Could this be!? Earlier today I decided to see if I could find an image of my first laptop. It was a gift from my uncle, since he knew how intrigued I was by computers. He hands me an all black Dauphin 386SX Laptop. Nothing fancy about it. The internal 9600bps modem didn’t work, and neither did the battery. It was the size of a 15.4″ laptop, with a 7″ screen. Really quite the animal!

I decided to do a quick Google search for Dauphin laptops. What I came across was strikingly similar to a Q1 with organizer pack. Could this be the very first UMPC, that predates even the OQO 01?

When compared to the Q1 with Organizer Pack:

The specs for the Dauphin are as follows:

• CPU: Cyrix486SLC-25MHz 32bit
• 4MB RAM
• HP Kittyhawk C3014A 40MB HDD
• Pen Windows
• OS: Dos or Win3.1 with Pen extensions
• Input/Output:
  Monochrome VGA LCD display; pen input with handwriting recognition; optional separate keyboard
• 640×480 grayscale

So is this really the first UMPC? It is amazing how far we have come since the creation of that little device, which was in 1993. That leaves me excited for what the future has, and with the flurry of UMPC activity lately things are looking pretty good!

This video over at Solar-UMPC.com goes over details about how you can connect and run your UMPC (and other devices) from a portable solar panel. There’s details on the components used and how you use batteries, controllers and converters to provide a complete solar solution for multiple devices.

I will be using this set-up on the solar-umpc tour and it weighs around 6KG including UMPC, solar panel and battery storage. The total storage capacity of the solution is around 160W/hr which, when used with the Q1b gives around 17hours of online computing time with a collection and storage capability (here in Germany on a sunny day) of around 100W/hr per day. The system can output voltages from 5v to 19v and I have a set of tips that should allow me to charge almost anything. I’m quite please with it but if anyone has suggestions for improvements I’ll happily consider them. Many thanks to SelectSolar for their help in preparing this solution.

Solar powered computing video.

RedFlag appear to have reached developer release stage for their Midinux MID-optimised operating system. A new website outlines the operating system features and advantages and offers customization possibilities for hardware vendors. We should have a developer version to play with in the coming weeks and I’m excited to see if they’ve got the right balance of ease-of-use, features, look and speed.

More mobile-optimised news comes from Canonical (Ubuntu) who have been talking about Ubuntu Mobile to Computex visitors. Release is still scheduled for October and “Ubuntu Mobile will aim at a full Internet experience, with video, sound and fast and full-fledged browsing on the MID platform.” Full Internet experience is a strong term but I know they’re working with Mozilla on a Firefox branded browser so again, it will be interesting to see what balance of specifications they go for.

Midinux website.
Ubuntu Mobile wikisite.

The Amtek U560 gets my award for the prettiest ultra mobile PC of Computex and looking at some of the blogs on it, many other people feel the same. But lets be pragmatic for one second. This is a device that doesn’t fit in a pocket. (Christoph tried and said that you might get away with it if you’re a cargo pants fan but otherwise its too big) so that means you need to carry it. Which means you have to have a bag which then means that umpc sizing […]

This picture of a rugged UMPC, “the worlds first”, has been posted by Chaorock to Flickr.  Its VIA-based with a 7″ LED-backlit screen and 6 hours battery life. Fanless too.

I guess this is being shown by the Industrial PC group from ASUS. They were the ones showing off the T83 convertible at CeBIT.

Info via jkkmobile.

I’m still trying to work out details on this one but its potentially quite big news.

AMD have announced a low-power version of the ‘Bobcat’ processor and a version called ‘Griffin’ aimed at UMPCs. It looks like it will be launched in 2008.

I’m working with a translation from Impress.jp as there doesn’t appear to be any English language content on this yet. Stay tuned while I work this one out.

Update: Others are reporting this now although everyone is working from the same source. I’m trying to find out information from AMD about what was actually said. If AMD are entering the UMPC CPU market in 2008 then its another sign that theres money going into the segment and another sign that the sector will heat-up during the later part of 2008.

It looks like we’ve got another live one! This is the UMPC that was used for a MidLinux publicity shot back at IDF. I wasn’t too impressed with the design to be honest. It follows the worrying trend of 70’s style ‘home of the future.’ That said, I’m always pleased to see a new option. I had dismissed this as an early prototype but it looks like its part of Intel’s line-up of concepts that could be licensed out to become real devices.

Here’s the Donley concept shown running MidLinux and here’s a shot of it running XP.

Aving.net have some more images and a one-line which doesn’t give any hints about the status of the device.

Intel introduced a 5-inch portable concept PC ‘Donley’ during Computex Taipei 2007. It features 5-inch LCD, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and wireless WAN.

Source: Aving.net
Intel, mid, umpc, concept

I’m a big fan of the Pepper software and the Pepper Pad 3 hardware. For me, it represents one of the first real attempts at filling the software void that exists between smartphones and notebooks and it does a good job. The Firefox-based browser works well, the user interface does exactly what it should and its simple to use. This software gap is something Kevin Tofel was talking about and something that I believe needs to be sorted out before the new wave of device hardware hits the market in 2008. Until now, Pepper have been focusing on the AMD Geode hardware which, as we’re seeing in more and more devices, is lending itself well to low-end Internet devices. However with Intel’s focus on a new, dedicated, MID platform, its clear there’s going to be a lot of Intel hardware flying about. Ubuntu, Gnome and RedFlag are already in the game and it makes sense for Pepper to re-build their software (and nice back-end update architecture) for the Intel hardware. I’m not sure that they’ve joined Intel’s MIDIA group but the press release certainly feels like its got the Intel stamp of approval so I guess that means they’re contributing to the whole piece. Which makes sense. There only needs to be one Linux core distribution but there’s probably opportunities for many different flavored user interfaces. Expect the new distro shortly after the summer.