Getting ready for a conference or trade show always get me excited. There’s the thought of the new gadgets, the discussions, meeting with contacts (I’ll be catching up with the MeetMobility and NetbookNews teams while I’m there; @jkkmobile, @sascha_p, @joannastern) and of course, the thrill of the pack. The scout in me never ceases to get excited about packing my gadget bag.

I had an update from TI’s ‘Mobile Mover’ Seshu Madhavapeddy on Thursday evening and came away with a very strong impression that Ti want to conquer the whole ‘Ring of FIE’ with their OMAP 3 platform. PMPs were mentioned (Archos.) Smartphones were mentioned (Samsung Omnia HD, Palm Pre) and so were tablets and netbooks.  Seshu also outlined how ARM-based netbooks would differ from the netbooks we know today buy talking about targeted markets and highlighting the Always Innovating TouchBook. He asked me if I’d heard of it. Bells rang in […]

News from the Maemo weekend in Copenhagen; Canonical will switch to Maemo-derivative Mer from the Moblin 1.0 build for it’s Ubuntu MID derivative. Moblin 2.0 is no longer MID-focused so it looks like Intel have just lost a significant partner in their MID ecosystem.

One element of the Gigabyte Touchnote that I’m starting to get used to now is the gesture support. It’s built into a special set of eGalax drivers that have been included on the device. Originally I wanted to turn them off as they were interfering with selecting text and Grab and Drag under Firefox but after tweaking them a little, removing a few that were clashing with other on-screen actions and getting used to new ones that I have set up, i’m really liking them. Here’s a video showing them […]

The Mozilla Maemo developer weekend starts tomorrow and will be focusing on the very things we love here at UMPCPortal. Efficient, mobile, internet-connected application

We had a very detailed email and press release from Viliv today which is now available on their English-language website. In summary, it looks like they will be highlighting global 3G and 4G versions of the S5, X70 EX and S7 UMPCs and demonstrating Windows 7. They will also be revealing two new models. A 10 inch model and a 4.8 inch device with keyboard. The press release also mentions that Microsoft will be using an S5 with Windows 7 in their keynote. We can’t wait to hear what the […]

Mobilx have just sent over live pics from their first batch of Clevo TN70M’s so if you’ve ordered already, it will be on its way. (Let us know what you think when you get it!) If you haven’t ordered, there’s stock available now. More images in the gallery. After analysing the Lazion review the other day I’m a bit more positive about it. I had thought that it had lost a bit of its lustre since we saw it in 2008 but having seen the upgrade possibilities (2GB, 1.8 inch […]

The Q7 may not be a UMPC but there’s a lot to like and a lot to learn from the device. It highlights the difference between professional and consumer devices very well so in this article I’ve mixed a review of the Q7 with some thoughts about consumer web tablets.