It looks like the Gigabyte U60 UMPC is ready to roll and according to some reports, it could be heading towards Europe and America. This was certainly in their plans when I spoke to them at CeBIT in March and it looks even more certain now. Worrying, perhaps, for Medion as they’ve had a lot of delays on their version of this design and are only just starting to ship to customers.

Pocketables reports that the first batch of 500 UMPCs for the local market (Taiwan) will be made available next week and shortly afterwards there will be a global rollout.  It appears that Gigabyte sells mainly through online distribution channels so the price comparison sites are likely to pick this up as soon as it happens. Pocketables also reports the news that they are teaming up with the local telco, Chunghwa Telecom, to provide a 3.5G bundle. Looking at the images provided by VIA I’d say that they are just bundling up a HSDPA USB dongle similar to the one I tested here. Its also not clear if Chunghwa are going to subsidise the U60 like carriers normally do with mobile phones. So far I’ve only seen one second-tier/virtual cellular provider doing this and so if it was being subsidised by Chunghwa, it would be the first example. To me, the acceptance of UMPCs by cellular carriers is a very very important step. At that point you can be sure that production capability is ramped up, 3rd party investment is secured and confidence in the future of UMPCs is there. It also means competition and subsidised prices for the end-user which is always good.

The new UMPC info is a one-liner: “The motherboard maker said it will launch another UMPC model in the second half of 2007.” Keep an eye out at Computex for prototypes or announcements on this one as it looks like they are working closely with VIA. (VIA Technical Forum will take place at Computex, Taipei on the 6th June. New device announcements are expected.) 

Lastly, Gigabyte says that the UMPC market has a chance to reach 2 million units in 2007. Of course it does! There’s a chance someone might drop a cheque for 1 million through my letterbox today as a Fathers day gift! What the chance though? My estimate for 2007 was near 700,000 units and here’s my hyperlinked source! There are some more estimates here and here (not mine I hasten to add but at least Richard Brown of VIA has explained why he supports the 10% by 2010 prediction.) that reach up to the heady heights of 25 million units.

Hyperlink to News Source:DigiTimes

….and it includes a UMPC.

We, the all preaching UMPC community, often talk about mobile usage scenarios and how the UMPC is the most capable and efficient device for the job. Often these scenarios include time and money-saving aspects and prove how the UMPCs can work to make this possible. Today I came across a totally new scenario though and its one that I think could really be one of the killer scenarios of the UMPC ecosystem.

Let me explain. I’ve often talked about accessories and docking stations. I honestly believe that a UMPC can be used as an office PC and that only independent analysts and advisors can promote it because there’s just too much for manufacturers to lose if they suddenly find that they’ve promoted the UMPC to a point where its killing sales of traditional notebooks and desktop PCs. To that end, I’ve prepared a photo shoot of a scenario I think will push UMPCs into the most private corners of a persons life.

Take a look at the following and tell me what you think. Will it light the UMPC touchpaper or am I missing something?

Click here to view the future of personal computing.

Matt Millers ‘year of Linux’ article today reminded me to post something about what’s going on in the Mobile Linux world. I posted last week about some progress with RedFlag (who appear to be close to releasing a useable distro) and the start of an Ubuntu project for a Mobile and Embedded distribution. There’s no more news on RedFlag today but I have been following Ubuntu’s team through their mailing list and Wiki. The main thing I’ve noted is that Ubuntu are really just starting on this and although Nokia and Intel are involved, its going to take a while to get a useable product out. Activity on the mailing list is high but the release schedule runs alongside Ubuntu 7.1 (Gutsy) which isn’t due until October 18th. That means you won’t see it in commercial MID devices until 2008.

RedHat (not RedFlag!) has also chipped in this week with news that they will develop their Sugar GUI for mobile devices. Sugar is the interface used on the OLPC XO machine (One Laptop Per Child) and is already available for download but the announcement at RedHat’s partner summit indicates a long development phase. CEO Matt Szulik said:

“You should not expect we’ll give you a finished product in 15 minutes around the Sugar desktop and Sugar client,” he said. “Customers are at an interesting stage to make decisions about what their next-generation client strategies will look like. “

Interestingly, CRN.com feels that Sugar could be a rival to a possible Google desktop. I’m not sure if CRN realise that both Google and RedHat are major investors in the OLPC project. Its more likely, I feel , that the XO would be stripped down, loaded with a consumer GUI and repackaged into the Google tablet that many people predict. Another thing I note about RedHat is that they don’t seem to be involved with the Intel-led MID ecosystem at all. No Gnome Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE) participation and no Mobile Internet Device Innovation Alliance (MIDIA) participation either. I wonder why? Could it be that one of the other sponsors of the OLPC project is AMD?

Kevin Tofel of JKOnTheRun has just completed a successful upgrade of his Vista-based Q1P from 1GB to 2GB and is reporting happiness!  One of the early tests Kevin did was to test the standby speed and he reports that coming out of standby is almost instant which is very nice indeed. I’ve just had a look at the prices of the SO-DIMM modules here and its not cheap. For 3 seconds of standby improvement, I’ll stick with 1GB on my Q1P. Especially as I’m running XP TE and appear to have a fair bit of RAM free along with a longer battery life than under Vista. Its a great result for those that want to improve Vista on UMPCs but my goodness, doesn’t it prove how much Vista just kills small PC’s?

