I highly recommend the T-Mobile shop in Bonn. They were kind enough to let me play around with the Ameo for a good half an hour. The Ameo is a re-badged HTC Advantage 7500 so it doesn’t have WM6 and doesn’t have the tip-to-scroll feature.

I don’t like it and I doubt that wm6 and the tip-scroll feature would make me change my mind. It seems clunky, slow and somehow incomplete. Its not nearly as satisfying as the E90 I tried in Helsinki. The browser was especially slow and the first two things I tried – YouTube and a WMV playback, didn’t work out of the box. OK, Opera would be a much better browser to try it out on but I’m thinking of the out-of-the box experience here. Another problem with the Advantage is that you can not use it in two handed thumb typing mode. If you hold the device by the keyboard you are asking for trouble as the main unit can fall off very easily. 640×480 browsing was good but not fantastic and given the limitations of Windows Mobile and the slow typing rate of the keyboard (I estimate 40% normal typing rate) I don’t think its worth the 900 Euros I was quoted. The E90 is winning in my mind and now I have a little problem…

Unfortunately, the E90 is proving a bit of a problem to try out here in Bonn. Not 100 Meters from me (I’m in Starbucks) is a Nokia shop that have just received two E90’s. (Unboxed before my very eyes!) They would not take the units out of the box and would not offer me a try-out period but they did offer to buy the unit back as a second-hand unit though which leaves me with a minimum 100 Euro decision. Should I go back and buy it? I think so don’t you?

At least me and James Kendrick can do some good comparisons together and help other people decide. Update: Matt Miller has one too. He likes it a lot! Is WM6 really that good or is it the package thats impressing Matt and James?

I’ll be back in Starbucks in about 20 minutes…hopefully with an E90.

Update: Yup, I got one. Intro video here.

Apparently, this news has already been circulating in mailing lists. Sprint will offer a Mobile WiMAX-enabled version of Nokia’s N800 Internet Tablet in 2008.

Again, the N800 moves forward. It could never have moved from where it was to a WiMAX enabled tablet in such a short time if  it had been running Windows Mobile. That’s for sure. And now its looks like it might lead the way as one of the first carrier promoted personal mobile PC/umpc/whatever they want to call it. I wonder if it will be free with a 24 month contract?

LinuxDevices have the full story including some interesting  comments from Ari Jaaksi, head of the open source group at Nokia.

Two questions though. Why WiMAX? The N800 doesn’t have the processing power to handle more than about 1mbps of any incoming data stream. In fact, EDGE would be more suited to the N800 as a WWAN connectivity method. And secondly, if this is a WiMAX-enabled N800 coming out in 2008, does it mean there won’t be any new Nokia tablet hardware in 2008?

This discussion will go on forever but there’s nothing like a good discussion and this really is a good one. I just wish we could all sit down around a huge table with a few beers and get all emotional and passionate about it. (Yes, I know it wouldn’t help but it would be a lot of fun! Who’s going to CES next Jan?) The discussion started many moons ago and my first memory of it goes back along way to when I challenged Craig Pringle on his definition of a UMPC. The latest episode is being told by Ben over at Micro PC Talk. He highlights a couple of good points that I’ve commented about in the article but I want to highlight and discuss the points in full here – especially after Jenn’s call for some input on the subject. Read on…

Let me just say from the word go that the Medison Laptop has nothing  to do with UMPC hardware. I was reading about the details on Pocket-Lint and reading between the lines, it looks like the cheap price is not actually based on production costs but is offset by offering huge advertising deals on the sales portal. Basically the company selling the laptop expects rather a large amount of visitors because of its appealing price and is offering advertising packages costing up to $2 million on its portal for people wanting to sell PC accessories. [The chance would be a fine thing! – Ed.]

I started to write down the maths involved with calculating the value and it went something like this:

If you get 10 in 100 target customers clicking through to a partner sales site and 1/20th of those buy the product and your advertising slot cost $2 million then if you got 100 million page views during the life of your product, you could sell 0.5 million products. Each sale would cost $4 which isn’t bad if your product brings you $50 in profit. However, 100 million page views is a seriously large number. Lets say that your ad only gets 10 million page views. $40 per sale is cutting it fine. if you drop below 10 million page views, you’ve lost! The whole equation above though relies on Medison selling a minimum of 0.5 million PC’s. And then I gave up trying to go further with the calculation!

