Not only am I lucky enough to be going to The Next Web Conference and Mobile Dev Camp in Amsterdam next week but, with the help of Moblix, I’ve managed to pull together one of the best collections of MIDs and UMPCs I’ve ever had.

• Viliv S5 (#1 most popular on the Portal)
• Gigabyte Touchnote (#2)
• UMID Mbook (#3)
• Aigo P8860 (With XP)
• Raon Digital Everun Note
• Kohjinsha SC3
• Nokia N810
• Fujitsu U820

And to round-up the device list I’m going to pick up an iPod Touch before I leave for Amsterdam.

But what exactly am I planning to do with these devices in Amsterdam?

The main reason is to show developers and get their thoughts on the platforms from both a hardware and software perspective. Are mobile application developers interested in pocketable X86 platforms? What would they look for before they considered it as a platform to work with or to buy for personal use? Do they want to see market penetration or Interesting APIs and hardware? What if a mobile device offered them access to processing power that they’ve never been able to use before? Screens that contain 4-8 times more space? Higher capacity storage and memory? Longer online battery life? I certainly don’t expect an overwhelmingly positive reaction to these ‘disruptive’ devices but I do promise to let you know what people are really saying.

Secondly, it’s to get real-life mobile-use hands on with the UMID and Aigo with XP. Although I had devices in Austin at SXSW, it was very difficult to get good 3G usage time. I’ll have a local Vodafone card (or two) in Amsterdam so there should be no problem staying connected all the time.

Finally, I want to let people get hands-on. There are few opportunities to be able to try before you buy so I’ll be available for anyone that wants to see them and ask questions. They’ll be at the sessions and the parties and if you want, at your preferred location in Amsterdam. If you want to meet up with me to check the devices out, contact me –tnwdemo@umpcportal.com – and I’ll arrange it. Hopefully we can pull together a few mobile gadget geek sessions. As mentioned above, i’ll be at the Mobile Dev Camp on Wednesday 15th.

Many thanks to Mobilx for shipping over the Aigo, Touchnote and UMID for testing next week.

Footnote If you’re arranging a mobile web / computing event in and you think people would be interested in a demo and discussion around the MID and ultra mobile PC segment, contact me and we can talk about logistics, presentations and other possibilities. The segments UMPCPortal works in are shown in this PDF.

I made a quick video demo of the VAIO P’s instant mode which is a sub-OS that boots you into an environment that offers some basic computing. Sony has had a similar media-capable mode in previous computers, but they haven’t added online functionality until the release of the VAIO P’s Instant Mode. With the VAIO P’s Instant Mode, you can access your media (photos, videos, music) and get some work done with a Mozilla based browser, Skype for VOIP, and Pidgin for instant messaging. Check out the video demo below:

Jkkmobile points out an interesting video from Engadget that shows some interesting multi-touch demos on a resistive touchscreen. Have a look at the video embedded below, but be sure to stick around for some thoughts below.

The demos are definitely neat, but I’m a very big proponent of capacitive touch technology, not because of multi-touch, but because of its consistent recognition of input. Multi-touch and the ability to do gestures is great, but I would argue that it is not the best part of capacitive touch technology. So they have managed to port the multi-touch facet of capacitive touchscreens over to resistive touchscreens, but they stick lack the consistent detection of input. Nothing is more annoying to me than having to click on one item several times because it is easy for a resistive touchscreen to either miss or misinterpret your input. It really ruins the touchscreen experience. Low pressure input resistive screens help to alleviate this to some degree but the issue still remains. Capacitive touch’s ability to extremely consistently recognize touch input is what makes it possible to have a viable on-screen keyboard on a device the size of the iPhone. I’ve tried many other resistive touch phones with OSKs, and the experience is almost embarrassing to the hardware.

As for the pressure sensitivity of the demoed screen: The way it was described is that it recognizes how much pressure you are putting on the screen by how much contact there is with the surface of your finger. If this is the correct explanation of how the technology works, then pressure sensitivity will not be able to be measured with a stylus. When you apply more pressure to a surface with your finger, the skin around the bone presses down with a larger surface area, this obviously doesn’t occur with the tip of a stylus.

This is definitely good for resistive touchscreens and a jump forward for devices that will continue to use them, but in many cases I still feel like capacitive touch offers the best experience.