Good news for those waiting for XP-based OQO Model 02 orders today. People are starting to report availability and customers are giving feedback on their first impressions. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any news about Vista versions.

One such report comes from ‘Kenrick’ who has even run some benchmark tests. As usual, the VIA C7 doesn’t post good results against the Intel ULV CPUs so there are no big surprises there. Improvements over the original OQO model are clear though.

Boot time is around 1 minute 5 seconds (from start to desktop availability – no login process,) return from standby looks to be a reasonable 6 seconds and there are some interesting comments about the capacitive scrollbars in this video.

Remember that the XP drivers for the C7 don’t allow full unitization of the video and encryption hardware on board but I hope that VIA will unlock this when they finally get a driver package together for Vista. Its long overdue and I suspect its the cause of delays not only for OQO but for the Medion UMPC too. My attempts to get updates on the situation direct from VIA has so far only received a ‘no comment’ type response which is really disappointing.

More OQO Model 02 threads at OQO Talk.

This makes total sense. The original Vista version of Windows Movie Maker that didn’t work with many UMPC hardware profiles (and extracted a huge moan from me) can now be replaced with a new, working version just release by Microsoft.

Movie Maker 2.6 is for Windows Vista users whose computer cannot run the Vista version of Movie Maker.

JKK. Has just highlighted it in his blog. Thanks JKK! My upgrade path has just been cleared and I’m now considering my next UMPC purchase. Should it be the Samsung Q1 Ultra, should I wait for the HTC Shift or should I see what the 4 new UMPCs look like on April 18th?

Update: Ctitanic has confirmed that it works too.

A few weeks ago I wrote about some testing that ‘Captain’ of Handtops had done on the Flipstart UMPC. He had completed a good range of tests on the device and included the Battery Eater life test. The result was pretty good at 2 and 1/4 hours – 30 minutes (30%) more than the Q1 which uses a similar architecture. Impressive.

The only outstanding variable was the battery capacity. Was it the same as the Q1 or was it a big fat lump of Li-ion? It turns out that its just a big fat lump of energy sitting on the bottom. In fact, its a 40W/hr battery which is over 30% more than the Q1.

I think if the Flipstart had been launched 12 months earlier it would have looked much more impressive and stood a much better chance. In today’s market, with 12 months knowledge and market research floating around on the net, it doesn’t. Even worse, its going to age even more quickly over the next 6 months if Intel has anything to do with it. Flipstart might do well to quickly drop the price of this one and look at getting next-Gen screen and CPU tech inside before the winter season starts.

I reported yesterday on the news coming out via HKEPC from those naughty Taiwanese moles. Today, HKEPC have posted the info in English along with a summary chart (which looks like its HKEPC-generated.)

As before, they report that the processor is a 90nm processor (doesn’t tally with what Intel told me) and the GPU is an X3000 (which I understand is a Santa Rosa part not compatible with old processors?) There’s also a little bit of information about futures too. Menlow is the codename for the 2008 platform and Intel expects the UMPC market to hit 10% of the PC market by 2010.

WHAT!

April 1st is over right? Lets read that again:

Intel expectes the share of UMPC in the PC market will continually go up and score around 10% raising or above by 2010.

By my estimations, the UMPC is taking something like 0.35% of the global notebook  PC market with about 700,000 units to be sold in 2007. [These are my guesstimates – see how I reached these figures here.] 10% of the PC market is something like 50 25 Million units.

Graph below updated
 

While I’d love to see a 400% 300% [corrected] year on year increase, I think there’s been an error somewhere along the way. In fact there’s a few things in the report that smell a bit funny. My money is on ‘fake report.’

As reported by Jenn, Rob and many others, Intel have finally introduced Ultra Low Voltage versions of the Core 2 Duo processors. As I’ve been writing about ULV processors a lot, its worth a little time to asses this news and work out where it fits in in relation to the other Intel developments that are going on.

The two new processors are the U7500 and U7600 (1.06 and 1.2Ghz) and they come in at the top end of the ULV processor range from Intel replacing the Core Duo (U2500 as in the brand new Flybook V5 and LG C1) and forming part of the new Santa Rosa notebook platform.

