the battle of the UMPCs (part 1)

the battle for being the ultimate Ultra Mobile Portable Computer (UMPC) is afoot. so far the big brands have dished out their versions. so far i think only the Asus and Acer are the worthy contenders.  MSI Wind and Lenovo's Idea pad follow suit and then there is Dell, Neo and some other not so well-known brands.  And lets not forget the ergonomic HP mini-note whose hype died when the hardware screamed Via chipset (instead of Intel Atom) and the software croaked Vista.

The Asus 1000h so far has the 'almost-best' keyboard with a functional and ideally-sized touchpad.  And at the time of introduction, it was the only umpc with a 6-cell battery translating into 8 hours battery but with internet it boils down to 4 hours.  The other worthy contender is Acer Aspire One which has better aesthetics and best keyboard, especially the full-size right shift key, the small directional keys is quite a big issue  The touchpad is a bit small though.  Since the Aspire One is a johny-come-lately it was able to come up almost right away with 6-cell variants of the battery.  Apart from that it comes in sleeker colors than the 1000h.  Between the two, i'd have taken the Aspire One although initial specs wasn't so enticing because it was sporting an SSD instead of a hard drive, plus I was pushed for time given my MBA deadlines.  And by the way, I'm comparing UMPCs with hard disks only.  Those with SSDs are a different animal.  The 1000h is a bit lengthier than the Aspire One thus it is able to sport a 'functional' keyboard.  The Aspire one though is a beauty to hold when closed since it almost like a thick notebook.  Almost all the other specs are the same.  The software can either be Linux or XP, and thank god not Vista!  I was able to fool around with the Kalyway distribution which installs Mac OSX Leopard in the Asus 1000h and all I can say is... WOW! It was a whole new FUNKY machine!  But there was sound issues, and the wifi needed a bit of setting up which was wasting my time.  Some guys in eeeph.com say that the iDeneb distro is better but still the same issues.  I haven't read about anyone in the Philippines working with OSX on the Aspire One.
 

Oh well those are the two top contenders for the UMPC  in my opinion. In part 2 I'll talk about MSI Wind and the Lenovo Ideapad.  Stay tuned!