Back in late 2005, I was thinking carefully about renewing my Siemens ME45 phone. I was reaching the limits of GPRS and WAP versions of websites and needed to take the next step to 3G. At just the right time, along came a ‘netbook’ that resulted in me getting very excited. I would have bought it but it wasn’t in stock so instead, I analysed my needs and wrote up the spec for my Carrypad (almost what the N810 and Compal MIDs are today) and started the Carrypad journal. Carrypad.com was born, merged with Origamiportal in late 2006 and soon after, changed over to the site you are reading now. I’ve been enjoying working full time on it now for over 2.5 years. If that JVC ‘netbook’ had been in stock, things would have been very different.
Its got an 8.9 inch screen and the overall dimensions are the same as the Samsung Q1!! It also has a pc-card slot and flexible battery options. For an extra 200grams or so you can clip on the supplied extra battery and get a confirmed 5 hours life. 5 hours! Linux is known to run on it and in my opinion it even looks cooler than any Origami to date. If I was in the market for an Origami-like device, i’d buy this with a bluetooth dongle and be very happy! (source)
The 1.1Ghz Pentium-M and all the other specs are about the same as today’s netbooks and if you ask me, the design is better than most netbooks on the market today. Look at the price I was prepared to pay…
It was because of this device that I started analysing my mobile computing needs, making notes, lists and eventualy turning them into the Carrypad journal. Me and some of my colleagues sat having our mid-morning cuppa and I was boring them with my quest for a mobile device (again) and how i’d found this JVC XP741 device. I knew I needed a keyboard and from the possible choices (OQO, Libretto etc.) it had stuck out from the rest simply because of its price. 999 Euro – a good 500 cheaper than the nearest competitor. I showed them the printout and a whole new level of interest in my quest was born. We decided we needed to see it in the flesh.
Off we went to ‘MediaMarkt’ where we found the sister device. The 841. It looked great and had a DVD drive in addition to the 741 specs. However, what we thought would be a tiny device, turned out only to be ‘small.’ We left without a purchase. Back at work, I did a further comparison of the two devices and found out that the 741 was in fact a lot smaller than the 841 simply because it did’nt have a DVD drive.
If the 741 had been in the shop, I would have bought it there and then and never have pondered over the Carrypad. But it wasnt! After that I was concentrating on the Carrypad and never looked back at the XP741. [From an article I wrote about the XP741 in March 2006]
And what phone did I buy in the end? A Nokia 6280 3G slider.
Posted a new article: How UMPCPortal was born: An out-of-stock ‘Netbook’ http://www.umpcportal.com/?p=5442
It’s not a bad looking machine that! I guess price is what sets the current generation of portable PCs apart from those of old.
yep, seems like moore’s law will stop producing more speed (unless your a gamer, and even then things will be more generational as gaming becomes more and more about console rather then pc), and instead be used to produce lower cost components.
about damn time if you ask me ;)
so it was either that device or…umpcportal.com :-) thanks god it was not available – sorry Steve…
Yeah. Its that simple. I went back to my desk, pissed that i couldnt get what i wanted and then started to write my own spec whic evolved into the first ever posts. They are still in the archive. Feb 2006.
Bought the device 4.5 Years ago and still use it. If it wasn`t for the battery it still would be my companion f choice. Unfortunately the battery is hard to get would be more expensive than a new netbook.
It should also be mentioned once again that this device was designed and built by Asus! It was only sold under the JVC label in Europe. So this is the legitimateprecedessor of the EEE and all netbooks!
Yeah. Keep forgetting bout that ASUS bloodline.
S.
I actually bought one of these (the original model, and paid a fortune for it) and used it very happily for 2-3 years. I only stopped using it when I bought the Asus EEE PC 700. I prefer the latter because, funnily enough, it feels a lot more robust. Part of that is the solid state disk versus a hard disk in the JVC. The screen is better in the JVC but the Asus has more memory.
What’s incredible is the price difference: the Asus cost me 1/10th what I paid for the JVC!
My journey into UMPC area started with similar laptop (Asus S200n, 1GHz, 512Mb) 4.5 years ago and I continue using it as my primary PC these days. Incredible device – 2008 was the first year when I saw first products that were comparable to it.
We should get a reader’s first UMPC gallery set up.
I’ll prepare a post….
Steve
The Asus S200n is exactly the same laptop as the JVC pictured above. It was only sold as JVC (but manufactured by Asus) in Europe. In the US and Asia it was sold as Asus.
Really great device.
I might as well use this post as an opportunity to say how impressed I am that you’ve managed to turn blogging about a niche field like UMPC’s into a full-time job, that’s got to take a lot of dedication :)
(ignore this if you’re really a billionaire and this is just a hobby!;)
Thanks Sarig. A billion posts will probably come before a billion dollars but it’s just about keeping my family’s head above water and that, thanks to my understanding family, is enough to keep me happy in my job.