You can see a bit more detail about the *nix structure used in MIDLinux in this image taken from one of the still-to-be-presented IDF presentations. [click to enlarge]

You can see why parts of the UI look the same as Maemo, its using Hildon. (I assume, then, that Hildon is an open source widget set?)

The Window manager is Matchbox. You’ve got BlueZ in there handling Bluetooth. Other slides in the PDF show that the browser is based on Mozilla.

18 seconds boot time sounds great. 3.5 seconds from standby is even better. In comparison, Ghz-class UMPC’s with XP take around 5 seconds.

I can’t wait to see what the Maemo and Pepper communities say about this.

Rupert Goodwin is excited now. The mainstream press is starting to focus on what’s going to happen at IDF this week.

When Rupert asked Mooley Eden (Intel Mobile) about whether x86 would have the same power/efficiency as ARM-based embedded hardware, Mooley said ‘Wait 24 hours’

This could be an extremely significant 48 hours for UMPCs. Intel will announce details about McCaslin, the platform that will support UMPCs in 2007. They will probably give more detail about the UMPC-specific chipset that is planned for 2008 (that’s probably the bit that Mooley is referring to) and will introduce a concept that could split the UMPC market in two. The MID. A consumer-focused, operating system optimised version of a UMPC that will run Linux.

I estimate that in terms of UMPC news, this could be the biggest 48 hours of the year.

David Flynn / ZDnet have just broken news about MIDs that we were talking about yesterday. Its worth a read because David is over at IDF as a guest of Intel and so will be reporting straight from the horses mouth.

As we said, MIDs are the consumer-level UMPC plan from Intel, A 4-6″ Internet Device running Linux or embedded operating system.

It looks like McCaslin is actually the codename for MID2007 and it will be based on ‘Stealey’, a Dual-Core part running 600-800Mhz clockrates. If its a Dual-Core part then it has to be an underclocked Core 2 Duo because that’s the only part that has all the new power-saving tech on board. 

If its McCaslin and its a MID, and a MID means embedded Linux then will all the new McCaslin based UMPCs be Linux based? No, because the Q1 Ultra and one of Intel’s reference designs run Vista and XP. What I think will happen is that you will see 2 flavours of the McCaslin platform

• McCaslin MID2007 with a Dual-Core CPU but older i915 (GMA900) GPU and embedded Linux for the consumer/prosumer market. Price point under $1000 ($750 I guess)
• McCaslin UMPC2007 with a Dual-Core CPU and new i965 (X3000) GPU and Vista for the IT/Business market. Price point $1000-2000.

Keeping consumer level devices on a completely separate operating systems makes perfect marketing sense and is possible the best thing that could happen to UMPCs right now. It splits the market into two distinct customer types. Very nice move. 

Keep an eye on UMPCPortal over the next 48 hours as I have no intention of leaving my desk until the full McCaslin / MID question has been answered and if the market does split, then maybe I should resurrect Carrypad.com as a consumer UMPC portal (MIDportal) because that’s exactly what the original Carrypad concept was all about. I’m glad people are catching up with me now ;-)

From the poll I ran on the front page over the last week, its clear where people think the Q1 Ultra should be positioned.

A majority of people think it should be price below $1200 and nearly everyone thinks $1400 or more is too expensive.

I’ve read a lot more posts about UMPC pricing this week. Loren comments at Incremental Blogger and also links to John Spooner who thinks UMPCs need to “fall below the $500 mark.” Thats what a lot of people comment on in the Q2 and Q3 period last year.  Maybe this weeks MIDs and MIDLinux will enable a much lower price point.

It looks like Thoughtfix has had a tough weekend of testing all for the benefit of us.

He’s managed to get a UMPC running with the Addonics CF/IDE adaptor but his conclusions are not that positive.

“If you really want a solid state UMPC, it’s best to buy an SSD drive intended for computing use and not attempt to use CF cards.”

Get the full story on UltraMobileGeek.

Again, from the IDF presentations, here’s a MID running MIDLinux, the new RedFlag distribution for UMPC’s that will be released in May. [MID is Intel’s definition of a consumer UMPC. Mobile Internet Device.]

Its looks like a prototype and to be honest, it looks pretty ugly!

I’m wondering about MIDLinux. I quite like the idea of putting it on a Q1 or R2H to see what sort of performance increases you will get. 18 second boot time. 3.5 seconds from standby. Could be quite a nice option especially for the bloated R2H.

Update: Lots of UMPC info coming in from the IDF today. More announcements expected during the keynotes tomorrow morning (at around 0200GMT) No sleep for me over the next 48 hours ;-)

I’ve just read about this in the Intel IDF PDFs that are to be presented next week.

Click to enlarge.

Its all open source. Wow! This is big news. Loads more info in the PDF here.

“Attractive to user” with “special effects” and “finger friendly icons.” This is good news. There’s even a hint about the chipset – Intel 915. An open source driver has been created. Look at the images. Its looking very Maemo like!

The new distro will have a 500MB footprint, will support power-saving features, boot time is shown as 18 seconds on one of the slides.

There’s a GPS application,

Does this mean that one of the four devices next weeks is going to be Linux based?

This PDF, due to be presented at the Intel Developers forum this week, goes through a lot of Linux-based MID (Intel’s name for a consumer focused UMPC.)

I really like this slide.

How about that – ‘Standard Desktop Apps can be very difficult to use.’ I agree. Vista is sometimes just too much for a consumer focused UMPC.

If you’re a Linux fan (Pepper, Maemo, Nokia N800) then take a look at the PDF. Its interesting.