Archive for the 'Tablet PCs' Category

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Microsoft warns Europe of possible Vista delays

Friday, September 8th, 2006

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First the PS3, now this. Microsoft is warning that their oft delayed, Windows Vista operating system might be delayed even further in Europe due to "unclear antitrust guidance" from the European Commission. Apparently this all began in a letter from the commission to Steve Ballmer in March with concerns that some of the features in Vista would breach the same laws XP violated a few years back. According to Microsoft, they proposed some changes but never heard back, saying "Once we receive the commission's response, we will know whether the commission is seeking additional product design changes that would result in delay in Europe." Tit for tat, a spokesman for the commission's antitrust division said Microsoft's statement was "misleading to imply that the commission could be the cause of delays. It is not up to us to tell Microsoft what it has to do to Vista, the onus is on Microsoft to design its product in conformity with European competition laws, which it is well aware of." Meow! So is this just legal posturing by Microsoft in their never-ending European antirust battle or a bit of preemptive blame-shifting in case of further delay? We don't know. But hey, Europe, consider yourselves warned.
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Pentium-powered Samsung Q1 in the wild

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

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Well, we sure didn't see this one coming: those sneaky devils over at Samsung have very quietly released yet another version of their Q1 UMPC into the wild, and to the delight of the few, the proud, the Origami lovers, this one features a Pentium M ULV CPU among several other spec bumps. You'll recall that the original Q1 sports a Celeron M processor, while the updated Q1b and Q1p offer Via chips to extend the battery life, and now an OrigamiPortal member named "millard" claims to have picked up a speed-stepping, Pentium-powered model at his local Fry's. Besides the improved battery life that should result from the 1.0GHz auto-adjusting processor in this new Q1 (which curiously retains the original "Q1" designation, though its model number has been changed to NP-Q1-V0002), other welcome improvements over the original include a 60GB hard drive and a full 1GB of RAM (compared to the 40GB / 512MB configuration on the debut model). At $1,249 the spec-bumped Q1 will set you back $250 more than the Celeron-powered version, but hey, it's still over $1,000 cheaper than the upcoming Q1-SSD with that hot little 32GB solid state flash drive.

[Via Carrypad and JKOTR]
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Medion working on MD RIM 1000 UMPC with slide-out keyboard?

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

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All we've got to go on here is a grainy scan from some Medion press materials being handed out at IFA, but if this new MD RIM 1000 UMPC proves to be for reals we'll have another welcome contestant in the slide-out keyboard space -- which is where we've been at all along when it comes to UMPCs. The specs aren't bad neither, with a 6.5-inch touchscreen, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, onboard GPS, DVB-T tuner and webcam. In fact, if this thing manages to weigh less than thirty pounds and cost less than twenty grand we're pretty sure Medion has got themselves a winner -- or should at least be able to give Sony's UX and Averatec's forthcoming AHI a bit of competition.
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Adesso CyberTablet M17: the monitor / tablet for Macs and PCs

Thursday, September 7th, 2006

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Can't wait anymore for Apple to launch a Mac in tablet format right? Well cast your glassy-eyed gaze in the direction of this Adesso CyberTablet, a 17-inch monitor which Adesso claims doubles as a tablet for your Mac or PC. The electromagenetic tablet features a 13.3 x 10.7-inch "active area" with 1280 x 1024 resolution said to "work great" with all your Adobe CS2 faves such as PhotoShop and Illustrator. The bundled software also brings handwriting recognition and more to pen emails and markup Office documents. So how does it work? No idea, so why not give 'er a go for a mere $1699. You didn't really need that fully spec'd $1,299 MacBook anyway. Now someone get Michael Caine on the horn -- we found his hand.

[Via CrunchGear]
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Acer’s TravelMate C210 12.1-inch tablet goes Core 2 Duo

Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

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If you woke up this morning craving a bit of Merom juice in a 12.1-inch tablet then check the TravelMate C210 from Acer. Like the C200, the "Vista Premium Ready" C210 features a sliding-track to easily move from slate-style tablet to keyboard mode. Inside you'll get a range of Intel's new Core 2 Duo procs, 256MB GeForce Go 7300 graphics, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory and 160GB "or higher" (whatever that means) disk, and fingerprint reader for a bit of security when left behind at happy hour. Slap in an optical drive and 6-cell battery and you're looking at a 5.5-pound tablet. Sorry, no ship date or price yet but you can expect this to cost about the same as the C200 it's replacing, or about $1900.

