Back at IDF in Sept we were told that most of Intel’s marketing spend next year will be on Ultrabooks. It seems hard to believe but what is for sure is that there will be a large sum of money involved. Companies producing Ultrabooks (that qualify) can look forward to marketing and advertising help along with a raft of generic Ultrabook advertising. Expect to see the first of this at CES where Intel is bound to be supporting all the Ivy Bridge partners and a big bunch of journalists.

In an interview to be published in the German Handelsblatt newspaper tomorrow, Tom Kilroy, VP of sales and marketing at Intel gives more information. Although the full article is not yet available, a press release (in German) gives selected details.

“Im kommenden Jahr werden die Ultrabooks im Zentrum unserer größten Marketingkampagne seit Jahren stehen”

Read the full story

The elusive company is back with the Ocosmos OCS9 — Ocosmos has tantalized us with awesome ultra mobile PC concepts for years, but the devices have always turned to vaporware seemingly just prior to release. Well, it seems Ocosmos is at it again, but this time, we’re certain that they’ll actually be bringing a product to market, thanks to the folks at Dynamism.

Surprisingly, Ocosmos actually showed up at last month’s IDF, only after Chippy, Avram Piltch (of LaptopMag), and I chatted about how unlikely it would be! The Ocosmos OCS9 was on display as well as the Android powered “Smart O-bar” controller. Here’s our hands-on (unfortunately we lost the first 50 seconds of audio to technical difficulties!):

The Smart O-bar has a 3.5 inch 320 x 480 touchscreen as well as two hybrid D-pads (they move like a joy stick, but have individual directional buttons as well) and shoulder buttons. The Smart O-bar is designed to be complimentary to the Ocosmos OCS9, allowing you to connect it for keyboard input and for use as a game controller.

According to the company, the Ocosmos OCS9 is the world’s thinnest Windows Slate, and at 11.9mm, that might just be true. Here are the specs:

There’s also a few accessories available for the Ocosmos OCS9, including a nice looking dock, a keyboard folio, and even a bag. These will run $70 for the first two, and $90 for the latter. The Smart O-bar is optional as well and is offered for $140.

And the price for the Ocosmos OCS9? Actually, a rather reasonable $699. Dynamism is taking pre-orders for the unit and is giving an additional $50 off for those who order before November 18th, bringing the price to $649. They expect the unit to ship on the 30th of November. We’ll have one on hand for review in the coming weeks.

Many of us have downloaded the Windows 8 Developer Preview to give it a test run and I think it’s fair to say that the most exciting feature to test is the Windows 8 Metro UI. Focused on touch, app-snacking, consumption and entertainment it has been an interesting product to think about in terms of mobile computing; real mobile computing. Getting the balance of UI right for both on-the-go and bum-on-seat activities hasn’t been achieved by anyone yet. Windows 8 is the big hope for that in the future.

Not only does Windows 8 introduce this interesting Metro UI and apps layer, it also approaches quick-startup and efficiency. In testing it over the last few weeks on four mobile devices, I’m not as positive as a was a month ago about the Metro UI although it’s way better than anything I’ve experienced as an overlay on Windows before and ultimately, I’m enjoying its responsiveness, sharing sub-system, full-screen Explore browser and dynamic nature. There are some serious issues to talk about though.

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The first is that while Metro works on low-resolution devices, the apps won’t because they require a minimum of 768 pixels vertically. For the side-by-side snap feature, you need 1366 pixels minimum width. There are also major issues when working in portrait mode something that isn’t really supported at all. The resolution restriction seems crazy when you consider the cost and size of 1366×768 screens. I don’t see anyone producing that at 7″ and as it’s not compatible with 1024×600, 100 million netbooks users are going to be left out.

[Ref – Screen size recommendations for Windows 8]

You might argue that we just need much higher resolution screens. I’ve tried Windows 8 on a 1280×800 screen at 5.8″ and yes, Metro apps work. Text might need a little enlargement here and there but it works. Some issues remain though. Touchscreens can’t be recessed otherwise it’s not easy to find the magic swipe that expose the hidden menus on the right and bottom left corner. Forget resistive screens. That’s not such a big deal considering the level of capacitive and digitiser deployment and it’s also not much of an issue for the classic Windows UI either as that’s the one you’ll be using who you’re docked at your desk. The other issue comes with cost and battery drain. High resolution screens are expensive to produce, especially if you want one that’s readable outdoors. There’s also the power cost in terms of the display electronics and the graphics power needed to control it. Given that most people are more than happy with 200ppi, a higher density in a 7″ frame is counter-productive, at least for large-font Metro. People with perfect eyesight may disagree with 200ppi but I regard it as a good trade-off point for screen design.

Windows 8 Metro UI in Portrait Mode

It’s unfortunate that the developer preview is indicating that portrait mode isn’t encouraged. All the apps in the preview fail to work efficiently in portrait mode despite that fact that in portrait mode you get the best split-screen keyboard experience and preservation of screen real estate.

I agree with those that say portrait is useless on a top-heavy device of 2lb or more but what about 2013, 2014 when 10 inch Windows 8 tablets could be under 1lb and when even the 7 inch form factor could be possible with a hi-res screen?

To demonstrate what I mean here, I’ve made a video showing the Windows 8 developer preview on an ExoPC in portrait and landcsape modes.

