If you’re in a quandary over black or white Kohji’s, maybe this image will help you. I prefer the white one. Its the SA1FOOD. What a great model #.

 I think we all missed the birthday of Origami. It was 1 year old yesterday if you go by the date of the official press release from Microsoft. 

Happy Birthday Origami

Here’s the Origamiportal post following the press release. One year on and there’s nearly 50 ultra mobile devices available. Some are derived from the Origami project and others have a different heritage, but all have one thing in common. They’re Ultra Mobile! There’s a great comment on the Engadget story of the day:

“I say it again: This device is 100% guaranteed chick-repellent material. A toy for people who can’t find the world around them just quite fascinating enough. Get a laptop and do some work. Use a smart-fon if you have to, but this gizmodo-no should stay in a hospital. and it should stay made by Fujitsu.”

Each to their own I say!

Check out the new UMPC. Stylish and loaded with power. It weighs under 1kg. Battery life is great. In fact, I wish my UMPC would take 3 AA batteries!

Early UMPC adopter.

The keyboard was a high priority requirement. A PC just isn’t a PC without a keyboard! For more (sensible) discussion on keyboards, see Kevin Tofels post at jkOnTheRun which has kicked-off a long line of interesting comments.

Location: Bonn Venusberg.UMPC: Kohjinsha SA1Internet: T-Mobile Web N WalkConnection: UMTS via BT on Nokia 6280 Armed with a fresh T-Mobile Web N Walk account I was sitting down in the woods near the house and having a few problems signing up for a new blog. It appears that T-Mobile (in Germany at least) proxy the images for recompression. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work for the blogger captcha image. It took ages to work it out. I hope this isn’t the start of annoying problems with T-Mobile. I’ve heard of […]

It seems like years since I first reported on the VX3 from Mobits. It wasn’t exactly attractive in its CAD form but looking at the real thing seems even worse. It was spotted at CES by GottaBeMobile when they were with the TabletKiosk team (they are launching it as the ‘TuffTab’) but we didn’t really get much in the way of close-ups.

More images in the Gallery.

It might be a little on the industrial side but what it does have that’s both rather unique and quite cool is the IP53 (ingress protection against dust and water spray,) the ruggedisation and the nice hardware platform. Its a VIA-C7 with VX700 and LED screen just like the Q1b and that means long battery life. I’m guessing that this one is going to be quite good value in terms of price too.

Believe it or not, I’m actually considering one of these. I’m going to be going seriously mobile with an ultra mobile later this year (more on that after the CeBit coverage) and this could fit the bill quite nicely. Actually, with my track record for breaking UMPCs, maybe I should get one of these for the home too!

The images came from Mr Hushhush of DontTellMyBoss Corp. but unfortunately there’s no information other than the images. There’s more in the gallery and the detailed specs, which have been known for some time, are in the database under the TabletKiosk brand.

As I was writing the last post, I noticed that the Flybook V5 specs had gone up on the Dynamism website…along with a gallery and prices. Availability for the non-HSDPA variant is only 2-3 weeks. Which is interesting because Flybook themselves don’t have any info on their site!

Specification-wise its about as good as you can get today with Ultra Low Power computing components and there’s just about every interface you can think of on it. From a V95 modem to a PCI-Express slot.

Pricing starts at $2450 for the non-cellular. The HSDPA version will be available in April for an extra $150.

As usual, we’ve put the specs in the database ready for you to sort and refine! Its probably worth putting the P1610 and V5 side-by-side because they’re both aiming at similar customers. I expect that the V5 will be at CeBit next week so expect a hands-on report then.

The doors open to the CeBit exhibition in Hannover in just 5 days which means its time to finalise the preparations. I have a pass for the event which permits me entrance on Press day although I won’t be arriving until the afternoon. By that time the Engadget team are bound to have dressed up as cleaning ladies and attempted early entry but they must remember that this is Germany we’re talking about here. Rules are rules!

