Leather case for Amtek T770 UMPC

todoUMPC will start selling next week a new leather case for Amtek T770 UMPC. Still unknown the price of it but pictures can be seen in this forum thread. todoUMPC ships worldwide and is planning to open a online store fully translated to English targeting markets that do not speak or read Spanish.

My eo v7110 logon screen is calibrated!

The other day I posted about a little tool that allows users to calibrate the logon screen in devices suffering of this problem. Well, today I had the time to test it myself.

The Tabletkiosk v7110 is one of the UMPC that have this problem. When you turn on the device and you reach the logon screen you have to use the mouse to type your password because the touch screen is not calibrated at all. I tried in the past many tips but none of them good. Today I can say without a doubt that GlTabCal is the solution.

It's very easy to use. You press the first button to calibrate your screen in any resolution. After that you press the second to test it. And at last you press the apply button. You will be asked to re boot your machine and there you will be happy to discover that your logon screen is calibrated.

This tool does not work with devices using Touchkit or the eGalax HID Beta Driver. That means that basically it works in Tabletkiosk eo v7110 devices as far as I recall.

I know that other devices like the Q1 XP using the HID eGalax driver have this problem, but so far there is not any solution for those.

Another good news for Tabletkiosk eo v7110 owners is that a rotation screen tool is going to be released very soon. the tool was tested in Vista and it works. Today I worked with the author checking the registry in XP and according to what he saw in my eo, it seems that it should work after a few changes.

Technorati Tags: Calibration

Amtek T770 Review

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed when I saw for the first time the Amtek T770 UMPC was the design. This device looks a lot better than the old T700. The T770 is black with some parts in silver.

The unit that I tested came loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium. Even when the Amtek T770 uses a VIA C7M at 1200 MHz, Vista performs very well in this device. Compared with my T700, it runs better on this one. I opened Media Center and it worked perfectly. It was easy to browse around the picture, music and movie library. I opened the samples movies and their playback was good.

One of the differences between the T700 and the T770 is the 770 includes a Webcam and a integrated Microphone. Another big difference between these two  devices is that the T770 includes two speakers with a sound quality superior than the one in the T700.

The speakers are located one in each low corner. The Microphone is located in the bottom bar between the two speakers.

The Webcam is located in the top bar, in the middle. 

Another difference, and a very good feature in the T770 is that this device includes a SD Card Reader. I checked the speed copying files to and from one of my SD Cards and the speed was good, no like in the CF Slot included in the Samsung Q1 which is almost useless. The only thing that I did not like is that the SD card does not go all the way inside of the device. It stick about a centimeter and a half out of the UMPC body like it's shown in this picture on the left.  Nobody is perfect...

The screen in the T770 is "softer" than the one used in the T700 so the experience using DialKeys was a lot better.

Another good point is that this device comes with HID support right out of the box. For some reason when I turned on this demo unit the touch screen was not working. After a little bit of research I found that the eGalax touch screen driver was not properly installed. I recalled about my experience installing Vista in my Amtek T700 and uninstalled the driver, cleaned the HDD, run Windows Update and I got it back working.

 

Battery Life

One of the first things I checked on this device was the battery life and I was disappointed to see that in this field the Amtek T770 is not better than the T700. In both devices the battery life is between 2 hours and 2 hours 15 minutes according to my tests. The battery in the Amtek T770 is also located in the top side of the device but the compartment is fully located in the back, no like in the T700 where the battery is located in the top taking part of the front side and the back side of the device.

Performance

Even when the T770 runs at 200 MHz faster than the T700, the performance in both devices is about the same according to my tests using CrystalMark Benchmark.

It seems to me that this probably is due to the fact that this machine is running Vista which is a little bit heavier than XP.

Vista Performance Score on this device is 1. This is due to the fact that this device does not support Aero.

Video playback was better in this unit than in a T700. I was able to play a DVD without any special tweaking something that took me a while in the Amtek T700 installing players, codecs and tweaking the device.  

 

What I did not like from the Amtek T770?

This device is really noisy. The fan can be clearly hear from 5 feet away. The other thing that I did not like is the location of the heat dissipation hole. The hot air is blown from the device right into your left palm. This is to me a defect in the design that Amtek carries from the T700. Even when this device works cooler than the T700 it still work at a higher temperature than my Q1 with the difference than the heat dissipation hole in Q1s is located in the top of the unit blowing the hot air away from you.

