Frank (Ctitanic), ever the eager ultra mobile PC beaver, has posted some interesting reading over at Ultra Mobile PC thoughts about the new eo v7200 series UMPC’s. Some of which I don’t agree with.

Apparently the PDF version of the manual (a 2005 version) is available through the FCC website and Franks been through it and picked out some points.

• No integrated Mic
• No resolution change button
• Mono speaker

We’ll have to get these points confirmed to be sure. For a start, there’s a hole next to the camera which looks like a mic input and also one under the prefs button. Take a look at the close-up images below.

Frank also thinks that the Pentium-M is not a good choice for battery life when compared to the Celeron. Actually, the opposite should be true. The Pentium-M should give battery advantages over the Celeron. The Celeron’s only advantage is price. The Celeron is basically the Pentium-M with some cache and speed-stepping removed. The Pentium-M is able to use speed-stepping to reduce clockrate and therefore save power over the Celeron. From the article I posted about the Origami CPU options:

The Celeron-M devices are Pentium-M devices with a reduced L2 cache and importantly, speed-stepping removed. …. In real terms, it means that the Celeron uses more power than the Pentium and that it could be slower in some operations.

In addition, as Frank already mentioned, if the architecture supports C3 states (the Founder looks like a Centrino architecture. If it’s Centrino, it will have the Wifi as a seperate chipset and not in the USB bus, causing problems, like it was in the v7110.) it could take a marginal lead over the other two Origami UMPC’s on battery life. Of course, we saw with the Amtek model that manufaturers can make cock-ups. Theory and practice are two different things so despite the facts, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Take a look here at some comparative battery life tests on 1.5Ghz C7, Pentium-M and Celeron based devices.

Accessorise.
Frank got hold of some prices for the 7200 series accesories. The bluetooth keyboard will go for $99.

They have also two carry cases: the eo Portfolio Carrying Case for $24.95 and the eo Slip Case for $14.95.

No word on the price of the show-off (wall) mount.

Thanks for the research Frank and if i’m wrong, I promise to send you some nice German beer.

eo i1709 specification page with hi-res images and news links.
eo i1710 specification page with hi-res images and news links.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Spare a thought today for Thoughtfix. He odered his Tablet Kiosk eo v7110 last week, received it yesterday, did the obligatory unboxing ceremony and started to get busy. 6 hours after he got his 7110, he learned that Tablet Kiosk had launched new versions of the eo. Oh the pain!

While still downloading and installing stuff on my freshly installed TabletKiosk eo v7110, I was admiring how fun it is to use and getting used to the interface. I finally got around to checking my Gmail from it and found something. A press release.

Still, on the bright side, Thoughtfix should do a good job of testing and reporting on the eo as he’s already proved himself with his other blog on the Nokia 770 internet tablet. He’s got a great list of things to do and as a Linux-fan, I expect him to be playing with Linux distro’s as soon as he’s got though his testing list. Right Thoughtfix?

Do the poor guy a favour and check out his tear-stained Ultramobilegeek blog before the eo goes out of the window!

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

The definition of a ultra mobile PC is a little blurred at the edges and from time to time I see questions like “Why isn’t device X in the product portal.” or “Why don’t you just go out and buy a PSP.” or “Do yourself a favor and forget it—get a smartphone.” (Thanks Gizmodo)

Valid points.

With that in mind though, I’ve written a summary of the ‘Almost UMPC’s.’ That is, devices bubbling under (or over) our definition of a UMPC.

Take a look here to see why the Flybook, HTC Universal and PSP don’t make it into the product portal and why the Nova5000 just got added! And as always, if you think I’m wrong, tell me why and I’ll happily shoot you down with a few big-headed emails. No sorry. I was getting all Gizmodo on you there for a moment. Keep the emails coming. It makes me think!

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Hold on chaps. Don’t you think you’re getting a bit too negative about UMPC’s? I know you’re a succesful web site and that with your readership, inbound link list and coverage you don’t need to side with anyone but there’s no need to sound like a 12 year old in a forum. Really!

here’s a series of the mini-tablets that can do a bad job of everything, only faster.

