I got my P1610 about 2 hour ago and the first thing I did is to launch the Vista Ultimate with SP1Installation. But apparently today is not my lucky day. Right when it was completing the installation the system crashed with the Blue Screen of Death.
I'm browsing the web to see if anybody had that problem before but so far I have not found anything like that being reported before.
I'm reinstalling again to see if I'm lucky this time.
If it happen again then I'll try Vista Ultimate without SP1.
I should receive today my new toy, the Fujitsu P1610, the replacement of my lovely Samsung Q1.
The above is the tracking summary of my package. And looking at it I though how inefficient are still our carrier. The package arrived to Fort Lauderdale Yesterday and it was sent today to Miramar. The problem is that I live between the two cities, but a lot closer to Fort Lauderdale than to Miramar. So basically, that package passed probably yards away from my house in its way to Miramar!
Our friend JKK posted a video review about the Asus Eee PC 900 that I would recommend to anyone thinking of buying this device.
There is so much more i would like to share about it, but I hope this is a good start.. oops.. a 35 minute start..
PC Market has shot a very good video review about the new subnotebook from HP, the HP 2133.
There are a few things that you can notice on this video and one of them is that VIA needs to work harder in the video chip. In both video tests the CPU load was at 100%. But I also think that probably there was something wrong with that demo unit because in my old eo v7110 (which is for sale now) I'm getting about 80% of CPU load in a regular video and the eo is using a C7 at 1 GHz vs this one that is running a VIA C7M at 1.6 GHz. It should have enough power to run a regular video using less CPU load unless is just not well configured with the right video codecs. The results with the HD video I see in my eo is about the same that you see in this video.
Everything started when alltp.com sent me one unit to review. Since then, I have been thinking about how to get a P1610. Yes, I know that the new P1620 has a Dual Core resulting in a lot better performance but the price like in any new toy still to high. So I did not think twice the last Friday when I saw the opportunity to buy a refurbished P1610, with 1 GB of RAM, 60 GB HDD, 6 cell battery and a Port Replicator included for just 960 dollars.
Why I bought it? Well, if you check my review of this mini Tablet you will find part of the reason:
The Fujitsu P1610 is just a Swiss Knife. None of the current UMPC in the market can come close to what this device offers. But at the same time you have to be prepare to pay around 2300 dollars if you want the P1610 loaded with 1 GB of RAM, a 60 GB HDD and Tablet PC Edition. One thousand dollars more than what you usually pay for the best loaded UMPC. If you are a professional photographer sending pictures to your news paper you wont find a better companion than this one. It's small but it's powerful at the same time. If you are in a field where you need a powerful Small Factor PC all the time with you, with a Indoor/Outdoor display, the Fujitsu P1610 is what you are looking for. But if you are looking for a companion PC probably you will save 1000 dollars getting a UMPC. But keep in mind, it wont be that powerful.
2300 dollars was too much for me... but $960 that's completely another picture.
The P1610 is about the same size of a UMPC with extended battery.
Everybody knows that I'm using since almost two years ago UMPCs as my main PCs. My Samsung Q1 has served me well but it's Intel Celeron M is slow in video editing tasks and that's something that I do almost every weekend. Everybody knows also that I have been looking for an UMPC that could bring me a better performance. But currently in the market there are basically two options, either you buy the Samsung Q1U Premium with an Intel Core Solo or you buy a Sony UX. My eyes are not well enough for the UX and I do not like the Q1U Premium - if I'm going to have an integrated keyboard gives me something that really works.
Now I'm selling my Q1 and my eo V7110 to pay for my new toy.
I'm asking for my eo v7110 $600 (that includes shipping), it was upgraded to 1 GB of RAM and a 100 GB HDD running at 7200 rpm which makes this UMPC faster than any other machine using the same processor. In this price are also included a 6 cells (3 hours) and 9 cells (around 5 hours) extended battery. This unit is using Windows XP Tablet PC 2005 Edition.
