2H which appears to have Vista pre-installed. The new model number is R2H-BH040C

Sure enough, the MicroAnvika website has it listed and its the only Google reference to the model so far. But there’s something strange about the website as it mentions the R2H-BH040T in the text too. We’ll keep an eye on this one.