 

Conclusion

The Amtek is a nice UMPC that still aiming the business market. The performance is enough for working with Office, Powerpoint presentations, having a little fun when you are in a business trip. It seems to me that Amtek learned a lot from the T700 Experience, the inclusion of integrated Microphone, Stereo Speakers and a Webcam are very wise steps toward the Home Market. This device is closer to reach the appealing needed for the Home Market but still not there. Amtek needs to work harder to reach the same battery life that other companies like Samsung are reaching with that same VIA processor.

Is the T770 better than the T700? Definitely yes.

Would I recommend this device? Depend. If you are a business looking for a UMPC yes, if you are regular user looking for really good performance this device is not for you. And do not get me wrong, the overall performance is not bad, but it's not at the same level than in any Intel based UMPC. If you are a regular user that does not care about performance but you want an integrated webcam and microphone without having to pay a extra money, yes, you will find in this machine these features and probably you will end paying less than if you buy one of the first generation Samsung Q1 which did not include a Webcam.

 

I would like to thank Alliance Technologies Partners for sending me this unit for this review.

 

You can find more pictures of this machine here.

 

Amtek T770 coming soon to USA

A few days ago we posted about this new device, the Amtek T770. Today I got more information about its release in USA and prices. According to our sources the T770 is the same T700 re engineered to run 7 degrees cooler - I knew it! The Amtek T700 has a faulty design from the point of view of heat dissipation!

The Amtek T770 is going to be available in USA next month with these specifications and prices:

1.2 G Via Processor
1G Memory
Built in 1.3 Camera
Card Reader
Stereo Speakers
Microphone
Vista Home Premium

With suggested retail pricing of:

40GB $975.00
60GB $1040.00
80GB $1095.00

And here is another big news, the company importing them to USA is a new company called Tablet PC Resources (page still under construction), (727) 480-8033, (727) 363-7703 - Fax. And last but not less, they are taking pre orders at this moment. I know that none of you will place order to an unknown company neither I. As far as I know from my sources they have worked with the owner of this new company before and they trust him. Anyway... The Amtek T770 will be available in USA next month and now we know the price.

Update: I just got more information about this new company.

Hi Frank

Just seen your posting about the T770 being available in the USA, and thought you should know that Tablet PC Resources is our US partner, so is a genuine business, and none of your readers need worry about buying direct from them. We will be providing a global presence, with www.tabletpcresources.com and www.tabletpcresources.co.uk already registered, with a further expansion later this year.

I am currently working on the website, but will probably upload a basic version later today.

Regards

Glyn Evans
PocketPC Solutions
URL. www.pocketpc-solutions.co.uk
Tel. +44 (0) 20 78715045
Fax. +44 (0) 870 0115801

My guess is that I don't need to say anything else, friends of my friends are my friends. Coming from Glyn means that it's good.

New Amtek UMPC coming soon

Steve at OrigamiPortal has found a few pictures of the Amtek newest UMPC, the T770 running Vista!

This unit is using again a VIA processor but running at 1.2 GHz.

BTW, thanks Steve for your nice words about me! I hope that many OEMs are reading you!

Amtek T770 coming soon

Amtek is preparing the T700 successor to be released probably in May: the T770.

This UMPC will be using a VIA processor and Vista and the target price will be around 900 dollars. I hope that Amtek will do a better job in this T770 than what they did with the T700 where they did not got it right the first time and a recall was needed to fix few things and even after the recall we have a UMPC that does not have the battery life close to what we see in the Samsung Q1b which use also a VIA processor.

The use of a VIA processor will result in a better battery life but if you are a power user you may not like the performance that you are going to get from that chip set. But... basically there are two points that have been criticized by the "specialized press": Battery Life and Price. The use of VIA takes care of these two points. And do not get me wrong, VIA Chip set is good enough to handle Web Browsing, Email, Office, the majority of the programs that you may use but will be extremely slow handling other programs like PhotoShop, programs using DirectX, certain high quality movies, etc. That's why I said that if you are a power user you may prefer to have less battery life but a better overall performance.

[Source: Carrypad.com]