A few days ago, Digital Trends published the latest report from Rob Enderle who was involved in consultancy work with the Origami team before it launched a year ago. Its worth reading but there’s a few funnies in it.

He calls the OQO and Flipstart ‘second generation UMPC’s which is not really true in my opinion. I would call them first generation UMPCs because they’re still using old CPU and battery technology. There’s nothing 2nd-Gen about a clamshell and slide-out form factor and there certainly nothing 2nd Gen about these devices costing over $1500. For the price of a Flipstart, you can get 2 Q1s, 3 Pepper Pad 3’s or 5 Nokia N800s (Not that having 2 or more UMPCs helps anyone but you get my point right?) ‘2nd Gen’ also implies that the 1st Gen are out-of-date but I can guarantee you won’t see any massive price drops and clear-out sales because the Flipstart and OQO Model 02 are on the virtual shelves.

My ‘2nd Generation’ bar will be reached when we see a step-change in battery density coupled with a significant step down in CPU/GPU energy usage (or a significant step up in processing/GPU capability for the same energy usage.) When that happens then the 2-hour, non-Vista-capable devices might start to look a little out of date and price/performance ratios start to become more important. Prices could start to fall for 1st Gen devices.

We might see one of those requirements being fulfilled on Wednesday or Thursday with the Q1 ultra *IF* its using the Santa Rosa platform. Microsoft will be very happy I’m sure.

S.

Aving are reporting that the ‘Q2’ will be called the Sens Q1 Ultra. Which is strange.

Why would you have a press conference for the ‘2nd Gen’ UMPC and then give it the same name as a 1st-Gen device? What’s even worse is that here in Germany the Q1 is now called the Q1 Pro. When will manufacturers understand (Sony are you listening?) that consumers don’t only get to see their local market device names when they search on Google? It might work in the local Electronics store but not on the Internet which is where most of the pre-purchase research is being done.

I don’t believe that it will be called the Q1 Ultra anyway. The design and technology are likely to be very different from the Q1 and worthy of more differentiation than this.

Via Pocketables.

It has to be said that good navigation solutions for UMPC’s are difficult to find. Despite an x86 platform being able to offer so much more than simple turn-by-turn guidance, no one appears to have put much effort into exploiting the possibilities. The package that appears to be coming out on top though is iGuidance and Frank (Ctitanic) has done a very good job of reviewing it against CoPilot and Autoroute 2007.

The one thing you can’t knock Autoroute for is price though. its the best value package there is by a long long way.

UMPC fans in the US will need to stay up pretty late on the 14th (its payback time – I was up until 4am every night when CES was on!) because I’m putting the info I’ve found together and getting a Thursday 15th launch for Samsung’s 2nd-Gen UMPC. Why?

1. We can be fairly sure that the new Samsung UMPC will appear at CeBit because of this.
2. We can be fairly sure that its going to launch at 10:30 on the 15th because of this:

10:30-12:00
Press conference
Samsung: 2nd generation UMPC Press Conference

I’ll be there and I’ll be using my German skills (fingers crossed!) and twitter to translate and update you all (updates appear on the front page here on the right hand side.) I’ll use the gallery to post images and of-course the website here to make the detailed reports and hopefully, hands-on! If my site falls over there’s always Engadget who I assume will be doing their usual great job of coverage.

All this Samsung Q2 info lines up quite nicely with the Intel press conference one hour before that should launch the Santa Rosa platform. Its just possible that they might mention the Q2 there too.

A quick news post. I’m actually on a bus right now!

DigiTimes has reported that BenQ will introduce a UMPC in the 4th quarter.

No more information is available at the moment. Will it be x86 or RISC based?

This morning I finalised the kit I will take to CeBit on Wednesday. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an HSDPA-capable Nokia mobile phone so I’m stuck using either 3G over Bluetooth on my existing phone or HSDPA on the USB modem.  The second option is a pain in the neck to be honest. It will be ok for blogging in a conference or at a table but if I’m walking around the CeBit halls I don’t want to have to connect up a USB modem all the time. I’m sitting in the […]

I spent most of yesterday (Sunday) refining my Ultra Mobile CeBit reporting kit which will be based around the Kohjinsha SA1, a T-Mobile 3.6mbps HSDPA / Hotspot contract and a Canon S2 IS digital camera / videocam. The final kit weighs in at under 5KG and should provide me with all day reporting capability. I really don’t think you could get much lighter than this with currently available tech and to be honest, I’m quitelooking forward to showing it off!

Missing from the kit at the moment is the TabletKiosk Powerbank which I will pick up at the show and the Philips SBC ME 570/00 microphone that I ordered. Missing from the image are three AC adaptors just in case I have battery problems but if the power bank works it should be able to run or charge everything here and I can leave them behind at the hotel.

The plan is that I can use the Kohji for pulling in photo’s and videos from the Canon via USB or the SD card slot where I can then use them in reports made using LiveWriter. Using the Canon remote capture software I should also be able to do near-live image posting and commentary from relevant keynotes using LiveWriter and the Windows XP Publishing wizard. (Intel will launch Santa Rosa and I’m expecting the Samsung Q2 UMPC to be part of that.) In interviews I plan to use a mic connected to the Kohji and simple MP3 recording software.

Unfortunately I don’t think the Kohji is up to the job of video and having tried a Stickam solution this afternoon, the results are not that glorious due to the lilmited processing power in the SA1. I’ll stick to using the Canon for offline videos as it does a nice job and VGA and QVGA resolutions in M-JPEG format.

I’ll write a bit more about the HSDPA modem at a later date but in summary, while its lovely to have access to the 3.6mbps HSDPA network, I don’t really think I need the modem. What I really need is an HSDPA-capable mobile phone. It would be much easier to have it on the belt and available via BT2.0+EDR. When the 2 month trial is up on this I’ll take it back and look for an E65 or 6110 Navigator as my new UMPC partner.

I’ve put a few images up in the gallery and knocked out a rough video that’s available on YouTube and in a much better quality 1mbps WMV download or stream here.

If you think I’ve missed anything out or am making a big mistake by not taking a hip-flask of Brandy I’ll be happy to hear from you. Drop a comment or two in below this article. You can follow my CeBit progress through TWITTER which is now also displayed on the front page of the portal (right column.)

Its small, mobile and can do things in places that not many other devices can, but I’m not sure I would use it as my main PC for two weeks.

That’s exactly what Thoughtfix is planning to do with the Kohjinsha SA1 though.

I’ll be using it at CeBit for 5 days as my main PC but that’s a different matter. I don’t have anything else that would fit the bill for a tour like that although if I had the money, the Flybook V5 or Fujistsu P1610 would probably be my first choice. Good luck Thoughtfix.