The company with the UMPC-tablet-unfriendly name, The Beijing Peace East something-or-other Company, who I am now going to refer to as the brand, Porient, have sent me an update on the H9 that I reported on at CeBIT (video below) The very important update is that it has gone into pilot production and that they’re not going to do a Raon Digital on us after all. They will put the BT and WiFi radios inside it in the ‘next-step.’ I assume that means that it will be produced with BT and WiFi on board.
It would make quite an interesting device would it not be for that RISC-based architecture. Hardware wise it looks OK and with a bulk trade price of around $500 it could have been an attractive Pepper Pad challenger. It might have even been able to run MIDinux. Its a MID before its time! I’d like to have a another play with it though. If the Linux is well built with a nice browser engine, it might not make a bad web-pad or car PC.
Here’s the video from CeBIT again. New images are in the Porient H9 gallery. Specs and links are available in the product portal, here.