I wouldn’t blame them for trying though. Dressing up is a lot of fun. Oh. I mean…there’s a lot to be seen and reported on. This is where focus comes in handy. UMPCPortal won’t even be batting an eyelid at 150″ LCD TVs or 25 Megapixel cams. I’ve got a UMPC plan! It goes something like this:

Enter Hall 1 and run to Samsung stand. Scan for small shiny black device with split keyboard and move in with tripod and camera. Analyse, test, fondle, snap, snap snap. Send images to gallery, make a quick Ultra Mobile report. Possible Twitter and ComVu video action. Move on to next target. Repeat until fade.

The reporting kit will be based around the Kohjinsha SA1 Ultra Mobile PC (yes, the one with the difficult keyboard.) and a T-Mobile HSDPA contract although to be honest, I may not use the HSDPA modem as its just too awkward to be connecting and disconnecting it all the time. I’ll either use the T-Mobile hotspots on site (there are 263 access points apparently. This info on access points will be useful if you’re going.) or use 3G access via my mobile phone. Fortunately, these are all included in my Web ‘n’ Walk contract.

Supporting my work at CeBit 2007 will be Dynamism who have agreed to sponsor some of my work there. Hopefully I can find them some nice new gadgets to stock in return. If you haven’t had an ogle at some of the nice mobile and ultra mobile devices on their website, I encourage you to do so. In fact I’ve just seen that the Flybook V5 info has gone live. Gimme gimme gimme!

The migration of Carrypad and Origamiportal to UMPCPortal.com is complete and I’d like to welcome everyone in to have a look around. Since last November I’ve been planning how best to move the three domains into one and in a mad dash between CES and CeBit I’ve managed to complete it.

Underlying the new portal is the old Origamiportal engine which, while its not perfect, brought advantages of smooth migration and preservation of the valuable readers contributions in the forum. I’ve mainly concentrated on re-writing the product database portal and with the help of John Tokash (Readermini for the Nokia tablets is one of his other projects.) we’ve enhanced the database, improved the usability and introduced a fantastic new feature – the comparison engine.

John took my requirements, worked his Web2.0 magic over a few weekends and came back with a tool that I’m really happy with. I have already used it twice in the last 24 hours to compare new devices. You’ll find battery life data where we’ve done tests, pixels per inch for screens, frame diameter calculations and the ability to sort, refine, sort, refine and re-sort to your hearts content. There’s still more data to go into the database too!

In addition to the comparison engine, I’ve simplified the forum as much as I can (ripped out some adverts, improved the layout, reduced the categories) and migrated all the content over from Carrypad. You’ll find a cross-domain search tool from Google on the front page. While everything gets re-indexed by the search engine, this is a good way to find info you’re looking for.

There’s still work going on in the background to fix the little things that aren’t perfect and we’ve got a to-do list as long as our arm of changes and improvements we want to make. Feel free though, to make suggestions or point out errors as you find them. One of the items very high on the to-do list is a mobile version of the site. It just hasn’t been possible to do that yet so if you’re struggling with the site on a mobile device, the full RSS feed or even full site under something like bloglines mobile is my recommendation.

Thanks to all the help and feedback from the testers and a huge thanks to John Tokash for some really nice work and a professional approach that kept me well in line with my priorities and actions.

A few points to note:

• Anonymous comments are enabled on news items but due to spam I had to turn on the approval process. Anon comments may take time to appear in news items
• I’ve tried testing with as many browsers as I can but its like trying to fit a balloon into a toilet roll holder. You push it in on one side and then something pops out on the other. I’m no CSS expert but I think most popular browsers are covered. Safari so good-IE.
• RSS feeds stay the same. I’ll add an overview of the feeds at a later date.

Next stop: Hannover and CeBit which is going to be fantastic for the UMPC world if the Q2 rumor is anything to go by!

Steve / Chippy