I think this sales model is at least, highly risky and potentially, very flawed, especially as notebook penetration already seems to be high and selling 0.5 million of a single  brand of notebook is a challenge. Perhaps Medison are after the kitchens, garages and sofas of the world? If so, why not offer something smaller like the Eee PC? 

Take a look at the product and disprove my calculations! Story via Pocket-Lint

How would you like a UMPC that switches between seperate high and low-end graphics processors based on its power profile?

Reading quickly through this article on the AMD Griffin mobile silicon architecture certainly brings up some interesting concepts.  Like the above live GPU switching and dual, independently powered and clocked cores.  

Griffin and Puma make for a very promising and capable mobile platform, with a feature set that (by the time you factor in an ATI-designed mobile GPU) should be mostly competitive with Intel.

I haven’t had a chance to put Menlow and Griffin architectures side by side yet (not much is known about Menlow at this stage) but it certainly looks like there will be a third high-end UMPC CPU and chipset manufacturer in 2008.

Read the, quite technical, but very good (as usual) Arstechnica report here.

If ever I saw a UMPC that took functionality as its only design criteria, this is probably it.

I have no doubt that with its split keyboard, 1024×600 screen, sub 500g weight, tri-band HSDPA, 0.3 and 2MP cam, touchpad and scrollwheel and options of VIA processors up to 1.6Ghz (wow) that its going to offer much more functionality than, say, an Everun but….the words ‘stick’ and ‘ugly’ come to mind too. The scrollwheel looks exactly like something my Grandma had as a tuning dial on her transistor radio and that touchpad. OMG! Can someone show them the mouse pointer on the Everun please?

Its targeted for October at a suggested Korean entry price of 650 dollars.

Now tracking specs and news on the product page here.

Aving have the full news here with more images.

One advantage of running a UMPC website is that I can easily justify buying a new UMPC. Right now I have 4 UMPCs in permanent use which cover a wide range of form factors and features and I’m settling into a pattern of how I use them. I think its worth me going through how I use each device to give people a feel for what tasks each is best at and then outlining which device I would buy if I was only able to have one UMPC. (God forbid!)

Chippy’s Gang. All running windows except one. Any guesses what its running?

Lets start with the most grabbed device in the house. Its the Everun S30S. I really love this little baby. Its fun, its handy, its always got a battery life left for me, its got a good screen and the keyboard is really useful for picking out URL’s from history, saved usernames and passwords, windows key shortcuts, function key shortcuts and even the occasional email and forum post. Its also the device I take to the car because it slips into a generic PDA holder and provides me with an on-dash car PC for navigation, music, and too many other dangerous and distracting options! It is covering nearly all of my out-of-work UMPC activities. The Everun is the fun UMPC.

The Kohjinsha SH6 is one I’ve only had for a week but its now my choice if I need to use a PC outside in daylight. Its not the keyboard that I grab the SH6 for, its the screen. Its fantastic. In bright daylight you can really use it and the 1024×600 resolution is so much better for applications. Its also the device I am grabbing if I’m using my digital camera. The SD slot is fast and useable. The Kohjinsha SH6 is the outdoor UMPC.

As for mobile productivity, the Samsung Q1b HSDPA with organiser pack is the choice here. Its 100% online connected, has very good battery life and has a keyboard that allows me to type at 100% of my nromal (oops!) typing speed. If I have finished my work I can go into ‘pleasure’ mode with the Q1b too. Pop the Q1b out of the case and use it as a tablet (on screen keyboard) and if I need all-day battery life I just plug in the extended battery. Remember that most of my activity is ‘in the cloud.’ I use Internet applications and store all my docs online. I don’t use any heavy local graphics or spreadsheet app’s and if I need too I just remote desktop home over HSDPA. All my power applications are available there. If truth be told, I’m getting more value for money out of the Q1b HSDPA than the Everun although its not as much fun and doesn’t work well in the car. The Q1b is the productivity UMPC.

