You know that feeling don’t you. The feeling you have when you get back from holiday and you know that within 18 hours you’ll be working. Well how about getting woken up at 10am by DHL who want to deliver a brand new UMPC! The timing could not have been better and here I am, as happy as a pig in poo, typing away on my new Kohjinsha SH6. The sun is shining. My neighbor is baking pizza for our families and I feel like singing. Its good to be back at work.

What do you want to know about the SH6? Everything I guess and I’ll be working at full steam over the next weeks to bring you all you need to know about it. I can tell you already that the screen is fantastic, the keyboard has none of the problems of the keyboard on the SA1 and even Vista basic seems to be working well out of the box.  More about the SH6 later though because I’m just finishing off a post about a great videocast that myself and JKK made in Helsinki last week. Its coming up in the next post…

Wish you were here!

I took the Everun out yesterday for a full day and night tour. Apart from the day being a lot of fun, it was a big UMPC learning experience for me because as we went around Helsinki and stopped of in bars (including one completely ice-clad and kept at -18 degrees C) we took the opportunity to ask the general public what they thought of the Everun. I want to write about the experience in a lot of detail when I get back here are a few key points learned from people we gave the Everun too.

– Mini keyboards are useless for Women with nails. That’s covers most Women and its going to be a big challenge to consumer Internet devices.

– The Everun is heavy. That’s what people said. But when we probed a bit further its actually because the Everun is heavier than you expect for its size. It doesn’t matter that its a quarter of the weight of a notebook PC because if the customer picks it up and its heavier than expected, its heavy!

– The XP user interface is totally totally useless for a consumer Internet device. Not one person was happy to use XP. We need to learn from this. Simple interfaces are absolutely critical to the success of a device. If I had been able to demonstrate RedFlag Midinux or even Origami experience, the device would have been much more interesting to the end user.

– You need always-on Internet. Wifi isn’t good enough. People want instant Internet access.

– The most wanted application was email

– Media didn’t interest the people we interviewed.

– Women don’t think the Everun is particularly pretty.

– The Everun constantly gets compared to mobile phone. Its a terrible consumer mobile phone which makes the Everun hard to promote after this first impression.

I’ll have more time to discuss this later in the week but right now I need some time to think!

What was the first shop I stepped into in Helsinki today? Nokia of course! I needed to get hands on with the E90. Its a fine piece of hardware.

The screen is lovely and browsing is better than on any smartphone I’ve ever tried (I’ve never tried the iPhone.) It’s not the FIE but its going to be close enough for a lot of people. The rest of the package is high quality and very complete. I like the keyboard too.

I’m pondering over buying one for further testing. Stay tuned.

The first time I ever met anyone from Finland, this was the result. OK, we were half-way through a day of Oktoberfest beer madness but its still a fond first impression of Finnish culture and I can still remember it vividly! ‘Kippis! Kippis!’ still rings in my head. The second set of Finnish people I met was in March this year when jkk of jkkmobile met up with me at CeBIT and we didn’t stop talking UMPCs for about 4 days. Funnily enough there was also a large amount of beer involved.

So its with some worry that I take my wife on a holiday to Helsinki tomorrow ;-)

I’ll be packing the rucksack full will all sorts of unnecessary mobile and UMPC equipment and hoping that the wife doesn’t notice. Jkk will be doing the same and coming over to the hotel for a UMPC chit-chat and you never know, we might even post a few videos of the put-it-on-the-room-bill madness. Apologies in advance and all that!! As far as the portal goes I will still be posting but it will be in holiday mode only. All rambling will be kept to a minimum. I’ll still be checking emails and dealing with back-office business too. In between all that I will be trying my best to focus on a relaxing holiday with my wife, taking saunas on the hotel roof, eating lovely food, exploring islands and ignoring the free WiFi, 7.2mbps HSDPA and the Nokia flagship store containing a number of E90’s!