Continued…

You’ve probably seen plenty of previews of Windows 8 over the last 12 hours or so given that its just gone publicly available as a preview. The operating system offers multiple usage scenarios for touch, mobile and productivity. Devices like the Fujitsu TH40 will benefit highly from Windows 8 as they too offer multiple usage scenarios.

I was really quite impressed with the device after my hands on at the Intel Atom Showcase here at IDF. Of all the Oaktrail devices I’ve tried, this has been the best experience yet. I was left wondering why this is only available in Japan.

Look out for the optical mouse pointer. Given my experience with other Oaktrail devices I would put the working battery life, screen on, at about 4-5hrs. Two points I would have to think carefully about are the longevity of the slider mechanism and the processing power which, on Oaktrail, is never really going to impress anyone.

The upcoming HTC Flyer [tracking page] is one of the only (if not the only) Android tablets that is built specifically with stylus driven input in mind. NotebookItalia.com has caught a video of an artist demonstrating what it’s like to use the Flyer as a drawing tool.

I don’t speak Italian, but the video gives us somewhat of an idea of what experience you can expect from inking on the HTC Flyer. My initial feeling is that while the N-trig capacitive/active digitizer screen will feel great for digital inking, the software on the Flyer is going to determine how seriously this tablet could be used for art.

I’m no artist, but from what I understand, layers and a robust brush tool are vital to creating digital hand-drawn art. Artists need to be able to selectively work on various layers of their projects, and need to have a huge brush-head selection to be able to do mass-outs and draw textures what would be difficult to achieve with manual strokes.

At first glance, HTC’s drawing application might look ok, but a major roadblock that I can already see is that brush sizes appear to be quantized, meaning that only specific pre-set sizes can be chosen, rather than being able to select from a virtually unlimited number of possible brush sizes. Layers also don’t seem to be present, so when if you are looking at the Flyer as a seriously digital-drawing art tool, you might be better off sticking with your Wacom pads. Drawing (not writing, mind you) on the HTC shift appears to be more useful for simple sketches than masterpieces.

Digital ink for note taking, however, will likely be well received to people unfamiliar with using a real stylus and active digitizer. HTC has talked about Evernote integration on the Flyer which happens to be my go-to digital ink (and regular text-based) note taking app, so they definitely picked a good ally in this department.

The on-device inking experience might not be up to professional artistic standards, but HTC could potentially pull a Notion Ink and allow the Flyer to function as a wireless drawing pad for a full blown computer. The Flyer appears to have pressure support (a must for life-like digital inking), so conceivably it could work as wireless drawing pad when linked up to an application like Photoshop. HTC hasn’t yet announced such functionality, but here’s to hoping (or at least a clever third-party implementation)!

The HTC Flyer is launching in the UE region on the 8th of May for a steep $792 (479 pounds) for the base model. Thus the Flyer is unlikely to be anyone’s first choice as a dedicated digital inking pad as Wacom’s industry-recognized Intuos drawing pad line starts at $299.

[via netbooknews.com]

The prototype ruggedized Android Tablet from Mobile Tout Terrain shown in the video below and in the gallery here is not certified for the sort of environment we’re seeing in north-east Japan right now but it’s certainly more rugged than your average tablet or ultra-mobile PC (UMPC.)  Think about hiking, traveling, the beach, your bike and even extreme situations like baby drool or even, and this is one I’m interested in, the bath!

Mobile Tout Terrain, a French company, are aiming to get this IP67-spec tablet ready for Q3 2011 at a price that sounded wrong. €350 sounds way too low for a splash-proofm dust-proof device.

Specifications and pricing are subject to change but we’re looking at a 1.2Ghz CPU (of unknown type) and an 800×480 multi-touch capacitive screen. There’s no telling what version of Android will be on it in 6 months time but we heard that 2.2 is being worked on.  GPS is included, micro SD, 512M RAM and Web Cam.

Styling work is planned for the connector/holding block but as it is, I found it incredibly easy to hold in landscape mode.

Extremely important for this, even critical, will be that it has a full Google suite of applications. Without Google Maps, Talk, Latitude, SkyMap and all the other great applications available through the market this will only be interesting for companies wanting to develop their own applications. Mobile Tout Terrain may just be aiming for such a niche of tour-guides, meter-readers and surveyors but I really hope not because there’s so much more this device could do. I’m sure you can think of a huge list of applications here.

Here’s the video.

After I had tested the N570-based S1080 tablet yesterday I had a great discussion with Gigabyte about mobile video editing. Gigabyte have always explored new features and pushed the boundaries in some way another so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the representative told me I should wait for Computex to see the T20xx range of devices that will come with the latest, Sandy Bridge versions of Intel’s Core i3 or i5 CPUs. I understood that they would be convertible too.

That’s going to be something to test as soon as possible because if they manage it, we could have another low-cost power-option on our hands. If they manage to get some decent battery life out of it and keep it under 1.5KG too, it’s going to be very interesting indeed. I sincerely hope that the rep knew what he was talking about and can’t wait to hear more.

Computex starts on May 31st and we’re planning to be there.

As I mentioned in the brief post earlier, the Gigabyte S1080 appears to offer some great connectivity. We’ll get it into the database as soon as we can. Here’s the video hands-on. There’s a full gallery here.