Hugo Ortega has taken some time out of his vacation to provide us with the answers to the HTC Shift questions readers sent him. The article is pretty long so I direct you over to GottaBeMobile. It is a 800×480 screen though. How disappointing :-(.

Location: Here (just south of Ludwigshaven)Distance since last post: 27.1kmWeather: Warm 25 degrees C. Some cloud cover.Notes: Counted 33 mosquito bites from last night. My back got eaten. There must have been one in the tent. He’s full up now! When I arrived at the campsite this evening, the tent area was empty. About 30 minutes later someone turned up on a recumbent and, as you do, we started chatting. My 25KG bike is usually a good conversation starter! Manfred is 63 and from Constance, where the Rhein river starts. […]

Look what I stumbled upon on the OrigamiProject forums! Two videos of booting the u1010, one with SSD and one with the HDD. The difference is quite noticeable. Which one wins? See yourself, although I think its pretty obvious ;-).  First one is HDD, Second one is SSD.

On a side note, sorry for not having posted anything over the last 2 months. Nothing happened to me, I just get a little lazy over the summer :-) .

I’m sitting under a tree, looking out on the Rhein river and the world is good! I’ve got time for one of those on-the-spot creativity moments and I’m thinking hard about what would be the ultimate travelers journaling PC. The Q1b is good of course but there’s always room for improvement and the first thing I see that needs improving is screen brightness under sunlight. I’m actually in the shade right now and with full screen brightness its still not that good. A screen with the clarity and contrast of the one on the SH6 would be much better. 300nits, LED backlit is the starting point for any outdoor work in my opinion. 800×480 at 7″ would be the ideal size I think.

Wait for it. I’ll get to battery life in a minute!

Full keyboard is a must. The Samsung organiser keyboard is one of these best there is although maybe there’s a possibility that it could be a little smaller. Not too much though otherwise you have to concentrate on typing rather writing. A keyboard like the one on the SH6 and Nanobook would be the best size but it would be better if it was detachable because being able to split components up is good when you’re traveling.

Price. This is important. These devices need to be sub $500. There’s no point having $1500 worth of equipment with you when you travel and even $500 is a little too much.

I’m pausing at ‘operating system’ and wondering exactly what a traveler would need. Instant, or at least sub-3 seconds on and the ability to provide a rich but efficient  writing environment like that provided with LiveWriter. HTML WYSIWYG, image drag and resize, capability to save drafts and post through different API’s. I’m not sure about the full Internet experience but something close to it would be good. I have no intention of watching YouTube or any sort of video media on my tour so a plugin-free browser would probably be OK.  This bring up the question of processor base and I’m wondering if something like an Advantage with an 800×480 screen and large format detachable keyboard would suffice but you’d have to find the right software. Taking the step down to RISC processors also brings the advantage of cheaper components and battery life, which really needs to be 6 hours or more with a quick charging time of 1-2 hours. You can not creative while you’re worrying about battery life.

And here we reach a point where there is no device to satisfy the above requirements. No WM5 device has an 800×480 7″ screen as far as I know. The HTC Shift is close to the ideal device but so so expensive and having the dual OS just makes it more complex. For 800×480 at 7″ you have to look at X86-only devices (Yes I know WinCE is an option but software would be a major issue here. WinCE is still Web 0.1!) then you really have to look closely at the Nanobook platform. I don’t believe it will have 6 hours battery life but if the outdoor screen clarity is good and it really is $600 then it could be the best travelers PC available at the moment. If you’ve got the money then the HTC Shift or SH6 would be options. None of these really bring me any major advantages over the Q1b and to be honest, if this device had a brighter screen it would be perfect. What do you think?

I’ll have time to think about this again tommorrow and if I have any ideas, i’ll leave a note in the comments.

The entry posted from the trees HERE. Follow my journey on the map here.

On Aug 31st, the International Funk Ausstellung (IFA) takes place in Germany. Last year over 6000 journalists attended and so, as a leading consumer trade fair, it makes sense to launch products there.

No-one is telling me exactly what’s going to happen but something’s definitely up and it looks like I might have to take an extra long lunch break on Friday and Saturday to make sure I don’t miss anything.

Any guesses?

Location: Speyer. Distance since last post. Approx 30kmTemp. 25 CWeather. Blue skies! Awake at 0730 after a really good sleep and a horrible dream that when I got out of my tent I was in an empty campsite…with no bike. Packing up camp took a bit longer then expected mainly due to the dampness of everything and the fact that I usually get up at 0900 and not 0730. I also had to deal with about 10 mosquito bites. Damn they are annoying. On the road at about 0915. At […]

No not a real body bag, the Jack Wolfskin Body Bag.

I bought one the other day and I have to say its perfect for a 7″ (or less) UMPC plus mobile phone. I can even put the Everun, a GPS receiver and a small digicam in there. It could be good for Justin.TV style activities too! Its with me on the Solar UMPC tour and working out well although I’m not carrying a UMPC in it. The Q1b is tucked away safely inside the organiser pack.

The best bit was that it was only 19.99 Euros. Bargain!

I’m writing this on my Samsung Q1b inside a tent in a campsite near a town called Sonderheim in Germany! The 9 day solar tour has started! It was a really hot day today and very hard work getting the bike and equipment down here on the train but I guess that’s nothing compared to the 400km I’ve got ahead of me. I’ve heard that the sun will continue for the next 2 days at least meaning I can get some good testing in with the solar ultra mobile PC equipment and […]