I’m away this week and so far It’s been a tough holiday for Internet connectivity. Not only am I with three generations of my family that don’t quite understand why I pull a mobile phone out every time we reach a town, but the villa we’re staying at, a fantastic wooden house on a hill in the heart of the Black Forest, is right on the edge of any sort of GSM reception. Every now and again I’ll get a bar of reception and a few tens of packets will fill the google.com/m pages that I’m using to keep updated. No, I haven’t been using a UMPC, just my mobile phone and my wifes notebook PC. I’ve had no time to write anything more than a short ‘I’ll get back to you soon’ during the day so there doesn’t seem to be any point at all in taking the UMPC. I can consume my important sources of info more easily on the N82 in these situations. If I need to do anything serious in the evenings, the notebook is available so again, there’s no point in trying to use something that’s going to make life more difficult. It’s easy to see how niche UMPCs are when portability and quick, inconspicuous, one-shot consumption are the most important requirements. Smartphones fit in so much more easily in these scenarios.
UMPCs aren’t far away from my thoughts though as tomorrow I’ll be slipping out of the villa at 7am to head up to the nearest Aldi to check out the situation with the Medion Akoya Mini. I’m planning to turn up about 30 minutes before opening time (say Hi! if you’re in the Freudenstadt queue) seeing how many people are there and ask what they’re queuing for. If there’s more than a handful of people waiting for Akoya’s I’ll concentrate on filming the possible mad dash to the cashier. If I’m one of the first, I might buy one (I’m a bit undecided yet.) I’ll let you all know how it goes!
>>>Smartphones fit in so much more easily in these scenarios.
You make a great argument for the iPhone with that!
And if you buy, maybe you’ll try putting OS X on it?
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/msi-wind-ten-inch-screen-macbook/
Next time, look for someone to post news for you, and then keep your phone off! Relax and have a holiday, man!
As you realized: a smartphone + a notebook is still the current technology, no matter how many UMPCs are coming out. Anything between is a promise between portability and productivity. If you need both, you still have to carry two and smartphone is the primary.
Fixup, I agree, and that’s why for now I am pleased with my EEE (900 for now), beats the $2000 USD OQO 02 and Sony TZ I’ve had before. Although nothing beats the Sony for size and battery time, it’s just not worth the $2k. I’ll rather spend $500 and have SSD and follow JKK mods :)
Got one!
Was at my local Aldi at 7:45 – and the first one.
I also was into Aldi first, but then made a strategic mistake: instead of asking a cashier, I just went straight to where the promos normally are. But no akoya there…
So I went back to the checkout, and there they were: you had to ask the cashier for one.
So I wasn`t first in line anymore. They had 12 akoyas in stock. Six black ones, six silver ones (Aldi Süd). The black ones were much in demand. Luckily the guy in front of me decided that he couldn`t live with a silver one and shoud try his luck in another aldi just 1km away. So I got the last silver one. Phew!
And what a beauty it is!
Really looks nice, and not too much bloatware on it.
Got pics? :)
lol so they only had 12 in stock … that’s a bad business strategy. And now Steven at least you can do you math more accurately knowing there are only 12 pieces a branch.
Don`t have a cam with me. But there are already enough pictures of it out there. Here is a photo series of unboxing the akoya
http://www.eeepcnews.de/2008/06/30/fotoserie-medion-akoya-mini-e1210-wird-ausgepackt/
The silver has the same colour as the inside of the black one.
And I take back what I said about it not having much bloatware. It`s terrible! There are hundreds (at least it feels like hundreds) of programs that have to do with the photo printing service of Aldi. Argh! And there are also people who don`t want to use google desktop!
Well at least Google desktop is small and easy to remove, btw you might try it you might actually like it :) I can’t find anything anymore on a Win machine without it, it even “sees” through the Outlook .pst files!
Google Desktop might be small and easy to remove, but some of the Aldi sofware was more than 600MB! And I just want to decide myself what software I want on my netbook.
Anyway, I`m probably going to completely reinstall windows xp when I set up a linux partition. And a larger hdd wouldn`t hurt either.
Screen brightness and keyboard are definitely big plus of the akoya.
Heh just another plus on the EEE 900 20G you do end up with a clean install as you have to install XP yourself :)
very nice.
I was the first one in the queue, but they wanted to sell the black ones first before the white netbooks…
So I had to wait shortly before they took some white ones out of the storage.
They had 16 in our store and they were sold out in about 5-10 minutes.
Arghhh – the envy!! And I have not even been able to find out whether it will be sold through the local Danish Aldi stores – since Aldi refuses to use e-mail :-( Apparently the MSI Wind should go on sale in Denmark within “4-14 days”.
Well, actually I wouldn`t be so sure about the envy. It`s a great device – no question.
But if the Acer one or the real MSI would have been available here by now (I just hate how all the umpc/ netbook manufacturers ignore europe. We always get evrything last – or have to import at high costs), I would have prefered one of them.
With the wind I could have saved paying for xp (I (really) own a valid (really!) license for xp that I haven`t installed on anything yet) and I`m also missing the overclocking button the msi is supposed to have (or am I just too blind to see it?).
And the acer one also seems really nice. At 360€ you get a smaller device with a bigger hard drive (and linux). Might sell the akoya once it is available.
Aren’t the Acer One supposed to have an 80 GB drive also?
And while you only save 1 cm in width and depth you loose a whole inch diagonally on the screen.
And weight-wise I supposed that the 950 g of the Acer is with SSD drive, not a conventional and large drive?
uk have the msi wind with another brand on it for cheap http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/219404 lucky British
Acer is going to come with 8GB SSD and 80GB and 120GB HDD.
You lose nothing with a smaller screen because they have equal resolution. And the way I like it: the higher the dpi, the better.
OK, not to turn this into a long discussion, just a last take on dpi.
Yes, a higher dpi is certainly nice, but mostly when discussing the same screen size. In this case, I’d rather be able to read the screen at a larger viewing distance and still obtain the same angular resolution. After all, my eyes are not getting any younger ;-)
Depending on the place Akoya Mini (aka MSI Wind) just hours away. | UMPCPortal – The Mobile Internet and Computing Reference Site ordinarily is not all that complicated. Searching for more info on this topic. Goodby!