Sunday, January 7, 2007

The Future Of Mobility Is Now

Heard about Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPC) yet? I first heard about them at the start of 2006 but I thought that they were just a concept and at most companies have just made prototypes, no real production. So last week while shopping around Dubai I find the Sony VAIO UX.

Sony VAIO UX

It blew my mind. It was like a dream. 4.5" screen, fingerprint recognition, eye motion detection, 550 grams and the best part of all it was running a complete Windows XP Professional; no cut down versions of operating systems anymore, run any software you want priced at 7000 UAE Dirhams. I have been using Palm OS since 1999 and have recently moved to Symbian OS on a Nokia Mobile. All this time whenever I wanted to something on my mobile device I would have to search the internet looking for a software which was available for Windows easily and most of the time for free.

So I come back from Dubai and I find out there are a whole bunch of UMPCs in production today. Two sites with the best info I found were:


Why do I say that this is the future of mobility? If you use your Laptop / Notebook to only check email, use an Office Package, browse the net or use software with little RAM/CPU requirements (ie. no 3D animation/modeling or 3D Gaming), a UMPC can do all thet for the same price as any high-end laptop, with less weight and a much much higher COOL factor. So what if the screen size is smaller. You can get a UMPC with a complete 1024*600 screen size with a zoom in and zoom out feature. The Sony VAIO UX also comes with a docking bay that has a regular video output that can connect to a monitor or projector. The ASUS R2H comes with built in GPS.

The top Windows XP based UMPCs as I see it are as follows:

ASUS R2H Samsung Q1 SSD
ASUS R2H                   Samsung Q1-SSD

But of course the best of the breed I think is still the Sony VAIO UX I got to play with in Dubai. But then it was a 4.5" screen whereas the above two are 7" screens. hmm....

Also found the following good comparison of a couple of UMPCs:

UMPC Chart

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