As the rumours surrounding the HP Windows 7 tablet continue to swirl and with no official response on the matter, no one is quite sure if the project is dead or not. For those who like the form factor and who aren’t interested in owning an Apple iPad, the Jumper JK01-TT may be of interest.
It’s a 10.1 inch tablet running Windows 7 and sports a 1024 x 600 multitouch display. The JK01-TT is powered by a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. It comes loaded with WiFi, 3G, USB, 4 in 1 card reader, 2MP webcam, accelerometer with autorotation and a 3000mAh battery.
I would estimate a possible 2 – 3 hours run time if you’re lucky but given its 1.2kg weight and slim dimensions (11.4 inch x 5.9 inch x 0.8 inch) it does make for a small, full-featured tablet.
As an added bonus the Jumper JK01-TT ships with a docking station, wireless mouse / keyboard and is available at Ownta costing €556.92
It’s been about 2-weeks since I last used my daily desktop PC and 2-weeks since I’ve heard that horrible background noise of fan and disk. For the last two weeks I’ve been using a silent, modular, ‘grab and go’ solution based on the Fujitsu U820 ultra mobile PC and it’s working out very well indeed. You won’t find many solutions like this out there because this is one of the secrets of the ultra mobile PC world that marketing teams and board members get scared about a multi-scenario device!
What a hectic few hours! I’ve had DHL at the door with the Archos 5 Mini Dock, a tweet from Pocketables alerting me that the new firmware is available and the whole lot has been captured in a video. I’ll say no more than this:
Mini keyboard and mouse = Mini ‘Web’ PC under 500gm and 300 Euro!
It looks like some hard drives with no external power won’t work but I tested a few USB SD-card adaptors and it worked fine. Questions remain over 3G sticks.
After a very successful and stress-free install of Windows 7 on the U/B50N (U820, U2010) ultra mobile PC yesterday, I’m now giving it a full test as a desktop PC with full size monitor and keyboard. Using the dock, the screen keyboard, mouse and power can be left plugged in and I can grab the ultra mobile PC whenever I need to take Twhirl to the kitchen!
The Loox was already an impressive device but with Windows 7 it’s working so much better. Quick, clean, enjoyable. Not as fast as XP but the trade-off is worth it now. Battery life appears to be better. It ranges from under 5W (wifi-on, screen on, idle = 4hrs) drain through 7W (average Wifi browsing = 3hrs) up to 10W (2hrs) if it’s pushed for videos. Boot time is about 60 seconds until fingerprint swipe and another 30 seconds on top until it’s stable. Far better than Vista was. All touch features are working including floating tip and the on screen keyboard is great in portrait sofa-surfing mode! Even the fingerprint reader is working for Windows login. There’s no audio output on the dock which is a little annoying but USB audio dongles are dirt cheap and there’s always the A2DP route so it’s not a major hassle. With the 1.6Ghz processor (1GB RAM) it’s fast enough for my journalistic and social networking activities although there’s clearly room for improvement in disk speed. A fast 64GB SSD would make this almost unbeatable. (The 2Ghz version with an SSD will be the ultimate grab and go desktop!)
This isn’t a cheap setup by any means but it’s one of the best engineered, multi-scenario ultra mobile PC packages you can buy. From tablet to thumbing to table-top and desktop. It’s up there with the 1.8Ghz OQO 2+ and docking station setup I tested. I’m enjoying the U/B50N so much that when I’ve completed the Viliv S5 review (that I’m supposed to be doing right now!) I’ll schedule a full review of this. When the UMID Mbook goes back to Mobilx this week, the U/B50N will become my main UMPC. Thanks very much to Conics for the long-term loan of the U/B50N. It’s been a pleasure but I really can’t stop thinking about the 2Ghz version you have!
End of day update:
This is very cool to work with. I always like a dual-screen setup and theres a great feeling of efficiency here but don’t expect this setup to be without limits. I put the Fuji into high-power mode (no speed stepping) and the fan got annoying (in my silent, out of town room while I was concentrating on an article) and there were one or two stutters too many. I think, however, these are coming from my RF keyboard and mouse rahter than the UMPC. I need another session with a hard-wired keyboard.mouse. If you need ONE PC for mobility and desktop and you want to use it a lot, i.e. you need quality, this is probably in the top three with the Sony UX and OQO. I dare say the 2Ghz with SSD and windows 7 will be the ultimate one-pc setup.
I’m a big fan of using UMPCs as desktops. In my normal daily work there’s nothing that I can’t do on my ultra mobile PC and with the future looking good for more powerful devices, even normal desktop users should be able to run their daily work on a ultra mobile PC but it doesn’t work if you keep having to plug cables in and out all over the place. A simple, single cable or docking port solution is what’s needed. The i7210, OQO and M704 all have nice docking stations but many other UMPCs, including my current Q1 Ultra, don’t.
A recent article by Jenn over at Pocketables made me give the universal USB docking station idea a second thought and this review of the Toshiba Dynadock now has me hovering over the order button. It supports multi-view via ‘DisplayLink’ technology, there’s a DVI-out version, ethernet, USB ports, headphone and mic ports a digital audio out port and even a serial port and the only thing you have to plug into the ultra mobile PC is a single USB cable.
An analogue, TV-out port would have been better than a serial port but for desktop operations and even in ‘set-top-box’ situations, the Dynadock looks perfect. Some video limitations mean that you won’t be able to run HD720 videos smoothly but for most people with UMPCs, that wouldn’t have been an expectation anyway.
Pricing for the DVI version runs to $180 but the analogue, VGA version is $150 but the street price (e.g. Amazon.com – right) is down to a very reasonable $107 for some models as I write this.
As the rumours surrounding the HP Windows 7 tablet continue to swirl and with no official response on the matter, no one is quite sure if the project is dead or not. For those who like the form factor and who aren’t interested in owning an Apple iPad, the Jumper JK01-TT may be of interest.
