Kaz911 has managed to get some hands on time with the HTC Shift (is it at IFA in Berlin today?) He writes some impressions on his latest blog entry.

My initial impressions are that it is a really solid device. Much better than I anticipated. The screen tilt stuff works well and you can position the screen as you like. The screen supports is really only 800 x 480 but supports 1024 x 600 resolution – but at 1024×600 it can seem a bit “muddy to look at”

Check out the post for more info including pricing and availability.

Distance since last post: 75kmWeather: Cloudy, rainy.Forecast: Bad for the next 3-days. Looks like I’ll have to be careful!Notes: Crashed into a lamppost while I was trying to mount my bike. No damage. Phew! View towards Remagen (two bridge towsers can be seen at base of hill) in terrible weather. No sun, no energy although somehow I’m managing to squeeze enough out of the clouds to charge the phone which is pretty amazing. Luckily I have enough juice on the UMPC battery and the Li-Ion battery to give me about […]

Packard Bell, one of the two companies that have taken the VIA Nanobook reference design, have today launched the Easynote XS.

I guess the announcement was made at the IFA but I’ve picked up the press release from the Packard Bell website. I suspect others have already reported this by now too!

They call it a ‘notebook’ and quote 3-hours battery life with WiFi On which is less than I was hoping for but its 50% better that is competitor, the Kohjinsha SH6. Its running Windows XP home edition, a sensible choice, up to 1GB of RAM and 30GB of HDD. The price is not shown on the press release (PDF) and I can’t find that info anywhere yet.I’ll update when I get a price. I’m expecting it at around the 600 Euro mark. The press release has no info about processor or screen details but I assume its the same as the information we already have.

When I did my first tests and calculations about the use of solar power to drive a PC I was quite amazed at the inefficiency of the process and today’s ‘laboratory conditions’ test proves just how much room for improvement there is. It’s thanks to devices like UMPCs that this is project is at all possible because I really doubt it would have worked with even a ‘power saving’ notebook PC. Today I stayed at the campsite and put the Solar panel and Li-Ion battery through a 3 hours test. Its […]

Have you ever tried going mobile without a mobile phone? Its impossible and will be for some time. A mobile phone is a small, efficient comms device that can be carried 24/7 and as it develops, there’s a lot more to the mobile phone than just voice. As I lie here inside my tent waiting for the Li-Ion battery to charge (looking good today for 4 hours of UMPC energy) I have some time left on yesterdays charge to detail something that I’ve already written about many time and summarised in one of my handful of posts back in Feb 2006. The diagram below shows the smallest device that you can perform certain applications on. For example, email and RSS reading along with IM and microblogging sits perfectly on a mobile phone. Photo editing needs an bigger screen and processor.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of applications and uses that need to be split between a mobile phone and a portable x86-based computer. A lot of this if obvious but has been confirmed by the way i’ve been using the devices during the Solar UMPC tour.

The challenge for the future is to bring features from the right column into the left column. Some of the won’t fit until screen technology advances to the point where we have roll-out 5″ colour touchscreens. Thats 5 years away at least. Do you have anything that you would add, remove or modify on this list?

This part of the Rhein, from Bingen, all the way up to Bonn, is really wonderful. And the campsites just keep getting better!

I’m still not 100% sure how much energy I managed to capture today but it looks like around 30W which should give me enough time to post without too much worry. I stopped at about 10:45 and set up my solar collection point, ate my breakfast and waited. And waited. And got a bit bored! I managed to hold out until 1400 and then went for it. Nearly all the way up to Koblenz. Total distance for the day was about 61km which is really good and way ahead of […]