I’m a little surprised to see the Readius product nearing ‘availability so quickly. It has been demo’d before but this time, they’re talking prices and timescales! It’s black and white, has the typical slow refresh rate of e-ink display, has GSM voice capability, mini SD card slot, MP3 playback capability and the software supports static page formats like RSS and e-books. It weighs 115gm and is based on an ARM11 processor at 400Mhz running a Linux kernel. Will hit stores in mid-2008. Reuters reports that it will cost as much […]

I’ve managed to find some more information on the P1620 outside of the USA. Fujitsu Siemens say “we will announce and show the new P1620 at this years CeBIT.” and “Pricing for the product in Germany will be approx. 2500 Euro plus tax.”Its a shame that those of us in Europe have to wait whilst our friends in the States get to enjoy the Core 2 Duo goodness, but the P1620 promises to be worth the wait.

The new upper limit of 2GB for RAM and the 1.2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, along with HSDPA, touch screen with palm rejection technology, a really decent keyboard and good battery life will really make the little Lifebook an awesome machine and a worthy replacement to the P1610.

The pricing mentioned is extremely high, Fujitsu obviously don’t feel threatened by the recent changes in the market place, particularly by the not totally dissimilar little white baby from Asus.

More P1620 info here.

I’ve just had some discussions with WiBrain and we’ve agreed that the WiBrain forum on UMPCPortal will now be the official English-language forum for the WiBrain UMPC products. This is great news as it means that I now have a direct line to the support people in order to resolve queries that can’t be solved within the forum. I’ll also get notice of products and driver availability and will be getting devices to test.

If you’re thinking about buying a WiBrain product and have queries, come on over to the forum! I’ll do my best to make sure you get the answers you need. I’m sure some of the existing WiBrain owners will be happy to help too!

Watch out for my full review of the WiBrain later this week.

Thanks to WiBrain for their co-operation.

When I tested the T-Mobile Ameo some 400 posts ago, I was less than impressed. In fact, I ended up putting down 800 Euros for a Nokia E90 instead. My main complaint was the poor WM5 experience so I was quite suprised when , in the U.S. almost everyone that tested it was very impressed. It turned out that it was a different build. The 7501 in the U.S. was WM6 whereas the Ameo was WM5. Could this make all the difference?

I might get the chance to give the Advantage a second-chance soon as T-Mobile (Germany) have announced an updated Ameo with WM6.1 and a 16GB hard drive. This won’t please those that bought the WM5 version of course but it’s a good move in the long run. One thing to watch out for though is the price. The current Advantage is running at about 850 Euros. Unless they drop that to 699, the new model will have to go in at something near 1000 Euros. Ouch.

Via Pocketables.

Advantage / Athena specifications and links.

What’s all this crap about the Macbook Air being a compromise and test of cloud computing?

Get a life!

I’m probably writing this in the wrong place because many of you here will know this already but just in case someone is worried about buying an Air thing – You don’t actually need a dual-core 3.0Ghz  processor, 15″ screen, 160GB HDD, a CDROM, 4 USB ports and an Ethernet (what’s that anyway?) to scan the sub-100Kb contents of Techmeme and write ‘Top 5 reasons why Starbucks is my favorite office.’ posts. In fact, you don’t need that to get real work done either. Take my efficient dual-screen office setup on the right for example. Its not super-fast but for 90% of my daily work, it would be good enough. [*1] There are many other examples too. 350,000 EeePC owners can’t be wrong either.

As for the ‘cloud’, many of us that monitor and participate in the UMPC community know that using the Internet for productive work is not just about offloading processing and storage.  It’s about mobility, availability, efficiency and even security. Millions in the developing world will be testing the cloud in the next few years, not a bunch of Latte-sipping rich-kids.

Sorry. I just had to get that off my chest.

*1 [Note that I don’t use this setup anymore because the UMPC died and I never did find another with such a great docking solution. I use a 1.6Ghz 1GB/80Gb notebook now – Same spec. as the Air.]

If this isn’t the biggest signal yet that the Internet is coming to a mobile device near you soon then I must have been reading the wrong 150 news feeds. One of the biggest social networking sites, Facebook, is teaming up with one of the biggest mobile phone companies, Nokia, in a way that will bring Facebook to your hand wherever you are.  It looks like Nokia might even be interested in buying a piece of Facebook too! Facebook isn’t exactly the be all and end all of the Internet […]

You might remember seeing news about a Gigabyte 704 UMPC towards the end of last year. It was a 1.2Ghz, 7-inch, 1024×768 version of the Gigabyte U60 with a redesigned frame and inputs, appeared briefly in the Gigabyte website and then disappeared leaving an empty product page. Well today I can happily file my first report about Russia because it’s appeared there under the Rover brand. I’m even told that it’s available to order so expect a little CeBIT-something from a few other vendors too! It looks like it uses the same casing as the original Arima / Medion / Gigabyte model and so the dock and the modules will fit. Unconfirmed local price is 750 Euros inclusive taxes.

• Rover Computers A700GC [translation]
• Information including complete specification in the UMPC database.
• My hands-on review of the Medion UMPC – an early version of the Gigabyte U60.

A new viral marketing  campaign has surfaced for a product that appears to  suggest modular mobile  computing. Best guess: A  Mini phone with display, cpu  and radios in a compact flash size package  (or  PCI-e?)  that docks into a range  of  lifestyle devices. You can find the website here but note that you can find a big list of job openings here which indicates that this product might not  be ready for launch just  yet. Modumobile promo video. JKK has some  more thoughts on this over at JKKMobile. View details […]