I'm selling my Samsung Q1 for 700 dollars (Including Shipping), that includes a 6 cells extended battery. This unit is running Vista Business (the original Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 is included) and it has been upgraded to 2 GB of RAM.
In both cases, I'm including the original CDs that came with them. In both cases I have been using screen protectors so the screen looks like new in both devices.
I was reading CNET News today to find Ballmer's comments about Microsoft's plans to phase out XP this summer.
"XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments," Ballmer said during a Thursday news conference in Belgium, according to Reuters.
I think that something is wrong with Microsoft's feedback and as MVP I think that I gonna start sending my feedback to them the best I can. So far the majority of people that I talk to and has bought new PCs has downgraded them to XP. I love Vista, that's what I use in my UMPC which is my main PC. But that does not mean that I'm blind. Vista still slow like hell. Vista still have a lot of problems with drivers - I know that this is not Microsoft faults - and this makes it a OS not good for business. Think about it, business do not go crazy every year buying new hardware and basically what I have seen is that OEMs are not going back to create Vista drivers for old hardware, they are pushing businesses to buy new hardware Vista Ready. Even software companies are doing the same. For example, the version of Norton Antivirus Enterprise Edition that I'm using in the company that I'm working for is not compatible with Vista. If I want to switch now to Vista and Windows Server 2008 I have to buy their new version. What for? First of all, I'm not that happy with NA to think about buying a new version from them.
In a few words, switching to Vista is painful for Businesses and for some home users. It means not only learning and training people to use a new OS, but buying new hardware and software, expenses that are not needed or just are not smart in a time where USA Finances are not so good. So, either the reports that Ballmer reads every morning about Vista are just lies or he just want to ignore them. Users love XP and users do not like at all Vista. That's a fact that I can't ignore even when I love Vista. It's slow - even with SP1 - and it still have a lot of drivers issues. And it's the last thing I would recommend to any business owner.
Almost a year ago I wrote about how my UMPC helped me in a security project that I was working on. So I was not surprised at all when I read today this news today about how thieves used the Asus Eee PC to steal credit card information in Brazil.
The cheapest UMPC in town, the Asus EEE PC, has fallen into the hands of three criminals in Brazil, using it to rig ATM to grab credit card information and personal information numbers for cloning credit cards.
What is available for the good guys is available too for the bad guys too. Thanks God, as you can see from this news, crooks are not too smart sometimes like in this case. 
Mini Notebook UMPC? What the heck is that? Is not this a Ultra Low Cost PC? A subnotebook? or Just a mini notebook? I'm all confused. A year ago all was clear, UMPC was anything small PC with touch screen of 7 inches or less and a weight of less than 2 pounds. Now everything is called UMPC. And probably to call the original origami devices UMPC was a mistake because anything could be called UMPC. What a mess! Anyway... SlipperyBrick has posted about a new "mini subnotebook" from 3K Computers.
3K Computers has announced a new laptop computer the company considers to fit in the UMPC mold. It is priced starting at around $400 and is known as the Longitude 400 Mini Notebook UMPC.
The 3K Longitude 400 weighs under two pounds and sports a seven-inch display. It runs off of a 400 MHz 32-bit single core mobile processor, 512 MB of DDR2 RAM and a 1GB internal flash drive for file storage. The operating system is Linux based as well.
400 MHz processor? No wonder it needs Linux! 1 Gb of internal flash drive! No wonder it needs Linux! If OEMs keep lowing the costs we are going to end with smart calculators in our pockets! Well, now that I think about it, my Pocket PC has a 600 MHz processor so probably we can call this a Pocket PC!
What a great honor! To have my blog in the position number 6 in a list created by UMPCPortal, one of the best sites about this topic, and surrounded by names like jkontherun.com and www.gottabemobile.com is something only comparable to my MVP Award received almost a year ago.
Thanks Chippy! I know you and I know that you really mean it. That my blog is not there just because we are friends. Thanks again!
