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.

The Intel Developers Forum kicks off soon in Beijing and the IDF website already has a lot of information available. For example. All the PDF files for the presentations seem to be available. There’s a lot there to go through but the first ones I want to highlight are those that mention MID’s. Mobile Internet Devices.

“UMPC transitioning to MID” is one of the PDF slide titles that jumped out at me and it looks like Intel are trying to move away from using the term UMPC for consumer devices.

I totally agree that the UMPC market will split [my previous thoughts here] but what’s really interesting is that Windows doesn’t really feature an operating system for MIDs. Could they be thinking about the componentized Windows XP embedded? Here’s some of the characteristics that Intel think are important for MIDs.

• 4-6″ display
• 300g
• connectivity via WAN
• Hardware keyboard
• Touchscreen
• Video can
• Small onboard storage.

Which seems to fit exactly my vision of the Carrypad home and office companions. I like the way you’re thinking Intel!

Lets move on and take a look at something VERY interesting. In this PDF outlining the Intel 2008 MID devices, you can even see outlines of three new MID devices. The ‘Stay in touch’ MID, the ‘Be entertained’ MID (which looks like a redesigned Averatec AHI) the ‘Access info and locate’ MID and finally the ‘Be productive’ MID. Could these be the target markets for the four new MIDs that Intel will announce this week?

There’s a lot lot more in other PDFs and one thing I’m ‘feeling’ from these PDFs and the schedule of tracks and sessions is that HP are getting a lot of mentions and associations with mobile technology. Could HP be selling one of the new MID devices?

More MID info and articles.

The Intel Developer Forum in China is starting soon but many of the PDFs are already available.

The most interesting one talks about MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices.) Intels vision of a consumer UMPC.

I’m analysing some PDFs right now.

Dive in here.