Sharp NetWalker PC-Z1 lands for unboxing, MID comparison

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.

It's too early for feedback, but from the photos alone it looks as though the PC-Z1 is a neatly designed device.  The keyboard has a whole extra row above and beyond the mbook M1, and it also has an optical mouse (just below the hinge) which UMID have only just added to the mbook M2, which isn't set to ship until later this year.

Early hands-on reports suggested that the ARM processor left things more than a little bit sluggish, however, so NetWalker will have to not only look good but perform reasonably if it hopes to be a real mobile companion device.  More details on the PC-Z1 here.