The NoahPad UMPC was something I reported on before I even got to CES, but they company that makes it had it here and they gave a little demo. The keyboard is at best weird, it acts as both the keyboard and the mouse and switches between the two via a toggle switch.
The WiBrain is a full function ultra mobile pc weighing in at about 1.15-pounds. There’s a 4.8-inch WSVGA touch screen display between a split keyboards. There’s a neat pop-up video camera on top of the unit.
Can your PC get more green that the 8 watts that this PC uses? Or what about the solar panel that provides pretty much all the power this PC needs?
Its on sale, in a dev kit, sort of, it comes with the motherboard, as you see it in the picture, and a copy of the gOS Linux distribution that was meant to be run on the motherboard. The best part, it’s a mere $60.
That $60 gets you a motherboard with a 1.5GHz VIA C7 CPU, and it’s a mini-ITX motherboard, which means you can stuff it in any number of places or items. The RAM and the hard drive storage are up to you, but I would recommend a large CF card for storage.
There is some new design features, specifically some new buttons and locations for old buttons, the keyboard is still split though. This device has a fairly amazing 4.8” WSVGA touch screen too, with a 1024×600 resolution which is pretty good for a UMPC.
It now runs a VIA C7M processor which gives it a whopping 1.2GHz clock speed, VX700 for graphics, and up to 1GB of RAM. You can get your choice of 30 or 60 gigabytes of storage as well.
Packard Bell’s first foray into the UMPC market (based on a VIA reference design, you may remember) has finally been fleshed out with some more information having appeared on the company website as “coming soon”. With a street price of £349 ($710, but remember that UK price includes tax) the EasyNote XS has a 7-inch screen, 1.2GHz C7-M processor and 1GB of RAM; happy enough specs for Windows XP Home.
Remember the cute little Linux-powered MTube UMPC prototypefrom last week? Well, if you were having doubts that you could pack a VIA 1.0GHz CPU, 8GB of flash memory and 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen into a super-small casing, together with WiFi and WiMAX, andhave it actually work, then consider your doubts quashed; Bjorn Stronberg over at UltraMobileLife was allowed to finger the MTube for a whole minute, and of course he filmed the whole sordid experience.
The Taiwan Science and Technology Advisory Group threw this together real quick just to say “hey, you could be here real soon” but it’s actually a really cool little device. It’s based on VIA hardware and has a 1GHz processor from them in it.
It only gets better from there, the 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen controls the Linux OS that it is running and commands the 8GB of internal storage. The battery life is only 4 hours, but that’s still pretty good all things considered.
Want an all-in-one PC but have problems with the screens they offer with them? Me too, but up until now it hasn’t quite been that easy, now VIA (yes the processor and pico/micro/nano ITX board manufacturer) has your back.
No literally, they have your back and your monitor’s back as that’s where their new fanless PC mounts to. To all those people who thought the VESA mounts were next to useless, you were wrong.
VIA has launched another mini-ITX motherboard with an integrated CPU. This one however is the fastest motherboard they have ever launched that fits in a mini-ITX footprint.
The full model name is the VIA EPIA SN18000G, and it uses the CN896 IGP chipset. That means it has integrated graphics that are DX9 compatible and can do MPEG-2 acceleration with hardware. However there is a PCIe x16 slot should you choose to upgrade to a better graphics card.
SlashGear Japan