[Via laptoping]
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Sony drops the UX280P, with twice the RAM and HDD

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006

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After mysteriously pulling all mentions of the UX180P from their online store a week or so ago -- they claimed they were merely out of stock -- Sony is back with the UX280P, which doubles both the RAM and the HDD size from that of the UX180P. Along with the new 40GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM, we hope they found some time to refresh that debilitating software we encountered in our hands-on preview of the 180. The processor remains the same ol' Core Solo U1200, and there's still EDGE, WiFi and Bluetooth radios. Unfortunately, the price has now reached the $2000 mark, so you best have cash to burn or a real good excuse for some UMPC+QWERTY action, or you're just going to look silly.

[Via jkOnTheRun]
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Samsung’s new Q1P bumps the specs, brings the HSDPA

Friday, September 1st, 2006

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Now we're talking. Or, well, continuing an ongoing conversation. Samsung seems to have a little spec bump for the Q1 every week or so: a flash drive here, a new processor there, but this time they're doing it up right and sticking HSDPA into their UMPC. The new "Q1P" also packs that new Via processor from the Q1B, which extends the battery to a purported five hours. The Q1 really does take on a whole new level of hotness with a respectable battery life and 3G internet access, and supposedly the Q1P will include "several additional interfaces" as well -- whatever that means. We sure wouldn't complain to have an easier time interfacing with the thing when it's released Q4 this year, but we're not going to get our hopes up too high.

[Via jkOnTheRun]
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Fujitsu drops a quartet of new notebooks

Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

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So Fujitsu's got four portable machines for us to peep today, but unlike the slew of Merom-powered notebooks we've been seeing, only one of these models rock that dual-core goodness. First off are two new members of the 15.4-inch Biblio NF family (pictured above), the NF60T with a 1.6GHz Turion 64 X2 CPU, and the 1.46GHz Celeron M 410-powered NF40T. The 60T rocks ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 graphics, 512MB of RAM (4GB max), and a 100GB HDD, while the 40T also gives you 512MB RAM (only expandable to to 2GB, though) and just 80GB of HDD capacity and integrated graphics; both machines, however, offer a full complement of connectivity options, with WiFi, FireWire, USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, PCMCIA, ExpressCard, and D-Sub standard. Next up is the Core Solo-equipped (1.20GHz U1400) FMV-Biblio LOOX Q, with a 12.1-inch WXGA LCD, integrated graphics, 30GB HDD (hey, it's really slim, at least), 512MB of RAM, and both WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0 radios. Finally we have the 8.9-inch LOOX P70T/V convertible tablet, which sports the exact same specs as the Q, but obviously replaces the XP Pro OS with Tablet PC Edition 2005. Look for the ¥185,000 ($1,581) NF60T and ¥150,000 ($1,282) NF40T to drop on September 2nd, the ¥260,000 ($2,222) LOOX Q to be available on the 15th, and the ¥250,000 ($2,136) P70T/V to hit shelves on September 28th -- all initially in Japan, of course.

Read- Biblio NF
Read- LOOX Q and P
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Asus officially introduces R2H UMPC

Friday, August 25th, 2006

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We're not entirely sure how much more official the Asus R2H UMPC needed to get, but they're, um, really announcing the handheld computer with the 7-inch screen, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR, 802.11a/b/g, fingerprint reader, drive options up to 60GB, and an anemic 900MHz Celeron M ULV today. Still no official release date or price, but if the rest of the UMPCs are between $800 and $1300 (or more), you can definitely expect the Asus device to be at the top of that scale.

[Via JKOTR]
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HiPAD II: Korea’s 10.4-inch answer to the cPC

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006

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After practicing incessantly on 4.3-inch and 7-inch form factors, a 10.4-incher is a piece of cake for those Koreans, and they're really just showing off with the new dual-OS HiPAD II. The 1-inch thick tablet weighs in at 2.9 pounds, but manages to run Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows CE 5.0, WiFi, DMB, HSDPA and a navigation app that's possibly GPS based. There's an AMD Geode LX-800 processor under the hood, along with a minimal 256MB of RAM and a 20GB HDD -- pretty weak for regular PC tasks, but plenty of juice for a bit of browsing and the PMP-esque feature set. To round things out there's a webcam mounted at the top of the screen, and you can expand the storage or functionality with the CF and PCMCIA slots. The Win CE mode seems mainly aimed at quick access to media and navigation functions, unlike the cPC's full-fledged Windows Mobile OS, and seems similar to that of most Korean PMP/DMB/GPS units, but XP is always waiting in the wings if you need to do something silly like be productive. No word on price or availability, but we're hoping for the best.

[Via Akihabara]
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