ABI surveyed 1000 people about netbooks. According to their results, only 79% see them as a secondary computer. 11% see them as a primary computer proving that there is a significant overlap an direct impact on notebook sales. No surprise really. The results are not good news for laptop and netbook manufacturers in general, despite the 79% that are buying a netbooks as a second device. Here are some thoughts from the top of my head. Any survey done at the moment is dealing with early-curve consumers that are highly […]

Jon Stokes, one of my favourite mobility-focused journalists, wrote in ARS Technica about battery life on the Palm Pre a few days ago and brings up one of my favourite topics. Battery life. It’s a real issue for smartphones now as the platforms reach levels where they can be considered capable of returning an acceptable web experience but when used in such a scenario, the battery life is too short. Losing your mobile communications because you spent 2 hours messing around on the Internet isn’t the situation most want to […]

Over at UMPCPortal I’m tracking the various versions of the Compal MID, their specifications and where you can buy them. Following an interesting forum thread over there I’ve written a short article that talks about the variants of the device and where you can buy them. Check the article out here: MID IDOL di Tim. Hands-on from Italy | UMPCPortal – The Mobile Internet and Computing Reference Site.

Yesterday I asked for input on the French SFR-version of the Compal MID. It turns out (thanks, everyone, for the feeback) that it’s provider locked but there’s no contract commitment. For the French, it’s a deal! The Italians have their own option in the IDOL that is offered through TIM, one of the local mobile Telco’s. There’s a nice thread in the forum where IDOL users are getting together to chat about the device but it’s worth highlighting a few things. Firstly, it’s unlocked, has Italian, Chinese and English language […]

The sun is shining out in Pocketables land. I can almost see Jenn’s smile radiating from here, 7500 miles away on the other side of the planet. She’s got the Vaio P and the unboxing and testing has already started. Unboxing photos’s here. It looks like the usual stack of Sony apps and try-me-ware is installed so Jenn will probably have some cleaning-up to do before the first impressions come out. She has the 1.3Ghz, 64GB SSD version. I’ve used a similar set-up on the OQO 2+ so if the […]

Well I guess it wouldn’t have made any difference if the ClarionMiND (yes, one-word due to legalities) had turned up for my 5-country day-trip; there’s no flippin Euro maps on it! Despite that, I’ve quite enjoyed familiarising myself with it because in terms of finger-friendly user interface, it’s a real gem. Carrousel style menu system and a UI that appears to run through the whole system. Only some sub-menus within applications such as the browser and email client escaped the skinning and overall it has been fun to test out. […]

This is more a call for help from the French readers than anything else. It seems to me that my French neighbors can pick up an SFR-branded Compal MID with 3G for 349 Euros without a contract commitment. The only thing I’m not sure about is the 3G. Is it locked to SFR? I’d appreciate any help on this so if you can read French or have already investigated this, let us know because it looks like it’s setting a new low-price for a slider MID. MID avec solution Internet […]

The Palm Pre will probably be the most powerful smartphone ever when it launches and browsing is likely to be significantly faster than any other smartphone before it. The browser is built on Webkit so there’s likely to be a good degree of accuracy and the connectivity options look good too so in many respects, this is going to be a great mobile Internet device.