When I come back there should be a Kohjinsha SH6 waiting for me and I’ll be diving straight into that as soon as my smalls are washed. I’ve heard some good reports already so I’m pretty excited about it. I’m planning for it to fit in as my productivity UMPC with the Everun taking over consumer duties when I’m not supposed to be working.

Have fun while I’m away!

Its getting almost impossible to choose the right terms and labels for the consumer based UMPC segment without upsetting someone now. I’ve just been responding to a thread of comments about the N800 where we were talking about whether the N800 should be called a UMPC or not and here’s what I wrote:

It does become confusing doesn’t it. Should a device with a desktop operating system that has a restricted UI be classed as a separate device? If it works, does it matter what processor it has?
Currently I call the N800 a sub-umpc but to a consumer its going to look similar to an x86 device running Ubuntu Mobile in three months.
Are we going to call MID’s UMPCs (bear in mind that you only need to install XP and its a UMPC!)
I tend to think that for the sake of the market, we should always use the term UMPC somewhere. Nokia is using this technique of calling its mobile devices ‘computers’ too.
I think its more important to choose a term for marketings sake than on technical grounds.

Image from Pocketables.net

…and then 5 minutes later I picked up on a really nice article that Jenn wrote over at Pocketables. She’s calling the iPhone a ‘UMPC-lite’ device. She says that a UMPC-Lite device is simply a MID (mobile Internet device as defined by Intel) with an ARM processor. A desktop operating system on an ARM processor with a consumer optimized user interface and application-set. I like it. There are some things to think about though…

• Some people would say that restricting  a user user interface means its not a PC? Hey, all user interfaces are restricted and in fact originally, PC’s never even had a GUI, just command line interfaces. My iPaq H2210 can run Linux and do that much better than my old PC could. Is my PocketPC a PC?
• If I ran my UMPC using Origami Experience alone, does it mean its not a UMPC?
• If I take a full Linux operating system and port it over lock, stock and barrel, to an mobile ARM device and get it running smoothly, would it be a UMPC? If I did the same with, say, OS-X, would it be a UMPC?
• Nokia call their N-Series ‘Multimedia Computers.’ is that wrong?
• If the consumer decides that they prefer the fun user interface and presentation-method that the iPhone uses, why should we bother to re-create a traditional Internet experience on a consumer focused UMPC? Fun could be more important than function to the consumer and could create more sales. (See iPhone)
• If Nokia released a communicator running Internet tablet software on an x86 processor, would it be a smartphone or UMPC?

OK, enough of that! In my eyes, this concept of re-presenting a ‘PC’ to a user in a different form is a good one, especially for consumers, and I like the way that the ‘PC’ term is being used and is moving forward. I also like the way that, for anyone entering the UMPC market for the first time, the term UMPC is the dominant term across all sub-segments and I like the way that its separating from its old Origami roots. I think people marketing these ultra-mobile-Internet-communications-and-media-devices (!) need to use the momentum that the term UMPC has now and to keep on pushing it. Stick with it. Don’t mess around trying to create confusing little pockets of devices with new names. PPC, MID, PIMD etc etc. I see just one split in the market and that’s between the consumer UMPC and professional UMPC. Consumer UMPCs are optimized to ‘drain’ content from the internetworks and professional UMPCs can ‘source’ content in an efficient way too. Or am I biased because I run UMPCPortal? possibly but its already too late. Google has already linked the term UMPC with hundreds of devices and of all the terms, this is the only one that’s got momentum. Everyone uses the term UMPC, even if its in a negative sense so if you’re in the business of marketing ultra mobile devices you have to use the term UMPC in order to get peoples eyes. No-one is searching for ‘MID’ or ‘UPPC’ in search engines. In the last month, 11000 searches ended up on this site by using a search expression with UMPC in it. In the same period, the number of people reaching me using a search expression with MID in it was just 237. That’s less than the number of people that reached me using the search term ‘jabra bt8010.’

