I know there are a lot of designers, manufacturers and resellers that read UMPCPortal so this one is for you. Potential Windows 7 Slate customers should also read this. In fact, as a reviewer, I’m learning from this White Paper too!

Windows 7 Engineering Guidance for Slate PCs.

Windows for Devices have reproduced an extremely useful white paper by Microsoft that gives detailed information about what Windows 7 can bring to slate PCs (note Microsoft aren’t using the ‘Tablet PC’ term!) and how designers should think about everything from ergonomics and electronics. Windows 7 is one of the only operating systems that provides the Full Internet Experience with a productivity focus and a touch-enabled user interface. It may not be the sexiest but as of today, nothing can touch it for desktop-style productivity.

There are some obvious tips that are useful for designer and buyer…

• “Provide 2 gigabytes of memory on CPU-constrained and GPU-constrained systems. inch [which applies to Menlow, Pine Trail and Oak Trail designs in my opinion – Chippy]
• “Slate PCs should use solid-state drives (SSDs) to enable lower power consumption and high reliability in a mobile environment. SSDs also have greater performance than most traditional platter drives. inch
• Battery life should exceed 4 hours under normal operating conditions.

…and some not-so-obvious tips…

• To get a Windows 7 hardware logo on a device bigger than 10.2 inch you need to support DirectX 10
• Ensure handgrip regions are designed away from heat dispersion and venting.
• Biometric logon — Consider including a fingerprint reader for improved ease of access for logon and security scenarios.

The document is rich with advanced tips and inks and is also a recommended read for anyone considering buying a WIndows 7 ‘slate’. Clearly, with Microsoft pushing Windows 7 into this area, with OakTrail offering a super low-power platform and the general slate/pad/tablet wave of interest we’re seeing at the moment, there will be an increased number of offerings in the late 2010 and 2011 timeframe.

Additional information can be found in my article: Things to Consider when Designing or Buying a Tablet-Style Device

Windows for Devices WIndows 7 Engineering Guidance for Slate PCs

Linpus are working on Linpus Lite Slate Edition and, in-line with Intel Moorestown and Oak Trail-based products, is planned for tablet PC’s of 2011. We took some time to speak to Linpus about Lite and MeeGo too.

Linpus Lite appears on Acer Netbooks and is expected to be the distribution that will appear on Acers’s MeeGo netbooks.

The video was shot just before the Intel keynote in which the MeeGo tablet UI was announced.

We highlighted last week that the EviGroup Wallet [specifications] would be going into production very soon. It seems that SMiTs is also getting ready to put their design through production for Enso as the ZenPad.

In a post at Chinable, they offer up a preview video (note the Google Maps, Google marketplace, Gtalk apps) and some notes that indicate this is an Android 1.5 build. A non-3G version is to be launched first. The price of the ZenPad is $155 (120 Euro) so perhaps, just perhaps, the 199 Euro EviGroup Wallet really does include 3G although it’s more likely that taxes and GPS make up the difference. The comments on the post indicate that the ZenPad is heading to production.

So many questions remain open about this device that it’s hard to even try to place it. IF it gets the Android market and runs well in 256MB RAM, it could make an interesting alternative to the Archos 5 which doesn’t have the physical buttons (it uses screen space for virtual buttons) and doesn’t run the Google apps well due to limited memory after hacking. Without a capacitive screen or a high-end CPU, this will never be in the same league as something like the Dell Mini 5 but if if does appear, either in ZenPad or Wallet branding with 3G for 199-Euro, it becomes an interesting low-cost mobility option.

Thanks Mike Cane

Enso website.

My apologies to anyone who got excited when we posted our last article about Archos 7 Home Tablet availability. It turned out to be, as we suspected, a trick by an online retailer. (Mental note: Never link to these chancers again!)

In a U.S. press release last week (PDF), Archos announced that the Tablet will be available mid-May.

The ARCHOS 7 home tablet will be available in June at $199.99 SRP through selected
retailers. Exclusive pre-orders are available at Amazon.com, with product shipping mid May.

Review devices have obviously gone out. Engadget have one for testing and UK newspaper The Independent has its mini review up already.

