Without detailed release information on the Cloudbook Max, the MSI Wind, the ECS G10, the FIC CE2A0 and the 8.9″ Acer Aspire, the only two budget 8.9’ers we have to compare at this time are the HP 2133 and Eee PC 900. If you’re considering both for a purchase later this month, here’s a side-by-side comparison with my thoughts.

 
Click for interactive comparison page.

I’m rapidly losing faith in Digitimes as a channel for reliable UMPC info. It seems they allow anyone to throw their PR statements into the website without doing enough checks. Perhaps the wave of UMPC news is getting too much to stay focused-on?

Today’s news is that the Eee PC 900 will launch later this month (which isn’t new news) and that it will launch before the HP mini note that will launch in June. HP state that the Mini note will launch later in April.

Finally they state that Atom will ship in May. I understand that Atom will be available in June but there could be some confusion there with Atom going into full production and devices going into full production or even being available.

At least they got the news right about the Eee PC 900 shipping with Celeron. This was confirmed by ASUS at CeBIT back in March!

Josh is a lucky man. A very lucky man. He’s promising another video later.

In the video you see the Lenovo – ‘Very very cool’ and the one that Josh has his eye’s on. Personally I have my eyes on the Aigo (specifically the Gigabyte variant that is more likely to land in EU and US.

Engadget were just 24 hours out with their information that the HP 2133 UMPC would be launched on the 7th April. As I wake up on the 8th (work-in-progress) I’m seeing a ton of emails and RSS feeds relating to the official release. GottabeMobile, jkOnTheRun, Laptop Magazine, CNet, Notebooks.com and computer Shopper all have reviews and I’m sure there’s more to come (I’ll be adding links below as I find them.)

Lets start with the press release from HP US which confirms that the specs that we got were almost spot-on, thanks to the inside tipster that put us right with the VIA CPU specs. There’s a big educational slant on the PR but it reveals a sub $500 starting price. [more after the break…]

Today has been such a rush of news and reports that I’m going to have to double-up on this one.

PCUser, via JKKmobile, bring us two USI MID products. USI is the company that bought ABit. I think they’re known as Universal Abit now but it’s not important at the moment. The image on the right is of the MID-200. There’s also a MID 150 and i’m sure we saw these as non-working prototypes at CeBIT. I’ve even got a spec sheet for the MID-150 in front of me now! (view image). Neither of the two were the one we took the video of though. I’ll see if I can get in touch with USI/Abit to see what’s going on here and which devices are the one’s planned for launch. I can’t help thinking ‘Compal’ when I look at the one on the right here though.

On the netbook front, some news has surfaced about an 8.9″ ‘Aspire’ device. The news comes from Digitimes. Ignore the info there about the Eee PC 900 being Atom, as far as I know, from information given by Asus at CeBIT, it’s not based on Atom. At least they have the HP processor listed correctly now though! [Via GottabeMobile]

Kevin kicked off a good meme at jkOnTheRun this afternoon. He asks:

my question to you as we continue down this trend of smaller, lighter and cheaper is: what do you value most in a device like this? Put another way: if you have to compromise on price, storage capacity, performance, or size / weight, which would you choose?

It’s a good question so rather than running the comments in two places, I encourage you to comment over at jkOnTheRun. I’ll see if I can encourage Kevin to summarise the responses because there’s probably something everyone can learn from it.

Chris Saad of dataportability.org also asks a related question on a recent twitter: What does everyone think about UMPC vs. Macbook Air Vs. Other light/small solutions. Let him know via a twitter to @chrissaad

I’m also asking a few questions this week. I want to know what your definition of a UMPC is so I’ll be kicking off a poll tomorrow.

I feel I have a right to get this off my chest having put a days work into my own IDF analysis. Techradar, a UK publication by Future Publishing, proclaims that MID’s are crap and details their reasons thus:

Intel may have given the UMPC concept a new name – the Mobile Internet Device, or MID for short. But it’s still the same lame idea. Indeed, when pressed to discuss the pocket-busting proportions of the MIDs shown at IDF, the typical reaction of Intel suits was to get a little shirty. We’ve a feeling Intel knows that MIDs are not the answer.

And that’s it! It’s a ‘lame idea.’ I’ve got a reasonable idea why the Intel suits got a ‘little shirty’ now!

No link

I saw this yesterday and dismissed it immediately. Then today, it popped up again in a search for UMPCs and I took a closer look and saw that it’s basically a UMPC in a notebook chassis.

This is far bigger than any of the netbooks you’ll find out there but, because of the chassis size, they’ve taken a similar approach to Clevo and stuffed in as much battery as they could resulting in a 6-hour battery life. Knowing that the Q1 Ultra, as device that uses the same architecture, can run for 7 hours on its 56wh battery, I see no reason why the Rock Pegasus 210 can’t run for 6.  Rock have squeezed the UMPC architecture into a tough magnesium chassis, added a 12.1″ screen, fingerprint reader, kept the weight under 1.2kg and made it available with a very useful 3G option.

• Intel® A110 Processor 800MHz, 512KB Cache, 400MHz
• 12” WXGA X-Glass Screen (1280 x 800)
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
• 80GB 4200rpm ATA Hard Drive
• Optional Dual Layer USB powered DVD re-writer
• 3.6Mbps 3G/GPRS Integrated modem*
• Integrated Wireless LAN 802.11 a/g/n and Bluetooth
• Windows XP Professional or Vista Business Edition
• TPM data security and Fingerprint access
• Magnesium Alloy chassis and Hard Disk Shock Protection
• Expansion: 3 x USB 2.0 / 4-in-1 Card Reader / 1 x PCMCIA Card Slot
• Output: 1 x VGA Output / Headphone / Microphon
• Communication: 10/100/1000 LAN / 56k Modem / 3G/HSDPA/GPRS(optional)
• Security:Kensington Lock support

The only problem I see is the price. With the 3G option included you’re looking at, wait for it, £1056.33 inclusive of tax. That’s $2100! I wonder what they could have done with a 1.6Ghz Atom platform. 10 hours battery life in a low-power, lightweight laptop anyone? Not for $2000 I’m guessing!

Rock, via BIOS and Cheaplaptop.org.uk