Kohjinsha’s PA-series MID may have satisfied us that the company is at least listening to critique about form-factor and usability – unlike other mini-notebooks, such as the UMID mbook m1 and Sharp’s NetWalker, it has a rotating touchscreen for use as a slate – but they still seem to have their fingers in their ears when it comes to pricing. According to WOW-POW, the PA MID will come in at 69,800 yen, which works out to a whopping $760.
There’s a lot of discussion about the role of convergence of devices. Everywhere you go, it seems that someone’s pushing the notion that every function needs to be converged into one device. Now convergence is a great idea: the idea of carrying one device instead of multiple devices is compelling, but is it really realistic? Sure, I’d rather carry one device than two, but our research shows consumers will carry two or, in some age demographics, they’ll even carry as many as three.
Kohjinsha may have filled their MID niche with a rebadged UMID mbook m1, but that hasn’t stopped their own engineers from coming up with a homegrown alternative. The Kohjinsha PA-series takes the same mini-clamshell form-factor of the m1 and Sharp’s NetWalker, but throws in a convertible display for using the MID as a slate.
Sharp’s NetWalker PC-Z1 may not be the device for everyone – after all, a 5-inch touchscreen clamshell MID with a tiny QWERTY keyboard and 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor makes it a pretty niche handheld – but most people can appreciate a mini-laptop so we’re pleased to see the first unboxing over at Pocketables. Jenn of course is no stranger to MIDs, in fact she has a UMID mbook M1 on hand to compare the PC-Z1 with.
UMID promised a new MID for IDF 2009, and they’ve delivered on that promise. The UMID mbook M2 – seen here in pre-finalised prototype stage – gets a choice of faster 1.2GHz or 1.6GHz Intel Atom processors, together with 1GB of RAM (the M1 had just 512MB) and standardized ports.
Video demo after the cut
Continued »
It comes as no surprise that UMID are delivering the first look at their second-generation mbook MID at next week's IDF - after all, they revealed those plans back in August - but the big news is that they're promising a US launch for the new device by the end of the year. That could mean the UMID M2 discussed back in February.
MIDs are, despite the extra attention Viliv’s range has drawn to the segment, still very much a niche within a niche, but most of us can at least admire the hard work that goes into squeezing a full PC into a tiny little chassis. It’s with that in mind that we’ve been enjoying PC Watch’s comparison photoset of the Kohjinsha PM MID (aka the UMID mbook M1) versus Sharp’s PC-Z1 NetWalker.
Kohjinsha have announced their latest MID, the PM-series, and if you’ve followed the scene in ultracompact PCs over the past few months then you’ll be quick to recognize it as the UMID mbook M1. Freshly rebadged and on sale in Japan for 59,800 yen ($646), the Kohjinsha PM keeps the mbook’s Atom Z510 1.1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM but seemingly lacks an integrated 3G option.
Sharp’s diminutive PC-Z1 NetWalker impressed us when we first spotted it, and Charbax’s video hands-on with the compact MID has done nothing to disappoint. The ARM-based device has a 5-inch touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard and optical mouse, and will land in Japan sometime this month; according to the Sharp representative interviewed, they’re hoping to bring it to Europe, too.
Video demo after the cut
Looking surprisingly like UMID’s mbook M1 MID, Sharp have unveiled their newest clamshell ultraportable and – thank goodness – it’s not just an e-dictionary. The Sharp NetWalker PC-Z1 has a 5-inch 1024 x 600 touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard with optical mouse, and Ubuntu 9.04 as the OS; connectivity includes WiFi b/g, both a USB and mini-USB port, and a headphone jack, but there’s no integrated 3G.
More images – plus size comparisons – after the cut
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