I’m getting the impression that the Archos 7 Home Tablet is going to be a bubble-wrapped tablet hanging on hooks at point of sale. Android 1.5 (really?) is on board and apparently there’s no plan to upgrade the OS. Built-in USB 2.0 helps for attaching accessories and apparently the stereo speakers are good enough for in-crowd use. Touchscreen quality sounds just like the Archos 5 resistive.

When it comes to the touch screen browsing don’t expect an iPad-like experience. There is no multi-touch support and the onscreen input often felt slow and unresponsive. There is also no support for Flash.

At 149 Euro for the 2GB model, if it provides a acceptable HQ video experience along with ereading, basic web browsing and audio, it’s good value and could make the perfect online Google Reader device but please don’t expect a swift web experience, rich video experience and anything like an iPad UI experience.

Via Ndevil , TouchMeMobile and Slashgear.

In press events on Tuesday, Intel launched Moorestown and gave journalists their full marketing package on the smartphone and tablet-focused platform.  The key highlight was ‘performance’ and one element I want to focus on is Web browsing.

In tests I’ve been doing with many devices over the last 6 months using the SunSpider javascript benchmark, the Atom CPU, running at 1.3Ghz, whips the A4 CPU into the ground with a >3X speed advantage. Moorestown, with its 1.5Ghz clock looks to improve that to a 4x speed advantage according to the slide below. That’s a huge win for web-based applications implemented in AJAX.

Of course, javascript is only a component of the total time needed to fetch and render the average web page so I decided to do a real world test.

To simulate how Moorestown would perform under web-browsing conditions I took the Intel Atom-based Viliv X70, a 7 inch tablet with a 1024×600 7 inch touchscreen running Windows XP Home, installed the latest Google Chrome, locked the CPU to 800Mhz and did some random web browsing tests. Remember that the Menlow platform used in the X70 is very close to the architecture used on Moorestown. The CPU are GPU are architecturally almost exactly the same. I side-by-sided it with an iPad which is, according to my tests with the Archos 5, X10 and HTC Desire (all running high-end ARM V7 architecture cores) the fastest ARM-based browser solution out there.

The video below shows that the browsing speed with the Viliv at 800Mhz is almost neck and neck. An 800Mhz Atom on a multi-tasking OS matches a 1Ghz A4 on a single-tasting OS. Ignore the UI and product, this is just a test of web page loading speed.

In the second part of the video I boosted the Atom CPU up to 1.3Ghz, the maximum on this platform, to simulate what would happen when a Moorestown smartphone ran at the highest clock-rate of 1.5Ghz. Remember the CPU and GPU architectures in Menlow and Moorestown are the same although Moorestown has a 200Mhz advantage here, can support faster memory and has a faster GPU clock.

The difference is very noticeable with the X70 rendering pages much more quickly, even with Flash enabled. Move to Firefox and disable flash and the difference is even bigger.

I see real-world advantages here. Faster, full Internet experience and a huge advantage for web-based applications and compressed or encoded content although it has to be said that in this high CPU-load scenario, battery drain on the Moorestown platform is likely to be slightly (although not considerably) more.

Remember, we’re ONLY comparing CPU platforms here and in this simulation, the Moorestown platform is showing great potential. It can deliver web pages, process script, decrypt HTTPS, GZIP and images much faster than the best ARM-based solution out there. It also adds multitasking and large memory support too. As a platform, if it delivers on the battery life claims, Moorestown is going to be a great, high-performance smartphone, tablet and even netbook option.

Recommended reading – Why social netbooks have a ‘lock-in’ opportunity. In this article I talk about key features of a smartbook. Many of these apply to a Moorestown/MeeGo-based product.

Recommended reading Anandtech on Moorestown. Detailed with good background research and knowledge.

I love the Archos 5 Internet Tablet. Jenn of Pocketables, on the other hand, doesn’t and we’ve been having a to-and-fro on Twitter that’s worth extending here because  it shows how personal opinions can vary widly. We’ve challenged ourselves to write one paragraph on the A5 to say why we think what we think. Before that though, here are a few tweets that kicked the discussion off.

