Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting. Samsung N110 available for pre-order — The upcoming Samsung N110 [Portal page] has began preorders at Buy.com. Though the N110 was just recently announced, it looks like they will be releasing it soon. ASUS announces Eee PC E1004DN with optical drive, 1008HA gets a release date – Looks like Asus will be releasing its first ever netbook with included optical drive, […]

While we still don’t have confirmation of a US release, the UMID M1 [Portal page] is already out in Korea, and has been demonstrated doing some multimedia tasks on video. Take a look at the videos below: In this video you can see the UMID play a nice selection of games. Starting off with an FPS which appears to be Quake, then an RTS which seems to be Warcraft III. Then a more modern FPS, a racing game, and a 2D side-scroller. There is a good representative sample of game […]

The Sony VAIO P is an impressively small unit that manages to pack some relatively powerful hardware into a small, envelope shaped footprint. Though it may not be practically pocketable like Sony wanted us to think, it is extremely light weight and slim. Let’s begin with the hardware tour, as usual. Hardware Tour Front (right to left): Wireless radio switch, SD card slot, Sony Memory Stick slot, power slider, battery LED indicator, SSD activity LED indicator. Right: Kensington lock, USB 2.0, port replicator connector. Back: Nothing but hinges. Left: A/C […]

My main job is to promote ultra mobile computing solutions. High-end smartphones, MIDs, UMPCs, Netbooks and the like. My websites work extremely well as a platform for information and discussion but there’s a big problem – hands-on. We’ve done live videos and chat sessions which have worked well but I want to do more. Here’s an idea… How about I rent a big mobile home / RV, load it up with devices from resellers in Europe and come to you instead? I recon I could join up with a few […]

Jenn from Pocketables.net has some interesting new info about the UMID M1 [Portal page]. Chippy has had some good hands on time with the UMID M1 and always seems to note that he wishes the build quality was a bit better. Luckily it looks like his wish might come true. From what Jenn tells us, it looks like the casing will be refined before the US release. But wait, there’s more! Improved shell has smoother lines and a smaller battery that doesn’t protrude as much. Release date in Australia and […]

Jkk has a great little video showing you how to squeeze the most visible page space out of your Firefox browser. As he mentions, there are lots of add-ons to help reduce the interface size giving you more space for viewing your favorite websites, but jkk’s solutions increase the size by a good deal without the use of any add-ons. He achieves this by moving a lot of the UI elements and getting rid of space stealing bars. All of it can be done in just a minute or two. […]

Jkk points us to a quick video of the upcoming Samsung N310. Take a look a the video below. As I mentioned when we first saw the N310, I don’t quite see how customers will differentiate this from the N110. Both are running extremely similar specs and the only major differences seem to be aesthetics and a chilet keyboard on the N310 vs. a standard laptop keyboard on the N110 [Portal comparison of N110 and N310]. It seems like some people might be turned off by the single color matte […]

File this post into the better late than never category. Samsung started into the ultra mobile PC market with the original Q1 [Portal page] from there, they upgraded to the Q1 Ultra [Portal page] which added a split keyboard, increased the screen resolution, and made some other upgrades. Now Samsung is getting back to its roots with the Q1EX which was spotted at CES 2009. The Q1EX looks like a more refined version of Samsung’s original slate UMPC, the Q1. They dropped the split keyboard from the Q1 Ultra and […]