I’ve uploaded the R70 images into the gallery. In a few of the images you’ll see Vista performance scores. They make fairly interesting reading!

Full gallery here.

Testing out the UMPC reporting kit in the MS press conference. Lets see how it goes.

Will update below if anything important happens!

While I’m waiting I can tell you about the Gigabyte M528 and M700. I’ve agreed not to take any pictures today as they want to go for a big launch tommorrow but i’ve already had hands-on with the M700. Looks very much like the R70 from Asus.

The M528 will have HSDPA, SSD storage, GPS, 800×480 screen (i’m told today) Can’t wait to get hands-on tomorrow.

1400. Should be kicking off soon.
1402: Sounds like there will be a big focus on environment.
1405: Coming on stage.

1408 Lots of environment talk.  Quite boring at the moment!

1410: Sounds like a VIA talk about efficient computing. He’s talking
about Vista being more efficient than XP. What statistic spin is that?

I guess the F5-hits on my server aren’t going to help. Looks like its already overloaded!

1412 Talking about Yello Strom. An electricity service provider in Germany.

I think i’ll stop reporting here and make my way to the Intel Booth tour at 1600.

Its all a bit uncoordinated here. One minute everyone is allowed on a stand and the next, it’s cleared out. No-one stopped me from having a good play around with the R70a though. Smaller and much better looking than the R2H/E, its running Vista in typical UMPC fashion (slow) on a 1.6Ghz CPU that I assume is Atom. If the predictions are right, a 1.6Ghz Atom will be about as fast as a Celeron 900 which inst nearly enough. There’s no aero capability either. Why do they persist in using Vista on UMPCs. Is Microsoft giving it away for free to the OEMs? There’s a 3G modem built-in with a pull-out ribbon aerial, a good bright screen (1024×600) and a touchscreen which seems to be good for inkers. Its certainly not a soft touch screen. GPS appears to be built-in. Battery life: This is the first time i’ve been able to see Menlow/Atom in action and it looks like, at 1.6Ghz with 3G on and brightness at 50%, you’re going to get around 4 hours from what appears to be a 30Wh battery. Lowest drain figures observed through the performance monitor were in the 6watt range which is more than i’d hoped for. In-use battery life looks like it will be in the 3-3.5hr range. A had a short play with the R50 but the battery died on me so I can’t give you any feedback on it yet. I would say that the R70 could make a nice mini-slate for inking but the Vista performance looks like it will be a problem. I’ll post the images as soon as I can upload them on to the server (which seems to be getting hit rather heavily right now.)

It won’t be long before these sweet looking UMPCs get unpacked and mounted on the Gigabyte stand. The banners are already up though and show two devices. The M528 and M700. Both look very nice and the 528, the MID that was seen at CeBIT looks nicer than ever.

More in the gallery.

Latest: Check out the Atom and Centrino Atom overview and analysis article here.

I think, although Intel aren’t actually saying so, that Silverthorne is now called the Intel Atom processor. Take a look at this.

Today, Intel unveiled the new brand, Intel® Atom™ processor, and a brand extension to the Intel Centrino® brand family: Intel Centrino® Atom processor technology. Soon, you will see the Intel Centrino Atom brand on handheld devices that can bring an amazing internet experience in a device that fits in your pocket. You’ll see the Intel Atom processor powering a growing category of devices aimed at delivering affordable, Internet-centric uses.

It looks like Menlow will launch as Centrino Atom.

The announcement appears on the Intel Mobility blog and ties in with their earlier branding announcement.

Update: A new set of Intel Atom web pages are now available.

Update: Confirmed. Silverthorn is now Atom. Menlow is now Centrino Atom

Update: Sorry about the double-post! Kornel and I will co-ordinate better in the future!

The Engadget crew are already in at the Hannover expo and have revealed images of the ASUS R70 UMPC.

There’s a whole gallery along with some information on the specs which include a 1.6Ghz CPU and, possibly, a 120GB drive. I guess the cpu is Silverthorne. It will be very interesting to see vista running on this and to see if Aero is supported.

I imagine that due to the in-car set-up shown there, its not going to have a hard-touch screen making it useless for ‘inking’ but good for finger control.

I’ll be heading towards the ASUS stand tomorrow to try and get the Vista performance scores from this as soon as I can but I might drop in in the Samsung press conference first. I’m not expecting anything new but you never know!

Source: Engadget

Well would you look at that. CeBIT hasn’t even started yet and already has engadget gotten in and managed to get info from the Asus booth (and anger their security guy!)

First up we have the R70 UMPC which looks an awful lot like the R50a we heard about back in January. Spec-wise all we have for now is that its a 7 inch screen, 1.6Ghz, Vista and apparently a 120GB drive.

There’s also a lot of EEE accessories displayed, nothing real interesting besides the IP phone though. Mainly rebadged standard computer accessories. Head on over to engadget for the details.

Chippy has arrived in Hannover, JKK is arriving soon too, and I will be joining on Thursday. Get ready for a crazy week everyone – CeBIT starts tomorrow!

Earlier in February Cindy contacted me with a set of requirements I haven’t seen before. Cindy is partially blind and was looking for a PC that could be used with speech recognition, touch and spoken word.

I can see 10% and for outdoor transportation I need a scooter. Outdoors I use a seeing-eye dog. I would like to buy a UMPC for the following reasons: – I would like to have spoken navigation with me – I would like to be able to call with a umpc if that’s even possible – I would like to go on the internet with my umpc – My three year old son is a diabetic. Because of that, I would like to use a umpc so that I can look up the carbohydrates of products in for example an excel-sheet. But of course, this will only work if there is some way of installing a speech or magnifying program. Can you give me some advise? Is it possible to do the things above with a umpc in combination with speech software or is it better to buy a small laptop? The big disadvantage of a laptop I think is that it isn’t easy to bring if I’m on my scooter.

There’s tough one. At first I thought that spoken navigation meant GPS Navigation so I went off on a track that covered devices that included the ability to run GPS navigation software and ‘call’. The Flybook and HTC Advantage were the first two devices I recommended. Unfortunately I misinterpreted the requirements and it turned out that Cindy’s main requirement was to run speech recognition software. She did some good research and ended up with a shortlist that included the Fujitsu U810 and the Belinea S.Book. The final query was whether Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 would work on these devices. It turns out that it doesn’t install on devices where the CPU speed is under 1Ghz so I took a copy of DNS9 and ran it on the WiBrain B1H, a device that runs the same processor as the Belinea S.Book. It worked!

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