Hong Kong Phooey has been playing around with the iPhone the past fews days and created some nice lists (I like lists if you’ve been paying attention) comparing it to the HTC Touch. I especially like he didn’t favor any particular device. He simply points out features he likes in each phone.
One interesting point he notes before diving in. “The HTC Touch IS a PDA Phone and the iPhone is more of a quasi-iPod with phone capabilities.”
James Kendrick must be psychic. Just days after posting his desire for Apple to produce a ‘handheld’, Apple Insider hints a mini slate tablet is in the works.
Early rumors suggests:
My take? I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m doubtful though.
Apple has been rolling selling mass amounts of iPod and iPhone units. These makes sense since they are pocketable and have a purpose that’s easy to identify. With a mini slate, it could end up something which is limited to a niche market. What’s the real focus? Productivity? Media player/GPS device? I really don’t like talking about rumors so I’ll just shut up now.
I mentioned fuel cells in a previous post. Looks like we’re seeing some progress.
PolyFuel is leading the pack by delivering 500 Watts/Liter of juicy fuel cell goodness. The delivery device they show is a 111cc container measuring 8.8 x 4.5 x 2.8 cm’s that can hold 56 Watts of power.
I’m still curious about how fuel cells will be delivered. I guess it would be similar to ink jet cartridges in that you can swap em out and throw them away or refill yourself.
What about when this picks up.. will you be able to take laptops on flights since this is like a mini liquid explosion waiting to happen? I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
Sketchcast
I just saw Minda’s inkblog using
Sketchcast and decided to give
it a try.
Mikey likes it!
Responding to all the backlash on Vista, Michael Connick wrote in a blog post saying Vista is working quite well, thank you very much. What’s surprising, he’s running it on a 600Mhz A100 Kohjinsha SH6 UMPC. Maybe a good helping of RAM and solid drivers are all you need?
There’s been a lot of Vista bashing going on in the blogosphere lately. Postings about the horrors of attempting to run Vista on a UMPC, postings about computer vendors now offering XP downgrades from Vista, even postings from Chippy at the UMPC Portal on how he’s removed Vista and installed the XP Tablet Edition on his Kohjinsha SH6.
Well, I’m going to have to post a respectful disagreement with all this Vista negativity. I like Vista on my SH6 UMPC. I haven’t had any serious problems with Vista, and I’ve really come to appreciate the new features that it offers over XP.
Features like ease of managing local networks, ease in adding printers, cleaner and more attractive end user interface, better Tablet features (like improved handwriting recognition), decent performance (if you have 2 GBs of memory!), and good stability (I’ve found it comparable or better than the Tablet OS).
Now there are a few glitches in Vista, like sometimes being very slow in coming out of Sleep mode, but really nothing that I feel detracts all that greatly from its positives.
What can I say but that I’m just happy with Vista on my UMPC. Am I really the only person who is?
P.S. Apologies Mr. Connick if you don’t like being called Mikey. 
Rob Bushway of GottaBeMobile.com got a hold of the Amtek T770. He will be doing an inkshow later this week. Few things he likes so far are the thumbstick mouse and the snappy response. The thumbstick is sorely missed in the Samsung Q1 & Q1U’s. Most other UMPC’s have this feature but I feel the Amtek has the perfect placement for the stick and mouse buttons. Especially for me, since I”m a right hander.
He also notes he’s getting a slightly higher Vista Experience score for the hard drive. This is most likely due to the 2.5″ hard drive in the T770.
alexapple posted a message in the Kohjinsha news group saying he successfully upgraded the Kohjinsha SH6 hard drive to 250GB. He had just found out there’s now a 250GB 2.5″ PATA available (previous high was 160GB) so he took the chance and cracked open his SH6.
Hey everyone, just upgraded to 250gb hd that I posted earlier works a
treat! Have all my music and Ipod video on there am loving it!,Upgrade is not for the faint hearted! But if your careful and have a
little experience in the field is not too hard… Have some pictures
I will post when I have some more time…Windows Vista is a bitch though, it would not boot after due to the
hardware change and so had to download a copy of vista and burn a
bootable vista version as it wanted an original vista disk to validate
the new hardware…. (I only had an acronis image i made, bought my
SH6 from Conics and didn’t come with a one…) Then I had to activate
windows AGAIN! and of course the online way didn’t work so had to
phone in, but is now working and I am loving the HUGE drive!!!!Had a viao tx and that even though is bigger uses a 1.8″ drive which
just don’t have the storage I want… I love this machine almost as
much as my sony picturebook I finally sold on in january… Can’t
wait to see what these guys do next..alex
Starting November 12th, you will be able to order a OLPC XO for yourself and another kid for $399. I wonder if it’ll be like one of those Sally Struthers advertisements. Get a picture of the fortunate kid we’re sponsoring.
Via Engadget
Ok round 2. Going to try to upload one of the raw clips taken from the Aiptek A-HD. h.264, 1280×720, 29.97 FPS, 4 Mbps.
Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)
UPDATE:
Well that worked. Next time, no inline player. Link to flash is better. For the iPod version, I’ll use Quicktime instead so the file will play on the iPhone through Safari. Not sure what to do for encoding to 720p though. Maybe have to render to a raw 720p file and then encode with Nero Recode or Quicktime.
This is a short test of 720P footage using the Aiptek A-HD. Original footage was recorded at 1280×720 4Mbps.
Edited and rendered to h.264 (MainConcept AVC/AAC), 1280×720, 29.97 FPS, 4Mbps, 48K AAC.
iPod version is h.264, 640×480, 1Mbps.
Also testing cross-posting to my blog. Uploading both 720P & iPod versions. Hopefully Blip.tv posts this nicely.
UPDATE:
Well, that failed badly. The MainConcept encoder rendered badly, blip.tv’s conversion to flash forgot to include the video, and it seems both h.264 iPod & 720P versions of the video aren’t streaming. The crossposting worked but just added the flash version. No links to the original footage. It added some garbage characters. Will try again later.
Here’s the blip.tv link to the video. Try downloading files instead of streaming.
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