![\"\"](\"https:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/blog-umpc.jpg\" "\\"blog-umpc\\"")
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.<\/p>\n
So, one of the technological developments I’ve been keeping an eye on has been the production of UMPCs<\/a>, 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> and HP has theirs<\/a> out for a bit already. This is going to be really interesting to watch.:)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/p>\n