Kevin is working on some more tests which I hope include battery life. Keep an eye on him at jkOnTheRun.

I think I found the ultimate UMPC holder while I was there!

I went to the Gym today. Its not something I do very often, I have to admit, but the Solar UMPC tour is drawing nearer (next weeks planned start has been abandoned due to bad weather – next planned start date is 10th June.) and I really need to step up my fitness activities. Going the distance and pushing myself on the bike is not really the aim of the tour but being able to blog without aching arms and an aching bum is!

I took a UMPC to the gym and had the chance to take a few pictures. Its actually a personal training studio for one-to-one training so I was able to spend some time taking decent pictures showing how a UMPC fits into this environment. I was able to read RSS feeds, watch videos, respond to emails and even play Sodoku which is pretty difficult when your heart has already hit 100% utilisation!

The image above is not of some strange eye exercise, its me on the massage table! I really don’t know why the under-slung holder is there but I have to tell you, despite it looking very weird, it was perfect for the UMPC and very very relaxing! More pictures below and in the gallery. Thanks to Power-Balance for the use of the studio. I’ll be back. As long as I can bring my friend!

 
More images in the Gallery.

During the course of the last 24 hours I’ve been pulling together all the Fujitsu UMPC stats and specs that have been coming out of WinHEC and Fujitsu’s press releases and website. I think I’ve got all the stats ironed out now but one stat intrigues me a little and that’s the 4 hours battery life figure. Of course it seems high but in this case its been tested against a standard. The Jeita standard for battery life tests. Could it be a real battery life figure rather than a marketing managers dream? To answer the question I dived into the Jeita paperwork and have found out the answer for you. As you probably guessed, the Jeita test is not exactly real-world.

I estimated last month, that the smaller McCaslin devices would have 20W/hr batteries and run for about 3hours (average drain about 7 watts) I got the battery capacity right – the Fujitsu has a 19W/hr battery (2 cell – standard version.) but what about that battery life. They claim 4hrs under XP. That’s 30% more than my figure. Why?

Its because the Jeita battery life test is as about the easiest ‘test’ you could ever give a UMPC. Totally unrepresentative of a real-life scenario. Here’s how it works. (You can look through the English specification here – PDF Link)

First, you turn on your UMPC. Then you turn all the radios and audio off. You turn down the brightness to 20cd (I’m assuming its 20cd/m2 – 20nits = nothing!!) and set the power-saving setting to a point where a given video file plays smoothly. Make sure the UMPC is fully charged, pull out the mains supply and start the test. Play the Jeita video file (with the player of your choice) until the device dies. You are allowed to turn off all the standby/hibernation alarms too so that it doesn’t turn off at 3% battery capacity. The video file is an MPEG-2 (easy to decode) 1.2mbps file. Nothing too taxing.

I’ve just run the test on the Q1P next to me and the battery life, unsurprisingly, shows a healthy 3.2 hours. If I fire up notebook hardware control, the battery drain is very low at around 10 Watts and the CPU has stepped down to 600Mhz and is working at 10%. Not exactly pushing the UMPC to its limits is it! But wait. It gets better. There’s a second part of the test and this one even even worse. Basically you turn everything off, stop all programs, put the brightness to minimum (backlighting must be on though.) and wait until it dies. On the Q1P, that test returns an estimated 4hrs run time at under 8W drain.

To get the Jeita battery life figure you add the results of the tests together and divide by two. This gives you the battery life figure. In this case, with the Q1P I get 3.2 + 4 / 2 = 3.6 hours which is, funnily enough, about 30% more than in real life scenarios. Jeita turns out to be nothing more than a minimal-usage battery life test.

To make things simpler for the future, I’ve come up with 2 new rules. Chippy’s rules of UMPC battery life are 1) Reduce manufacturers claims by 30% 2) Check the real figures that I post on the product portal after the device has been through the hands of trusted users. Users, not testers!

Using rule 1) The Fujitsu UMPC has an estimated 3 hours of real battery life on the 2-cell battery (under XP. Less with Vista.)

Click for Fujitsu UMPC specifications

One of the first online retailers to offer the Q1 Ultra in the UK has appeared. Mikro Anvika are offering the NP-Q1UA001/SUK for 800 soft ones. That’s a very competitive price for this specification which includes the 60GB drive, cameras and Windows Vista. In Germany, the same model is appearing for 1200 Euro now.

The specifications appear to match the Q1U-V in the US which is going to be offered for $1200.

More links and images in the product portal. Thanks to Sung Quek for sending the link in.

Multiple versions I was expecting. High price is a little shocking. But NO BLUETOOTH? What are Fujitsu thinking about with their FMV-U8240 [U Hate 2 Fault Me?] Before I get into the details of that, take a look at this hands-on report by PC World. The list of specifications are quite impressive ad there’s no negative undertone in the report either. It weighs 580 grams and measures 171 millimeters by 133 millimeters by 32 millimeters thick. Using the standard battery the machine will run 4 hours on Windows XP and 3.5 […]