Dawn of the Ultra Mobile PC
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When Jeff Hawkins speaks, people in the tech business take heed. After all, Hawkins, founder of Palm, has invented three breakthrough gizmos--GRiDPad, one of the first tablet computers; PalmPilot, the first hit personal digital assistant; and the Treo smartphone.
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Apple or Asus? The hottest mobile products of the moment? Undoubtedly, Apple's MacBook Air and Asus' Eee PC. So how do these would-be pinnacles of ultra-portability compare?â¦
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The 1.2 pound Sony Vaio U is powered by a 1.1GHz Intel Pentium M 733 processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 20GB, 1.8-inch hard drive.
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(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics will introduce an upgraded version of its Q1 ultra-mobile PC with extended battery life, high-speed cellular, and a new processor. The Q1P, a successor to the Q1, will extend battery life to five hours and connect to cellular networks based on HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), Gee Sung Choi, president and chief executive of Samsung Digital Media Business, said Friday at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. The device, to be available in the fourth quarter, will also be equipped with a processor from Via Technologies instead of Intel, which supplied technology for the first model, a company spokesman said. The spokesman declined to specify the reasons for replacing Intel, pointing only to a need to extend battery life. The Q1P will include several additional interfaces, but the spokesman declined to provide details. Pricing information was not available. The Q1 device, launched earlier this year, runs a tablet version of the Windows XP operating system and is intended to fit in the market between laptop PCs and PDAs (personal digital assistants). The new version takes advantage of HSDPA, which mobile phone network operators are rolling out with initial speeds up to 1.8Mbps. The technology is engineered for peak speeds of 14.4Mbps. Samsung's ultra-mobile PC already offers Wi-Fi connectivity.
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Advanced Micro Devices on Monday provided further details about its&#160;next-generation Puma platform&#160;for notebook PCs, which is designed to maximize battery life while meeting the heavy graphics performance demanded by the Windows Vista OS.The Puma platform will come with processors named Turion Ultra, originally&#160;codenamed Griffin, and include Hybrid Graphics Technology, which boosts the platform&#39;s graphics performance by running both the integrated graphics processor and discrete graphics together.Discrete graphics cards, which are usually plugged into a slot on the motherboard, usually provide more video memory and graphics processing power than integrated graphics processors, which are included on a system&#39;s motherboard.The platform will include the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 discrete graphics card, which is specially designed to work with an integrated graphics card to either crunch extreme graphics or to get better system performance-per-watt, said Scott Shutter, mobile division brand manager at AMD.AMD will also launch ATI PowerXpress for the Puma platform, which allows users to switch between integrated and discrete graphics dynamically without rebooting their notebook. This allows the discrete graphics card to be used for graphics intensive applications when under AC power, and the integrated graphics to be used for extended battery life when on the go, said Bahr Mahony, division marketing manager with AMD&#39;s mobile processor group.The platform will fully support DirectX 10.1, Microsoft&#39;s 3D graphics platform.The hybrid graphics capabilities will ship with notebooks based on the Puma platform in the middle of this year, Shutter said. Though intended to be a centerpiece of the Puma platform, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 graphics card is already separately shipping with Asus systems, according to AMD. Pricing information was not available.A future Puma platform capability will include support for ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology with ATI PowerXpress, allowing users to switch between an integrated graphics card and a discrete graphics card based on a system&#39;s multimedia requirement. AMD will launch this technology toward the end of the year.The combination of the CPU and graphics processing unit capabilities in the Puma platform is one more step towards achieving Fusion, a platform that merges a CPU and graphics processing unit on a single piece of silicon, Shutter said. The Fusion platform is aimed for release in 2009. The company last year launched the &#39;Spider&#39; platform, which combines the company&#39;s Phenom quad-core process, graphics cards and chipsets in one package.Notebooks based on the Puma platform will be able to handle high-definition HD DVD and Blu-ray movie playback through its Avivo HD technology, which offloads the processing of high-definition data decoding from the CPU to the graphics processing unit, Shutter said. The low CPU utilization allows a notebook to perform better.The CPU has 2M bytes of on-board cache, an upgrade from earlier Turion Rev G processors, which had 1M byte of cache, Shutter said. The system also throttles down bandwidth between cores based on system usage and performance to increase a notebook&#39;s battery life.Boot times and program launch times in Puma notebooks will improve with on-board flash technology called HyperFlash, Shutter said. The flash technology will store important bits of information needed to boot a system quicker, reducing lag time usually associated with reading data from hard drives. It will be available on the board, or as a separate modules for motherboards.Shutter didn&#39;t reveal further details about Turion Ultra&#39;s initial clock speeds.
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Device uses NCQ technology to prioritize a PC's requests.
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The Smartphone maker is taking advance online orders for its Shift ultramobile PC.