The two processors can utilise FSB bus speeds of up to 800Mhz and include new enhanced deep sleep (EDS), bus switching and other power-saving feature such as Display Power Saving Technology (DPST) 3.0

Its worth noting that these processors are really part of a notebook range from Intel because with processor TDP ratings of 10W, they will require large format batteries (50w/hr or more.) If battery technology had advanced in the last few years [Dennis has a very valid battery rant over at GottaBeMobile] we might have seen 50W/hr batteries on small UMPCs but as it stands today 50W/hr results in a battery pack too large and heavy for most UMPCs. Maybe we’ll see them in high-end 8.9″ devices later in the year but I wouldn’t expect to see then in mid-range UMPC devices.

For the UMPC market, we need to be looking slightly lower in the Intel range at the Core 2 Solo processors (which, unsurprisingly, have half the power rating!) but there is little known about these at the moment. We can expect 1.06 and 1.2Ghz budget (Celeron brand) and full-spec (Core brand) versions. In the Core range, the U2100 and U2200 processors were due for Q1 launch but haven’t appeared yet. There’s also no word about Celeron versions. Of course, the big question is, what processor is used in the UMPC-focused McCaslin platform. Is it a new 65nm, 800Mhz Santa-Rosa based ‘Core 2’ processor meaning it works with the X3000 GPU and contains a lot of power-saving technology (this is what Intel told me at CeBIT) or is it something that fits in with the Napa Refresh platform meaning i945 chipset and slightly older tech. There were a lot of reports of the Q1 Ultra showing an Intel 945 chipset so its all still up in the air.

My vote still goes for an underclocked Core 2 Solo processor with X3000 GPU.

If its not confusing enough already with information on 65nm Steeley processors, rumors of an i945 chipset and new Tolapai SOC news, The Register are reporting another, different rumor.

This time its from Taiwan, via a Chinese website and it says that Steeley the UMPC-focused CPU and Little River, a northbridge containing an X3000 GPU will all be launched at the IDF on April 18th. It doesn’t say whether the three products are linked with the McCaslin UMPC-focused platform although it does say that the chips work together.

Together, the chips are said to draw no more than 9.3W, with an average power consumption of 1.95W.

With only two weeks to go before the IDF, its almost a certainty that more information will be leaked on McCaslin and the four new Intel-based UMPCs so be ready for more confusion soon!

Thanks to Paul for the tip.

This is going to come across a bit negative but its just the way that the latest Flipstart ‘a Paul Allen company’ press release was worded that got me all worked up about it. Gear Diary has posted a copy of the Press release. I like the concept of the Flipstart and I applaud all attempts at bringing products into the UMPC market but Vulcan, I can’t read your press release without feeling patronized.

Here’s a quote from the press release.

“When people get their hands on the Flipstart device, they just get it. It has a remarkably innovative design that makes it the most usable compact PC on the market,” said Dr. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., vice president and chief analyst, Mobile and Wireless at Frost and Sullivan, a world leader in helping companies achieve growth.

Compare this to comments given at a Frost and Sullivan sponsored conference where the Flipstart was shown:

“I think it’s going to be a couple of years before we know where this kind of device fits,” said Kerry Sedwick, director of technical architecture at American Express Technologies. [from here]

And then the press release talks about typing speeds:

Independent research reveals that people’s typing speeds on Flipstart are 16 to 26% faster and accuracy is 40 to 45% better than on similar products by competitors. 

That’s the sort of cheap advertising you find on morning TV, not in press releases for a product targeted at professional people. One can only assume that they are talking about a speed comparison with the Sony UX which has an extremely poor typing rate. 16 to 20% faster than 35% of normal typing speed isn’t much to talk about. My own independent typing speed tests are here. If anyone gets hold of a Flipstart, drop me a line with your test figures and I’ll add them to the table.

Come on Flipstart. You’re talking to professional people. Give them honest, intelligent information for goodness sake. Drop the big flash-crap-heavy website and drop the cheap marketing talk.

Way, way back in the early days of Vista testing, Kevin Tofel highlighted the problem of WDDM drivers for the Intel 915 chipset which would result in a reduced Vista experience for UMPC users. Although the 915 chipset was old at that time, it was a core component of nearly all Intel-based UMPCs. People moaned. People even campaigned for the problems to be fixed but neither Intel or Microsoft saw fit to modify anything that would enable WDDM drivers…