Eee PC 900 is Born!!

I discussed the news about XP support on the UMPC or the ULCPC as some call them couple of days back. Now comes news of Asus releasing their biggest UMPC, the 9" Eee PC 900 family. Besides the 8.9" display at 1024x 600, the system has 1 GB memory, a 1.3 MP camera, a 12/ 20 SSD and a multi touch trackpad. Either Linux or XP indtalled the machines with XP come with the smaller drive.

The first reveiw that has appeared is also quite complimentary. particularly in the value for money department the series 900 scores a perfect 10. The scorecard reads as follows,

Design 9/10
Features 8/10
Performance 8/10
Value for money 10/10
Overall 9/10

The price is expected to be around $500.

UMPCs Are Growing !

Looks like more companies are coming out with these ultra mobile stuff. Latest announcement comes from Everex. But that's not the musings here about. I notice dome trends happening with these new fangled devices.

First and foremost of course is the price. Whatever devices are for sell almost all cost upwards of $300. There's something interesting here. People are ready to pay higher for a smaller and most often less capable device. Popularity of Asus Eee PC is an indicator to that. Also there's this constant push for bigger display real estate that sees 20", 27" or even bigger displays on the desktop and sizes like 17" coming over on laptops, here's device that does with a lot less. Displays on these devices are around 8"diagonal.

Other major thing is that solid state drives are finally here. These SSD devices of useful size is likely to become the sole drive on such notebooks first, looks like.

Intel Atom Processor

Ultra portables or the UMPCs are taking off looks like. So does the Intel Atom processor. Engadget announced the Intel made Atom based UMPC. This is how it looks.












Couple of other machines are being shown off at the Intel Developer's Forum at Shanghai. Asus has announced a Eee based on the Atom, that is well known. But Thinno's Eee clone was a surprise item.
Register Hardware reports from IDF at Shanghai:

Intel was keen to show off its Atom processor in the run-up to Intel Developer Forum (IDF), and drummed up a trio of machines to show it off - including the 7in Asus Eee PC.

Asus' plan to adopt Atom is well known, at least as far as the upcoming 8.9in Eee PC 900 goes. Less well known is new brand Thinno, which was showing its unnamed Eee-alternative. Demo'd with two laptops - one running Red Hat Linux; the other, Windows XP - the Thinno machines were fitted with 1.6GHz Atoms and 512MB of memory.

It's worth keeping a eye on the UMPC developments as well as the Atom.

UMPC Or The Ultra Mobile PC

Recently came across this again with quite a force. While working with the deal site work I have been seeing the reference to ultra mobile machines quite often, though of a particular model from Asus. But that did clearly indicate this category of notebooks is actually growing.

Then came across this blog dedicated to UMPCs. I was a little surprised at the variety of models that are getting quite a bit popular. Though I missed the opportunity for writing about them, the idea keeps swirling in my mind that I should go ahead and start writing about them. This may become of the niches I am looking for eventually.

VIA technologies' C7 chip seems to be getting quite poplar as x86 compatible processor of choice for such devices. May be I should start with an article on this little chip first!