So let me see a show of hands. Should the manufacturers, resellers, promoters and marketeers continue to use ‘UMPC’ and add descriptive terms like ‘sub’, ‘lite’, ‘consumer’, ‘pro’ or should they try to influence Google, confuse custonmers and make up a new name? Come on, lets welcome the iPhone into the (sub/lite) UMPC fold with open arms, give it a big multi-touch kiss, learn a lot from it and get the Ultra Mobile PC segment developing even faster. Ignoring it is not an option and that’s why i’ll be queueing up for one when it launches in Europe.

So its been awhile since I’ve posted anything on UMPCPortal.  I now have a new toy, and I thought I would share my thoughts on it with you.  I just received today the Tekkeon MyPowerAll MP3450.  Steve “Chippy” Paine did a review on the MP3400 a few months ago, and after reading it, I had to get one.  I decided to wait a little bit, and I am glad that I did.

I took a trip to tekkeon.com where I came across a new listing for a new MyPowerALL Device…the Tekkeon MP3450.  What separates this from the MP3400?  The 3400 provides you with an additional 6Wh at 56Wh, while the 3450 provides 50Wh.  What does this mean?  Powering a device such as a UMPC, or a Laptop will result in less capacity, and there for less overall battery life.  The 3450 is rated at being able to power a Laptop for about 3.5Hrs.  I haven’t had a chance to test this however I must say so far its doing quite well.

A few other differences that I would like to point out is the MP3450 has the capability to charge not only a portable device such as a Laptop, it also can simultaneously charge a USB device such as an iPod or Digital Camera.  The most important feature that I think is key to the selling point of the MP3450 is its ability to link up with an additional battery pack (MP3450-10), and provide double the capacity, so you’re getting roughly 100Wh out of it.  Seems more bang for your dollar than having to purchase an extra battery for your UMPC, Notebook, or other portable device.

Conclusion:

The build quality is very solid, and all of the accessories that were given with the MP3400 are given with the MP3450.  The leather case varies slightly however I find this one much nicer as it just slides out, while still maintaining protection of the device to prevent scratches, or if you have butter fingers, to protect from shorter drops.  I was able to find the Tekkeon MP3450 over at Newegg for only $114 with $5.00 shipping.  Quite the bargain compared to the MP3400 which is about $20 more.

So there’s one of my complaints about the N800 out the window. They’ve (Maemo and Mozilla teams I assume) ported the Mozilla engine over to it and now you’ve got full Ajax support and the possibility of plugins within the Nokia N800 browser. A quick test on my N800 confirms that at least Google Reader is working now and that you can switch between Opera and Mozilla engines and get different results. Over on the Internet Tablet Talk forum there are pages of people buzzing about the more complete Internet browsing experience. And its only a beta release! (Note I have seen crashes. Its not ready for mainstream yet.)

I’ve moaned about the FIE on ARM before but it looks like I might have to think about moving the Nokia tablet from sub-UMPC status to UMPC status making it the first ARM device I’d recommend as a consumer-focused ultra mobile PC. Not quite yet though. Not in its N800 incarnation. That processor is still not powerful enough to get things flowing smoothly for customers. Page loads are still as slow as before and media playback/YouTube still stutters along. BUT…its a big step forward and really heats up the x86 vs ARM race. I have to say that the Maemo project appears to be coming of age nicely and it makes things very interesting indeed for the next version of Nokia Tablet hardware.

More info on the N800 available here.

Via Ubuntu Mobile mailing list. (See Wiki for more info.)

My favorite sofa surfer, the Pepper Pad 3 took a while to get across the pond but its finally arrived in Europe. In the UK its being carried by Expansys for 400 ‘softs’ and as their network extends across Europe, its available in almost any Euro country for a tad over 600 Euros. That’s 200 Euros less than the nearest UMPC competition.

Now could be an interesting time to buy a Pepper Pad as Pepper prepare to release another version of the software which includes the Skype voice client.

More information on the Pepper Pad 3 including galleries and a full review is available on in our product database.

Via Pepper forums.