Jenn and I have been having a private race to see who was first to get the SC3. She won! On the upside, it’s made me even more excited to get mine. It’s looking like a real peach of a device. My worry about Vista is fading away too. Here’s what she says about that:
"Keeping in mind that my review unit has 2GB of memory installed, Vista Home Premium SP1 runs extremely well on the 1.33GHz Atom processor. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s downright zippy and on par with what I’m used to (which isn’t much). I’ve experienced no disk thrashing, lagging, or slow-loading menu items and icons. Anyone expecting Vista to perform on the Atom the way it did on the A110 will be pleasantly surprised."
This is in line with what JKK is experiencing with Vista on the Atom-based 901 and very good news indeed. Tablet lovers are going to get very excited as Vista brings significant advantages over XP where a touchscreen is concerned.
I’m looking through Jenns review and thinking…why would anyone by an HTC Shift, Q1 Ultra or Fujitsu U1010/820 now? It’s tiny!
Efficiency is in-line with what I extrapolated from the marketing figures. 2.5hrs battery life on a 20wh battery. Bear in mind though that the battery is smaller than one you’ll find on an Acer Aspire. The 4-cell version, still small, will give you 5 hours of work time.
A backlit keyboard, built-in 3G and on-frame mouse control would be the only things that would make this device any better for the pro-mobile user. The 3G requirement is arguable as you’ve got an ExpressCard/34 slot to play with on the SC3. Note also that the keyboard is relatively small. Smaller than the old Kohjinsha keyboards and the ones on the Asus 701/900/901. This may not suit those that need to input data over a long period of time. There’s also a heat-build on charging.
I’ll stop there as you need to go straight over to Pocketables to see it in all its ultra mobile PC glory. Well done for winning the race Jenn. See you on the next starting line ;-)
Specification and more links available in the UMPCPortal product database.
sadly the price is basically insane…
But now you can continue the race with the Sharp WS016SH :-D
I wonder who will be first.
Insane? Not at all.
For U.S. customers, its not such a bargain but for a pro-mobile device, its still in the correct zone. As an import into EU and UK, its a bargain. 35% cheaper than the cheapest Q1 Ultra. At least half the price of an OQO. 40% cheaper than Shift.
Steve.
That Fujitsu looks neater to me, and the new 2010 may be even smaller, and has 3G I believe
Man, am I slobbering over this one!
My only concern is the heat output referred to in the review. Over the long term, that would scare me.
I’m really torn between this and the forthcoming Gigabyte M912X.
Decisions… decisions…
Actually, I think the price is pretty good.
For 650 Euros you can get the high end model.
As I remember I paid 1200 Euros for the HTC Shift I think prices are moving to a better range.
of course this is not on the level of the low end EEEPc’s from ASUS but there is a significant difference in hardware which makes up for the higher price tag.
Which is pretty much why I just bought the SC3 in White, 2GB :-)
@Maarten Congrats!
@Heavyharmonies For me the SC3 wins over the 912X based on size and features. If you can wait about 10 days, I should have both.
Steve.
hmm, i may indeed have spoken to soon about the price.
my bad.
I agree it seems like a bargain for what you are getting compared to other devices in this class (obviously it is more than a netbook, but we’re talking convertible mini tablets…)
But it isn’t cheaper than the cheapest Q1U available in the UK.
Which is around £437.37 inc VAT (£372.23 exc VAT), the SC3 comes in a bit over £500 and there is a good chance you’ll have to pay import tax and VAT on top of that…
http://saveonsamsung.com/product/id/410507/NP-Q1U/Y01/SUK
The SC3 sounds great -everything I had hoped for in my previous UMPC, which didn’t really deliver!
Anyway, looking forward to hearing your views on the SC3, Chippy (was your shipped on a rowing boat?!).
Cheers.
Mark
That’s about the same performance I get in my old Q1 with a Celeron M at 900 MHz with 2 GB of RAM and running Vista. The old Q1P with a Pentium had the same performance and the same battery life. So in conclusion, we got back the same performance that we had about 2 years ago!
Do not get me wrong! I’m extremely happy to see this. The A110 was a step back that never should had be done.
Ctitanic. It’s looking like the hyperthreading is helping a lot at this stage. People are reporting VIsta running better than in old Pentium-M devices.
Mark. I think mine is coming over by carrier pigeon. One bit at a time!!
I forgot about the VAT that wold have to be paid so, for EU people, add about 20% to the price.
Chippy, I´m an Eng. so I read numbers. Those numbers posted there are about the same I see in the Q1 and Q1P with 2 GB of RAM and Vista. Of course, this machine has the advantage of a better graphic cheap but for some reason I do not see a better result in the benchmarks.
If you build a car to go a certain speed, it will always go faster when the wind is behind it ;-)
I’m starting to wonder with these Vispa capable machines if the 2nd GB of RAM is eating some of the battery life. Given M$ofts usual design features vispa is probably nuking the entire 2Gb. So even where you have 2 banks or 2 SIMs (and all these UMPCs probably have one for smallness) neither probably gets much rest adding to the watts used. Aside: I remember when 1Mb was LOTS or RAM and 20Mb was big disk!
I also suspect that the hyperthreading is vital to more efficient windows operation if it accelerates the switch to/from kernel or between apps. I remember having to trace a windows application messaging bug on several occasions and noting that merely changing focus/activeness between apps caused many (as I recall 12-20+) task switches. The messaging events are diverse, many, mandatory, largely unused and expensive. They probably get more expensive as each version of windows adopts a purer memory model with more separation between applications and from the kernel. Thats one of the reasons XP and Linux run faster in half as much memory.