@Smith922 I’ve never had a 5, 6, 7, 9 or 10″ device that beats this around the house. @pocketables will give you a different view though.

@chippy You’re kidding! What about it beats other at-home devices for you? And do you *only* use it at home?

@pocketables yeah. The Archos 5 rarely leaves my home, just fits me perfectly. Quite stable now too. Might get digital a/v dock soon.

@chippy Stability has been OK on mine. I just can’t stand resistive screen, stock OSK, & “ungoogled” Android. Dell Streak, where are you?

@chippy The Archos 5IT is fantastic as a PMP (like previous gens) but I went in expecting an awesome Android MID, which for me it isn’t.

Remember that this is all personal, subjective opinion!

Here’s my summary:

The Archos 5 fits my consumer internet device requirements both physically, through form-factor and font-sizing through to OS and applications and succeeds in doing it in a way that is better than any other home experience I’ve had before. Battery life is fantastic, it looks good and it’s priced at an a level that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. My use-case is home-based Twitter, email, Google Reader, MP3 player, podcatcher, storage, TV-playback, YouTube, ebooks and of course, the browser that supports all the links you receive through email and social apps. When you get a URL through twitter, you want a fast browser to view it! It CAN be better (smoothness, stability, capacitive screen, 3G) but it doesn’t exist yet and that makes the Archos 5 unbeatable in my book.

For Jenn’s summary paragraph, see her post at Pocketables here

Any Archos 5 owners care to offer another one-paragraph perspective?

More mobile internet device news leaking out from Dell today shows new information about the Dell Streak. [Info: Currently #1 on Carrypad.] As we’ve already heard, the launch timescales could be well into the summer but at least there are plans for accessories.

Before we talk about the accessories though, check out the roadmap for the Dell Mini 5 (at Engadget) which shows a Q3 to Q4 launch window. We suspect that it’s a wide window for carrier launches with 3G but the indication is that there will be a WiFi only version which should launch earlier based on the fact that no 3G certification will be needed. Our guess is that you’ll see that in the Dell shop from day one. Also on the roadmap is an indication that the Dell Mini 5 will get an upgrade to Android 2.1

Secondly, there’s a huge range of colors available indicating a young consumer target audience which should also mean aggressive pricing and high sales targets. Archos need to watch their backs carefully here, especially as the accessory kit looks like the box of bits and pieces I’ve got here with my 605 Wifi and Archos 5.

Looking at the accessories I’m quite shocked to see the battery priced at $55. For a 5.5W battery that’s expensive although it does make me wonder if ‘kit’ means ‘extended battery.’ Somehow I’m doubting it.

Moving on we’ve got a set of in-ear plugs, a soft pouch and a few ‘kits’ for the car and the home theatre. This is where Dell steps right on Archos’ turf!

Full specs have been also been confirmed and show support for multiple video and audio codecs and a non user-accessible 2GB storage (user storage appears to be only via Micro SDHC card.)  The rest of the specs are in our database.

I think that about covers it but to be sure, check out all the images at Engadget.

If you’re the type of person that’s more interested in kicking back in a comfy chair with a coffee and your favorite internet sites and apps rather than looking to get productive with UMPCs, you’ll want to take a look at our sister publication, Carrypad. We’re focusing on consumer media and internet devices and building a database of all that’s interesting.

Here are some of the recent news highlights:

ICD Gemini Official Specs Confirmed. Comes in White Too! Android-based 11.6 inch consumer tablet has awesome specs but it’s a Q4 device and there isn’t even a hint of a price.

JooJoo Review Reveals 2.5hr Battery Life. Move along please! The JooJoo didn’t get a good review. We weren’t surprised.

Typing on the iPad Ben has an iPad. Here’s one of his videos. Stay tuned to Carrypad for more iPad news.

iPad: What’s Bubbling To The Top? Looking at the reviews for common threads. How’s the iPad doing? We’re not seeing too much rising up as ‘killer’ features.

Why The CIDs Will Suffer. A thought about how the iPad could stall the market for consumer internet devices.

More Smart Delays Dell Mini 5 and Lenovo Skylight get delayed.