Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

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Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by Fred »

Well, my trusty laptops screen has died (inverter or tube) and I need something lighter for the commute anyway, so I'm planning to go into london tomorrow and buy a ultra mobile laptop.

If I go EEE I'm thinking the 1000 model with xandros and a decent keyboard size and screen size.

There is also the msi wind, the acer one, the hp 2133 and maybe others, what else do you know about them, which models are better, why, etc.

The 1000 eee has really good battery - important.
The keyboard is decent - important
It has a debian based linux on it standard and won't give me any trouble on the OS front - nice, but not critical.
It has the atom cpu = good.

The HP has some crappy via cpu = bad
the hp has some redhat based linux = bad

The wind sounds like something I'd get after baked beans = indifferent

The acer one is ok, but the cheap ones are specced low as and its acer... which has me wondering ...

I saw an advent one on a train that looked like a candidate. Not sure what it was yet.

Help me out with opinions and info asap :-)

Fred.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by jharvey »

Get the extended warranty, as repairs are next to impossible, and like you might find on your current laptop, parts are also hard to find. Hope you find a replacement tube for it.

I don't know if they have them over the big drink, but ThinkPAD's from IBM are quite rugged, and good quality.

Sounds like you plan on seeing it before you buy it, good move, they often bugger things like ports, ect. If you want a 232, seeing it's there is a nice thing.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by davebmw »

Well I have had this Novatech AMD64 3700, 100GB, 1GB laptop for over 3 years it has been on pretty much constantly for the entire time, I have had to replace the screen because my loving wife dropped a money box on it other than that all original and still pretty quick.
like most of the Novatech branded stuff its based on a Uniwill motherboard, LG TFT panel, Toshiba HDD, Panasonic 8 x DVD RW drive.
Battery life however is appalling and its not very portable.

Toshiba laptops are also very reliable i have had them in work for ages they are quite robust battery life varies a lot, support is excellent as you would expect parts are very easy to get new and old. The newer models are a little on the tacky side with a cheap feel to the keyboards and the chassis is a bit flexible.

I recently bought a HP/Compaq laptop for my father it was on Ebuyer for £270 single cored centrino CPU 1.8GHz 1GB ram 80GB HDD.
Feels a bit flimsy and the display is well... below average! but you get what you pay for eh?

we have a couple of IBM think pads in work, yes they are robust buts thats because they are made from reinforced concrete and powered by uranium, they are awful to use and look cr@p. the displays are very poor and anyone that sees you will laugh! Sorry not a fan!

Sony Vaio are my absolute favorite they are not cheap but if you want an Ultra portable laptop they are king, they have the best displays by far you can use them in full sunlight or equally as easily in a dark room, The resolution is the highest you will find on any laptop.
The battery life is very good my works laptop is a VGN FS195XP running windows XP pro SP3 I have 2 batteries the standard 4400mAh lasts about 2.5 hours and the extended battery 6800mAh lasts in excess of 4 hours.
They are exceptionally light and usually come packed with features, although sadly none of them have RS232.
The quality of feel is the best you'll get and they have magnesium alloy chassis very quiet fans and everything about them is designed well and engineered to perfection. Support as its Sony is the dogs bollocks ie the best you could have it repaired in 24 hours under the standard sony warranty which i think now is 1 year unlimited warranty with extra year extension at £70.

So if it was me buying one i would go for a Vaio hands down the NR and NS ranges are very well spec'd and starting at About £570 direct from Sony and much cheaper from the USA at about £400.

The much more portable models with 11.1 inch screens get really pricey starting at £1200! but they do have carbon fibre parts along with the magnesium alloy chassis. but again if you are determined to get a bit of computing excellence you'll find one on ebay much cheaper.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by Fred »

Perhaps I should have said "netbook" ?

I intend to get a toy laptop, something small, light, and cheap that I can use for tuning and train/car stuff in future. When I get home and the keyboards don't suck, I'll buy a mid sized high end something or other with a US keyboard built in. I've been intending to get one since the eee 701 came out, but I can't type on them...

9 or 10" screen is what I'm after with keyboard right to the edge and weight of 1 - 1.5 absolute max.

Definitely won't buy anything without getting my greasy mitts on it first. Not worried about rs232, don't have that now anyway, and don't expect it on any boxs in the future either.

I'm thinking 200 - 400 quid, any more and I'd want a real machine! :-)

is it totenham court road that has acres of pc shops? I was planning on going there and walking around till I was happy with something.

That advent 4211 is an msi wind, as is the 4213 and the same company makes them as makes the hp and the acer.

I guess I'll just make sure the keyboard is decent, the battery decent, and buy the best hardware I can for the $$$

Going into london today is the last thing I want to do actually, but it will mean I can get "something" done during the week which I won't if I don't.

Fred.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by davebmw »

Ahh! right you want decent and basic in the 200 to 400 then you are in Toshiba territory now there are a couple of models with RS 232 but they are 15.4 inch but have 4 hour battery life.
They are due to release this the NB 100 this month at about £260:
http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/ ... 00-laptop/

Now being a tosh its worth a look as this is the netbook flagship the quality will kick butt and it has everything you wanted. if you'll find one anywhere it'll be london's tech district!
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by Fred »

What do they weigh though? And how big? I want small as poss with a keyboard I can use. The current machine gets in the way when there are 150 - 200 people in a tube carriage in the morning. Also the weight if a real nuisance and is ruining my hands.

I'm leaving soon, we'll see what I end up with I guess :-)

Fred.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by davebmw »

The keyboard is full width, it weight 1050g and the display is 8.9 inch i think its 1400 x 600 with LED backlighting, 120 to 160 GB HDD and 512 to 1GB ram.

Happy hunting

PS the HP netbook has below average reviews.

Personally i hate small screens, so i would be looking in the 15.4 inch wide range, plus i have enough difficulty typing on a normal keyboard let alone a minature one. Best thing you can do is get your mitts on one and see if you like it.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by Fred »

I am now the proud owner of a lovely black eee 1000 with 1gig ram, 40gig ssd, and xandros preinstalled. Also featured is a dead battery which I will be emailing the shop about right now.

I have to say, every time I open a manual and see the gpl terms I grin :-)

It's a pretty cool little machine and once I swap the up and shift keys around it should be very usable.

Mean while it looks like I have a fix to make to the firmware. Someone is filing bug reports on me ;-)

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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by Fred »

Well, the shop was good about the battery, and I now have a new one less than 24hrs after I bought it. I have eclipse installed, but there is a permissions issue there that I need to solve. I've added the xandros 4.5 repositories, and things are mostly good. I need to understand and sort out back porting svn 1.5 to it as the installable one is too old.

It's a great little machine, it just needs more data and a few more apps and I'll be humming along :-)

Fred.
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Re: Which UMPC and why?? Buying in 12 hours or so maybe.

Post by Fred »

I was grinning the entire way home.

It has SIX hours battery life, genuine number too. So awesome :-)

Linux the easy easy easy way :-)

Eclipse is fixed (on the train ride home) and I know what I need to achieve tonight to get some dev done tomorrow.

Get java6 into it.
Get svn 1.5 into it.
connect to the svn server on my other laptop after checking in my changes and do a check out :-)

Too easy!

Fred.
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