Notebooks have to achieve balance between weight, battery power, performance and form factor, and as satisfied as I am with the two notebooks I use, the want to carry around PDA-sized and truly portable and light notebooks is always somewhere at the back of my mind.
So, one of the technological developments I’ve been keeping an eye on has been the production of UMPCs, short for ultra mobile PCs. These notebooks utilize smaller screens of 9-10 inch or smaller, very small form factors (with semi-cramped keyboards), very low-powered processors, and typically without optical drives. Asus for instance produced the wildly popular EEE PC last year and sold a couple million units, and has followed it up with a newer model that retain the original’s diminutive size but increased the potency of the unit’s hardware. And best of all is the price; just $760.
I can imagine a couple of uses for it right off. For starters, it’s small enough to carry anywhere, and has the necessary connections for Wireless@SG. During vacation, one can use it to store and check on photos taken. E.g. even though the 3 inch 900 pixel screen on my D300 helps a lot in checking on pictures, an LCD screen – even a 9 inch one – will help loads more.
Notebook manufacturers besides Asus for certain have all realized the potential of low-cost, budget UMPCs, and are all coming up with their own models. MSI is just about to start selling theirs and HP has theirs out for a bit already. This is going to be really interesting to watch.:)
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