Right after Japanese UMPC French company It’s Label has developed a new UMPC specifically for the French market.The Origami It’s is a convenient marriage of both form and functions, featuring a 1.0GHz VIA C7M NaNo processor and runs on the Windows XP Tablet PC OS (not Linux again). The device boasts an ultraslim 7″ wide-angle TFT LCD with a nativeVGA resolution of up to 800×480, 512MB RAM expanded to 1GB, a 40GB HDD, a built-In 1W Speaker with 3.5mm Headphone & Stereo Microphone Combo Jack, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. There is a possibility to have additional functions and accessories like External CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive, USB Modem or GSRM Modem and a Docking Cradle with additional I/O Ports. The price of French UMPC is €990.
Last time when I played with Nokia 770 I created a file .profile and put it into /home/user. The reason was to run manually installed programs (they are in /var/lib/install/usr/bin which isn’t in the PATH). I wrote into .profile installed applications path and libraries for this. But I made some error and Nokia 770 couldn’t boot anymore. I saw this scary picture instead of usual screen:
(click to enlarge)
Well the good news is I found a way how to repair Nokia 770 (thanks Maemo wiki!!!). I reflashed it. The procedure is very simple and fast. I just followed by this instruction. After the new image was loaded into device it booted successful as usual. Also I enabled the Research & Development mode to have possibility get root privileges on Nokia 770.
Now I have to install additional all packages such xterm and vim again. But it isn’t a big deal. I need to go to Chesters Bar, Starbucks or another place where is a Wi-Fi hotspot to download them from Internet. Or I can setup USB networking on my Fedora 4 (in all probability, I’ll choose Chesters 
).
Be carefully with your Nokia 770. Remember that there is not rescue disk and to reanimate your device you’ll reflash it and lose all your data.
Smart Caddie is a new UMPC from Japanese slate Tablet PC maker PBJ. Itfeatures:
- VIA C7-M CPU ULV 1GHz
- 512mb RAM
- 7″ 800×460 TFT-LCD
- 40Gb Hard Drive
- integrated Bluetooth connectivity and WLAN
- Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005
The price of Smart Caddie is about $1100.
All existing UMPCs are based on Intel processors. But AMD doesn’t sleep. It’s going to provide its processors for ultra mobile PC which will use about 13% less power then Intel equivalents. Limited battery life is one of the main obstacle of Ultra Mobile PC and it can be a good opportunity for some vendors. Anyway, let’s see. The competition is good for quolity of product.
Debian seems one of the most popular Linux distribution expessially for embedded systems like Plutohome, VDR etc. Usually I use RedHat/Fedora but I also works with both: Plutohome and VDR. So, I have to learn Debian a bit. It isn’t completely different from Fedora but it looks strange for me. When I installed additional packages to build Orbiter for Nokia770 I faced with following problem. apt-get gave me en error:
debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed
(Reading database … 20913 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libsdl1.2debian-oss (from …/libsdl1.2debian-oss_1.2.7+1.2.8cvs20041007-4.1_arm.deb) …
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libsdl1.2debian-oss_1.2.7+1.2.8cvs20041007-4.1_arm.deb (–unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libSDL-1.2.so.0.7.1′, which is also in package libsdl1.2
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libsdl1.2debian-oss_1.2.7+1.2.8cvs20041007-4.1_arm.deb
E: Sub-process /scratchbox/devkits/debian/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
After Google search I found that running a following command:
dpkg -i –force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/libsdl1.2debian-oss_1.2.7+1.2.8cvs20041007-4.1_arm.deb
resolved the problem.
Recently I decided to test Plutohome Web Orbiter. As result I wrote this simple howto – Howto setup Plutohome Web Orbiter. Hope it’ll save your time when you’ll setup the Web Orbiter.
The world is crazy about UMPC. And Apple also didn’t keep out this tendency and started develop its own ultra mobile PC. I found only sketches. But the computer world grows extremely quick. So, I think we’ll see the new iUMPC very soon.
After buying DVR software developer Meedio Yahoo! offered their new Meedio-based Yahoo Go TV software free. It seems Yahoo! got the trump card in their competition with Google.