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What kind of things do you want to be truly portable? That&#39;s become an interesting question now that so much is digital in our lives.
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Aimed at enabling new levels of interactive content not previously possible on mobile phones, PDAs and other handheld devices, Nvidia has unveiled its GoForce 3D 4500 3D wireless media processor (WMP), which allows mobile content developers to create 3D
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I was pretty amazed to see 3D graphics coming to mobile phones, and now it looks like TV is coming to them too! Texas Instruments has started work on a chip that
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(InfoWorld) - Ultramobile PCs, the new product category developed by Microsoft, have been unsuccessful so far because they're too expensive and their batteries don't last long enough, a top Advanced Micro DevicesÂ executive said Friday. AMD is exploring the prospects for ultramobile PCs, which includeÂ Samsung Electronics' Q1, but wants to be sure they make sense for users before making a big commitment, said Phil Hester, AMD's chief technology officer, in an interview at Computex. The devices are currently more expensive than many laptop PCs and their batteries don't last very long compared to other devices. They also need new screens that can be viewed outdoors under the glare of the sun, according to Hester. "We have a processor for that space when the space is ready," he said. Most of the big design wins for ultramobile PCs have gone to Intel and Via Technologies, which may help to explain Hester's coolness to the market. Samsung recently announced a new version of the Q1, called the Q1 Ultra, which starts at about $800 and uses Intel's new McCaslin processor. The new Intel chip should improve battery life considerably over the previous model, from 1.5 hours to more than 4 hours, according to Samsung. But AMD has had some design wins too, with itsÂ Geode processors. Raon Digital, a South Korean company, uses the Geode LX800 in its Vega ultramobile PC, and has put an LX900 in its Everun, which hasn't been launched yet. The Vega boasts 6-hours of battery life, while the Everun lasts seven hours on its standard battery, or up to 12 hours with an upgraded battery pack. Besides ultramobiles, the Geode family is aimed at low-end laptop PCs and the high end of the handset market, Hester said. There's a Geode processor in Nicholas Negroponte'sÂ One-Laptop-Per-Child laptop. The OLPC project is trying to reduce the cost of its laptop to $100 and put it in the hands of school children in the developing world. Hester believes the battle to put the next billion people on the Internet is not going to be won by PCs, however. "I really think for most people, the device is going to be the handset," he said. Â
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At only over 1 pound, Sony&#39;s VAIO U Ultra Portable PC is a full Microsoft Windows XP computer, on a form factor that resembles that of a PDA.
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New at CES: the 45-millimeter LG60 LCD, an ultramobile PC, and mobile broadcasting device.
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Taiwan&#39;s BenQ is showing off a new user interface on an ultramobile PC that it plans to start marketing in the second quarter of this year, a spokeswoman for the company said Tuesday.The device is being displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as part of BenQ&#39;s new mobile offerings. It was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year.BenQ has taken on the new moniker coined by Intel, &#39;mobile Internet device (MID)&#39; for its new gadget, a name that appears to be replacing the term &#39;ultramobile PC.&#39; Ultramobiles have so far not fared well in global markets, despite a much hyped launch and&#160;backing by heavyweights such as Microsoft and Intel.BenQ&#39;s MID sports a Linux OS, but the company tweaked the user interface to work more closely with its functions. Although full details have not yet been released, the company has said the MID is equipped for wireless Internet use via Wi-Fi, or with 3G (third generation telecommunications) networks, which also enable voice phone calls.The Linux OS was developed by China&#39;s Red Flag, but BenQ customized the interface to make its MID unique, said Jean Hsu, a BenQ representative.The MID also features a 4.8-inch touch screen, 0.3-megapixel Web cam, and on board sensors that minimize and pop up all open Windows when you shake the device, instead of making you touch each tab individually.BenQ&#39;s MID uses Intel&#39;s Menlow set of chips, which includes a low-power microprocessor code-named Silverthorne and a chipset codenamed Poulsbo. Intel designed Menlow for ultramobile devices.Companies are developing ultramobile PCs and MIDs in a bid to attract users to device slightly smaller than notebook PCs, but with full PC functionality. Some analysts see the devices as the PC industry&#39;s answer to smartphones, but point out that many ultramobiles do not include telecommunications functions. BenQ&#39;s new MID does include telecommunications capabilities with its 3G support.
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Before embarking on a series of reviews of the family of electronics devices known as ultra-mobile PCs, it's worth noting that there's much debate over exactly what an ultra-mobile PC is. Nearly every device claiming to belong to the category is different.
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Intel is displaying four new ultramobile PCs designed around its Menlow chips, including highly anticipated devices from Lenovo and Toshiba.
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The new ultraportable Asus PC is a pint-sized powerhouse.