Click to Play From CebIT 2008, here’s a video of the Gigabyte M528 Mobile INternet device. Based on an Atom processor (Intel) with a slide-out keyboard, 3-4 hours battery life and and operating system based around Moblin and Ubuntu Mobile. Formats available: Windows Media (.wmv), Flash Video (.flv), MPEG-4 Video (.m4v) Tags: umpc, intel, mobility

If you were to see the list of videos and images I’ve got here from CeBIT you would instantly notice a slight bias towards the Gigabyte M528 MID. If I could pre-order, I’d do it because based on what I’ve seen it’s going to give me a great form factor, good style, good battery life, a ton of apps and a fun and useable UI. I predict it will be faster, more productive and vastly more connected than my N810 and could possibly fulfil my Carrypad dream. The M528 is months away from launch so a lot could change but already you can see how far the UI development is. Finger friendly. Kinetic scrolling. Responsive and stylish. The application suite is also much richer than I thought it would be. Open Ofiice was there and we also saw a demo of Fluendo which is a nice looking media player app.

Something is happening behind Intel’s Atom branding that’s more than just silicon development. There’s a software infrastructure building that is big, financially supported and not far removed from the way Apple are doing things with the iPhone. The control is there. The guidelines are there. The restricted hardware set is there. The ISV process seems to be both accessible and well controlled and with 150 people working on the Moblin core and distribution through partners like Canonical and Asianux who are also working on optimisations and UI, you know there’s some big numbers involved. I don’t expect version 1 to be quite the slick application suite that you find on the iPhone but it will close in very very quickly, especially if third party app developers jump on board which I expect them to do becuase the potential market for Moblin is far greater than that of the iPhone. I might be wrong but I don’t see Apple going for the car, kiosk, hifi, set top box, seat-back or fridge market. Blip.tv HQ WMV version here. YouTube version over at JKKMobile.

This snippet of news deserves a some analysis. Yahoo reports that Wal-Mart will stop selling all Linux-based PCs in shops. That includes the gPC and the Cloudbook.

“This really wasn’t what our customers were looking for,” said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien.

Or was it that the cost of wheeling them out onto the shop floor and answering questions about whether it runs Outlook was biting into the extremely thin profit margin on it? Or were the Cloudbook unboxing horror stories enough to scare Wal-Mart into thinking twice?

Windows is a recognised brand and to try and sell devices that look like PCs with another operating system is guaranteed to be tough work. If it looks like a PC it has to act like one and if you’re selling at bargain hunters, you’re going to attract bargain hunters. They are not the sort of people that hesitate to bring a device back when it doesn’t work and they are not the sort of people that spend hours trawling forums for an answer. They get straight onto the phone and call the support line because it’s the only process they know.

If you’re going to put Linux on a device you have to make it attractive and rock-solid otherwise the customers won’t feel comfortable and the resellers will dump it at the first sign of an increase manpower costs. It’s going to be absolutely crucial for MIDs that Intel, Ubuntu, RedFlag and others get the UI stable, stylish and intuitive because MIDs will also be relatively low-margin devices. If they get it right though, the OS could be simpler, more stable and cheaper to support than something based on XP or Vista. MID’s are a perfect opportunity for Linux to move into the mainstream but there’s only one chance with the big guys as this Wal-Mart example shows.

Source: Yahoo

That’s what it says on the logo, and that’s what they achieved last Thursday through their sponsorship of the UMPC meet-up at CeBIT in Hannover. Whether ARM, AMD, Intel or VIA-connected, it didn’t matter because everyone had a great time. There’s even rumors of some business being done in the dark corners of the cellar bar so it wasn’t all just play play play!

Wibrain were there showing their B1 range of UMPCs, Fortune Fountain showed Dial Keys Gen2, Linpus demoed their small screen Linux build, Hanbit brought along the latest version of the Pad (with a very nice LED-backlit screen I might add!), TheTabletStore were available to chat, Amtek were there, Intel turned up, A-Bit brought along their MID, Mobilx were there, OLPC Austria brought along a green machine and there were a number of UMPCPortal members there including Sonietje who brought along his 24 hour old HTC Shift, the lucky man! The highlight of the evening though was the team photo, a 25-device line-up of mobile devices.

The great thing about the whole evening is that everyone was really positive about the mobile computing sector; from the convergent smartphones all the way through to the ‘power-house’ UMPCs. Resellers were able to hear feedback abut what devices were regarded as popular, manufacturers were able to talk about future plans and the CPU guys from VIA and Intel heard all our complaints! No one was complaining at the end though when JKK bought a round of traditional Finnish iced vodka! Thanks to Sonietje for sending this team photo in. 18 mobile devices and a bar. life just doesn’t get much better!

Last year we had ten people, this year 40 people turned up. Who know’s what’s going to happen next year! Thanks VIA for a great night out!

Note: To anyone that was there and has photos of the event, please send me copies and i’ll place them in the gallery.

If you’re interested in some hi-res images of the ASUS R50a and R70a i’ve just dropped a couple of press photo’s into the gallery.

Click through for access to originals.

Its nice to hear my home-country accent every now again and even better when its from a couple of geeky lasses. The Shiny girls have an Eee PC and a Vye S37 and ask the very simple question ‘which would you buy?’ You can guess the answer can’t you and that’s the answer the most consumers will return. Forget the fact that the Vye can house a 250GB drive – “Why would I need that?”, that it’s got a touchscreen – “All I normally use is a mouse pad.” and that it has the convertible screen – “I like to look at the front of the screen, not the back of it.” because consumers like cheap things that do the job and have that certain something that they can talk about to their freinds. That’s the reason that the Eee PC is going viral. Check out the video below and by the way, the Vye has two USB ports, not one.

Source: ShinyShiny

There’s a great article about the Eee PC over at Laptop magazine. CEO Jerry Shen responds to interview questions and talks about HSDPA, Atom, and all-day battery life. Having seen and heard about battery life on some Atom-based devices, notably the Hanbit Pad and the Clevo UMPC, I have no doubt that they can pull off at least a 7-hour Eee PC on a Silverthorne processor and perhaps a 6-hour device on Diamondville. ASUS appear confident that this will happen for May so maybe that’s a clue about the launch of Atom.

As the Eee PC 900 flies up the UMPCPortal product charts (I expect it to be #1 tomorrow) its clear that ASUS have an incredible brand with ‘Eee.’ They are setting the standards and covering all angles in their market. Others are simply following and trying to clear-up a few sales based on large storage and territorial availability. It will take something very special to beat it in sales numbers.  As hard as I try, I really cant think of any feature that, if included in a competitors device, would take significant sales away from ASUS. Its the de-facto 2nd PC, mobile notebook and kids PC.

Eee PC 900 specifications here. (Plus links to latest news items.)

One of the many 7-10″ UMPCs, or MiniNotes as I think people prefer to call them now, I saw at CeBIT was this one from Norhtech. Its simple, efficient, portable and cheap.  Linpus were demonstrating it with Linpus Lite at CeBIT. NorhTec, based in Thailand, seem to be looking at the Nigerian market for this one but I have a feeling that we’ll see this design crop up in other territories with different brands as it’s originally from Quanta, the OED in Taiwan.

There’s a preview of this device available at the Nortec news blog.

More info at UltraMobileLife.