The other device I have is the Samsung Q1P. Its gathering dust at the moment! Occasionally I might use it for a mobile desktop setup with an external monitor but that’s rare. If I was a desk hopper – someone that had multiple desks with a screen, it would be better than the Q1b because of the noticeable difference in processing power. In this scenario you don’t need to worry about batter life or HSDPA either so there’s no disadvantage over the Q1b in this case. I’m selling the Q1P now so if anyone in Europe is interested, see this thread. The Q1P is the portable office UMPC.

Now all this doesn’t really help the average person that is considering buying a single UMPC. You won’t find any device with all the advantages above so choosing the perfect single UMPC is tough. The OQO has a small screen. The Q1U is not as grabbable as the Everun and the U1010 doesn’t seem to be great with the small 1024×600 screen, 2-hour battery life and limited keyboard. So…

Which single device would I choose for all my mobile tasks if I could only buy one device today?

The feature that I love the most out of all the above features is….the 1024×600 7″ screen of the SH6. Its so good that if I was to buy just one device, it would have to include this screen. I can’t go back to 800×480 only and I would sacrifice size and grabability just to have this screen. But I would not sacrifice battery life. I can not live with 2 hours battery life and I mentioned on the video with JKK that comfortable battery life starts at 3.5 hours. You know where I’m heading now don’t you! Before I say the name of the device, let me also say that I don’t want Vista. Vista is like a cuddly cartoon bear to me. Its sweet and comfortable but a little bit too big and slow. So far, I have never found a situation where Vista has been more productive for me on a UMPC and it annoys me too often for it to be a comfortable choice. XP Tablet Edition would be the choice. So you have probably worked out which device I would choose haven’t you. Its the Q1U-XP with organiser pack (which currently doesn’t exist.) I’m confident in the screen, confident in the battery life, confident in the organiser pack and confident that 800Mhz Intel is going to be as productive (or more) than the Q1b under Windows XP Tablet Edition. My only problem is that I haven’t been able to do a long term test on the Q1 ultra yet but that’s the situation that most customers would find themselves in.

There are going to be disadvantages though. While I could wait for a car mount solution for the Q1U and pay for the navigation software to be unlocked, I can not let my wife take the Q1Ultra when she needs a navi system. Therefore I would need a separate navigation system (with MP3 capability because I’m sick of loading up CD’s in the car now) which would be another 400 Euro. And here’s the big issue. A Q1U + car navigation/ entertainment system is going to be way over 2000 Euro! For that price I can buy an Everun AND an SH6 which would cover off all the scenarios above and give me flexibility. But… The last variable to be add to the equation is that my wife now wants a Q1U or SH6 for her work (personal and business health advisor.) so if I get her a Q1 ultra with organiser pack, car mount and navigation software, she’s fixed and we don’t need a navigation system in the car. All I would need to buy is…a Q1 Ultra with organiser pack and navigation! HSPDA would be an option I would take if it was less than 200 Euro extra but working via a BT2.0 connection over a mobile phone, while slower, isn’t a big problem.

You know, I’m pretty happy that I’m not the average customer at this point. Choosing a single UMPC is a tough tough job but it seems that the Q1U-XP with organiser pack, extended battery and HSDPA is the closest I could get to my ideal device at the moment. I would lose some grabability and possibly some ease of use but when all variables are taken into account, its the one.

Oh wait a minute. I almost forgot. I have an N800 too. The only time I’ve used it is for research (Mozilla browser, comparison photos etc.) In real life I haven’t used it at all and have decided to hand it over to Kornel who’s been helping out a lot on the site. Hope you enjoy it Kornel! let us know what you think.

I know when I’ve caught up with my RSS feed because I start using google blogsearch to find new news. The Acturion rugged UMPC is all over in blogsearch today.

I didn’t even give it second look when I saw it yesterday because I thought it was old news. Looking back on an article from November 2006, I found the device but actually it was the Tetra Light T8 from Logic Instruments that I encountered at World of Mobility in Cologne.

So I better give Acturion a shout because this was quite an impressive UMPC when I played with it. I seem to remember that they even had a rugged case for it! One for the Hummer crowd I think.

Tablet Talk have the news. Logic Instruments have a PDF too.