I made a big mistake when I was reviewing and testing video and gaming on the U560 yesterday. The experience was good but it turns out I had the device locked to max-battery setting. That means I was using the device at 600Mhz instead of 800Mhz. I re-did the tests this evening and increasing the processing power by 33% has made a rather impressive difference to both the video playback and gaming performance. Check out some of these video playback figures.

• Windows HD WMV 720 ‘Coral Reef’ demo – Perfect (6mbps)
• 1mbps H.264 – Perfect (30% cpu utilisation)
• YouTube full screen – Perfect.
• 4mbps Divx – 35% cpu.
• Joost – Working (That’s the first time I’ve seen it working on a UMPC)
• Stage6 streaming HQ Divx videos – Working.
• Divx DVD VOB files – Working

Video after the jump….

I’m a big big fan of docking stations and I’ve got one on order for my Everun. I plan to use it for playing back videos and audio into my A/V system. With the S-Video out the quality should be OK for my videos and the SP-DIF digital audio connector out should give me great sound quality. The Raon Digital dock is also very portable. BuildYourUMPC have posted a good video demonstration showing the dock connectors and in action.

They also have an Everun overview video here.

Update: The Full U560 review is now available.

I only received the Amtek U560 yesterday (Thanks to Mobilx.hu who have sent it over for testing.) but I’ve been with my curvy little friend for most of the last 24 hours and we’re hitting it off quite nicely! Here are my first impressions, some images and and a set of three videos.

Note: I’ll be live this evening, after the Apple keynote and able to show off the U560 if you want to join me at UMPCPortal.com/live.

According to some information sent to me by Gigabyte today, it will be focusing more on the MID and UMPC market in 2008.

With the standard notebook market over competitive, Gigabyte will focus more on small- and medium-size panel devices to suit client demand. Basic notebooks will focus on adopting 7- to 9- inch panels, while pushing price and unique functions as the main selling points. UMPCs will focus on 7-inch panel-based sliding case devices. The company will also cooperate with telecommunication vendors to push out MID products with 5-inch panels and 3G communication functions, added the paper citing Richard Ma, vice president of the company, adding that the company also aims to enter the China retail market with its notebook products.

Gigabyte currently sell the U60 UMPC (top left) and have recently demonstrated a 4.8″ MID device at CES (top right). They have told me recently that UMPCs and MIDs will be a big feature of their stand so i’m looking forward to that. Hands-on with the MID device is already at the top of my list for CeBIT.

The story has just appeared word-for-word in Digitimes too.

Thanks to MobilX.hu, the Amtek U560 UMPC sample arrived today, well ahead of expected availability early next month.

I’ve been making notes in this forum thread so feel free to join in with the questions. I have also prepared some videos for a post tomorrow where I’ll give my first thoughts. So far I’m impressed. It’s got a fair bit of chubbiness but it’s a curvy and efficient little device and has strong video qualities. 

I’ll try and do a live session about an hour before Steve Jobs starts his presentation tomorrow. (15th)

Again, thanks to Mobilx for the loan of this.

More Amtek U560 information and links are available in the product portal.

The reality of the UMPC market today is that most of what you might have seen last week at CES is trechnology and products that are months and months and months away. Some of it is years away. Intel’s Menlow mobile Internet device platform officially launches in April with, I guess, the first product availability being announced. I wouldn’t expect anything to hit Europe or the U.S. before June and so that leaves us back in the situation where Intel’s McCaslin and VIA’s C7 based devices are the latest platforms. CES didn’t change much at all for the current UMPC customers. Read on…

Largely unplanned, and sounding a little bit tired, JKK and myself have a 30-minute chat, our last in the CES-series, about the no-shows, the effect that CES might have on the UMPC market and our high, and low-points of CES. We talk about VIA and how important the mobile-ITX platform is for them in 2008 and JKK talks about how designs should be targeted. We finish with a quick thought about Macworld and what we expect to happen this week.

Listen or download the MP3, 30 minutes, 21MB here.

Subscribe to the UMPC Podcast RSS feed.

Correction: RedFlag Linux is actually optimised for MIDs. It’s the Vista-based devices that didn’t get a very positive response on the UI-side.

I have been watching the S.Book on a few European price tracking sites over the last week and this morning the main distributors for many of the online retailers obviously entered it into their database as 11 new retailers appeared. A quick cross-check of the German Belinea web revealed the official info.

 
Click for our S.Book product information sheet.

The details are the same as were previously leaked and reported with an 80GB drive, 1GB RAM and touchscreen, the VoIP module (I assume this basically a Bluetooth handset with headset and control profiles) and the 1.2Ghz VIA C7-M processor.

The price is a little more than expected though. In the UK, a place normally associated with higher prices, its retailing for a very good value 420 UK pounds (approx 800 dollars, 560 Euros) but the online retailers in Germany have it up for between 720 and 800 Euros. That’s a huge difference. If were considering this I’d wait until the prices settles down and find it’s niche, While 720 is good value in general for a ultra mobile notebook, when you compare it to the Eee PC you’re paying up to 500 Euro for 80Gb drive, 512MB RAM, touchscreen and Windows XP.

I wonder if anyone is going to do anything about the pricing of the AMD-Geode based Kohjinsha/Data Evolution/Vye S18 now. The pricing on these seems way to high considering the new competition in the market.

Update: Confirmation of the release has now been given by VIA.  Good timing!

For information on the performance of this, see the UMPCPortal review on the Packard Bell Easynote XS that uses the same internals.

S.Book details and links.