Further to my thoughts on RAM and power usage I’ve looked at a pair of Micron SODIMM DDR2-5300 (similar to the EEE ones). The spec sheet for 1gb/2gb shows some differences and a symptom of how hard this stuff is without knowing exactly which module is in use.
The datasheet I used in here http://download.micron.com/pdf/datasheets/modules/ddr2/HTF16C128_256x64H.pdf
These figures are quoted as 2gb vs 1gb.
standby current +18%
burst read/write -24%
burst refresh +19%
interleaf read +16%.
I’m not saying this is the memory in any particular device and the lower read/write is probably caused by the number or configuration of the chips being different.
Neither micron nor we can calculate wattage as we do not know the duty cycle of the memory – ie. when its busy and it what ways. Unfortunately Vista would exercise the disk/ssd much more run with 1gb so we cannot get a comparison by swaping its RAM. Maybe a linux test 1gb vs 2gb would be revealing.
Appreciate its export only at this stage but what brand name will these sell in the UK under?
In Jenn’s review, she said she got 2.5 hour battery life with it. What’s that useful for?
it was only the infamous sucky battery-life of Kohijnsha’s earlier SA model that prevented many of us purchasing that one. Now they release what appears to be an almost perfect UMPC…with 2.5 HOURS!? why bother.
Why is Fujitsu able to squeeze almost 5 hours out of the LifeBook U810? Asus EEE PCs also have respectable battery-life.
Can anyone explain why Kohijnsha seem to get everything right, yet seem to fail with battery life!?
As others pointed out, this has a small battery. The u810 with the small battery gives worse battery life, or to put it another way, if you put the eee 901 battery on the sc3, you would get between 5 and 7 hours active life.
Kohji sell a 4 cell battery which isnt too bog and will give you up to 6 hours life.
Steve
Tom, the performance of the U810 is about 60% of free one you get in this one.
Tom, the performance of the U810 is about 60% of the one you get in this one.
TIP recognized “free” instead of “the”.
Sorry
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the capacity of the new SC3 battery lower than that of the SA, SH, and SR series (2200 mAH rather than 2600 mAH)?
If it’s that much of a concern, get the extended battery. It’s not like a 4400 mAH battery is going to be gargantuan.
Frankly, as notebooks/subnotebooks go, 2.5 hours real world on a 2200 mAH battery seems quite decent to me.
I went ahead and pulled the trigger on a non-GPS model last night (really have no use for GPS or bluetooth at this point in time). What prompted me to do so was the 10% eBay coupon and the 25% off Microsoft Live cash back promotion (search SlickDeals or FatWallet for info).
$939 + $69 shipping = $1008.00
-$93.90 (10% coupon)
-$234.75 Cash Back
= $679.35 delivered… which is a price I can live with.
I’m going to see how it performs with 1GB and get a baseline for heat output, and then drop in my own 2GB stick for $40-50 and see how the heat compares from there…
I just did the same as heavyharmonies sans the 10% EBay coupon, which didn’t work for my account. Fingers crossed that this Microsoft cash back thing works.
heavyharmonies – where are you going to pick up the extra RAM from?
Talk about impulse.
-Devin
Not sure yet. I usually comparison shop between:
Amazon.com
Crucial.com
Memorysuppliers.com
“Jenn and I have been having a private race to see who was first to get the SC3.”
Still no SC3?! Not much of a race – you weren’t kidding when you said that yours was being delivered by carrier pigeon…
Not very good publicity for DFJ – what were they thinking?
I think I’ll get mine from Conics.net – at least that way it’ll arrive before it becomes obsolete :-)
Yes, its taking a long time. It came by standard EMS. Its cleared German customs now so am expecting it on Monday. Better get the cash ready to pay the tax!
Note that DFJ give you free delivery. If days are important then you need to consider options. Maybe they have a fast service.
Not sure how much Jenn paid for delivery.
Steve
Chippy,
Actually the price is a wash. As I was racking my brain on whom to purchase the SC3 from (DFJ, conincs.net, kabatek.com, dynamism.com, eBay sellers), with the exception of Dynamism, who was always considerably higher, they all came out within $50 of one another on delivered price.
Which would make sense, as several of those web sites, as well as the eBay sellers, are the same entities. There’s really only 3-4 distinctly separate sources for these on the English-language internet (who knows how many sources there are that I can’t read about).
The three advantages that I noticed from DFJ as opposed to others are:
1. Free SD card for readyboost (minimal, but nice)
2. You get Vista Ultimate; the others offer Vista Home or Vista Premium.
3. In the event of warranty issues, DFJ pays for shipping both ways; all the other vendors require you to pay 1-way-shipping to Japan to return the unit.
If not for the eBay coupons and cash back, I most likely would have ordered from DFJ.
Yeah. Ultimate gives you the language pack and, importantly, XP downgrade rights!
Steve
Once I make some restore DVDs with Acronis Trueimage, I’m tempted to try installing XP tablet edition 2005… would love to see how it hums under XP.
Just to update, my Microsoft Cash Back Live account shows a refund pending with an availability date of 9/18/2008 less than 24h after purchase.
Additionally, both DTFJ and Tabak are accessible via this offer, but you must search “kohjinsha” in eBay instead of “kohjinsha sc3” to locate DTFJ’s listing.
-Devin