Actually it made me laugh a little because I sent them a tip about the 7200 series today. No wonder they didn’t link back to my positive sounding post! Next time i’ll know better than to try and boost my google rating with cheap links. ;-)

Take a look at the news coverage. Its worth a laugh. and then when you want to learn something about UMPC’s, pop over to any of the sites on this ultra mobile PC linklist. These guys are the experts.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

Going through the ordering process for the eo 7210 (yes, I’m ready to put money down on this one as soon as I find a German reseller.) I see that Tablet Kiosk have some nice little accessories available.

The VESA mounting bracket looks perfect for my lounge mounting scenario, and the branded BT keyboard looks like the nice folding one we’ve seen in the Founder images. Finally there’s a nice little case for the device.

Outstanding questions: A car mount kit would be nice. It doesn’t look like it’s available. Does the BT1.2 protocol support high quality stereo streaming over the A2DP protocol? How much faster is the Pentium-M going to be. How much more battery life will it enable (remember that the Pentium-M supports speed stepping.)

Oh what a fun day its turning out to be!

Regards
Steve/Chippy.

[url=http://www.tabletkiosk.com/config/pc/viewCat_P.asp?idCategory=35]TabletKiosk[/url] just announced a new ultra mobile PC that will be shipping in the end of August.

The ultra mobile PC looks to be a Founder device like the original eo was an Amtek designed system.

The new TabletKiosk eo will come in two flavors again the eo ultra mobile PC i7210 which is going to sell for $1,399.00 and the eo ultra mobile PC i7209 which will go for $1,099.00.

The TabletKiosk eo ultra mobile PC i7209 will have 1 Gig of Ram and a 60 GB hard drive. Unlike the original ultra mobile PC TabletKiosk released this version will be running a Intel Pentium M 1.0GHz w/ 2MB L2 cache instead of a VIA processor. It also has a 1.3 MPixel CMOS with 15fps video capture and a 4-in-1 Card Reader (SD / SDIO / MMC / MS).

As for the eo ultra mobile PC i7209, it has the same features except it has an Intel Celeron M 900MHz w/ 512KB L2 cache and has 512 MB of RAM and a 30 GB hard drive.

This second batch of UMPCs is a bit pricier than the first batch, but they do include a few more features and to top it all of they also have a docking cradle included this time.

Go check it out the new devices on
[url=http://www.tabletkiosk.com/config/pc/viewCat_P.asp?idCategory=35]Tabletkiosk.com[/url]

source: [url=https://www.umpcportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=531]Our Forum[/url] and [url=http://www.ultranauts.com/umpc/p,184/]Ultranauts[/url] Thanks WapTap

full press release below… Read the full story

While I was out of town Julie at the [url=http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/diary/judie]the-gadgeteer.com[/url] was able to purchase an early version of the DualCor cPc.

She put a bunch of great pictures of the device up including a comparison picture against a Fujitsu 2110 laptop, the DualCor cPC, the JasJar and an iPAQ 1945.

An interesting feature on the device is the DualCor button that allows you to switch between Windows Mobile and Windows XP. (More info on this can be found in the [url=http://www.dualcor.com/gettingstarted.pdf]DualCor Getting Started Guide[/url].

According to Julie the official release version of the cPC will include WiFi and Bluetooth built in which has been a question after a few sites said it wouldn’t.

The cPc also comes with a nice “rhinoskin” case as well. Here is a picture from [url=http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/diary/judie]the-gadgeteer.com[/url]. Looks very nice.

[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/umpc/images/dualcor_pack.jpg[/img]

Lastly she had some info on the GPRS capabilites which are not being included in the device however she did have a link to a modem that she bought to use with it which is available [url=http://www.enter.net/kart/kart.pl?action=moreinfo&sku=MDM-E0110-01&cart=weintraub]here[/url]

Nice to see some info on the device and hopefully she will be adding more information over the next coming days. Read the full story