Why do you need a mouse on a UMPC?

Something I discovered after getting over all the specs was the all important button set on the face or the side of the UMPCs. I realized quickly that a major difference was in the number of shortcuts and the presence of a mouse stick and mouse buttons. I started asking myself, why do I really need a mouse button on a touch screen device? Isnt the whole point to use my finger as the mouse?

I read that many people say that the lack of the mouse stick on the Samsung Q1 was a dealbreaker for them. I was immediately thinking, either they have very dirty fingers or they are just too big. For UMPCs I generally see two categories of usage scenarios, one where I interface with big buttons where my fingers will be good enough. And the other where I have to do more detailed work on the device. For the detailed work in the field I saw that I would most probably use a combination of the pen and/or my finger or fingernails. When in the comfortable chair in my office at work or home I would most probably have access to a mouse and keyboard as well. Even with only a keyboard I can see myself picking up the pen and click something as a faster way to do stuff than to grab the device with both hands to navigate the pointer with one hand and click with my other hand. I just never was comfortable with these on laptops either so maybe thats why I feel so sceptic about the mouse pointer.

So what does e.g. the Samsung Q1 offer instead? It has a brilliant set of shortcut buttons instead. Something I can see myself using more often than a mouse. Like jkOnTheRun I would probably configure one to toggle the IE browser fullscreen and other nice things depending on which application I am using. For a UMPC I see that the major set of applications that I am likely to run on it will be very simple interfaces with big buttons or otherwise shortcut enabled though the buttons on the device.

Current selection of UMPCs

There are a number of UMPCs today and more are being annouced every month now. The major UMPC brands available for purchase today are Samsung Q1, Asus R2H and TabletKiosk. Most of these have many similarities in specifications with some variations in CPU type, ports and accessories.

The UMPC that has been on the market the longest time is the Samsung Q1 and hence has the widest selection of accessories as well. The original Q1 come with a Celeron 900 Mhz CPU, 512 MB ram and a 40 MB drive. The unit also get nice reviews because of its stereo sound and array microphones. It has 2 USB 2.0 ports, one Ethernet port as well as a Compact Flash port. The CF port immediately drew my attention because I could see the advantage of having this for photography backup in the field. Unfortunately tests show that the CF port is almost useless because of its slow speed at around 0,7 MB/sek tranfer rate!!! This is truly terrible as you could plug in any other USB based CF reader and get up to 16 MB/sek with a SanDisk Extreme IV card. When you are out in the field you want to empty that card as quickly as possible.

All UMPCs come with a wireless lan which is one of its major selling points. Being able to sit around in the sofa and surf the net or jot down an email at the kitchen table is nice. All of the UMPCs also come with a bluetooth interface except a nerfed down European version of the Asus R2H during its initial release. The bluetooth is a vital addition since it allows you to use a wireless keyboard and mouse as well as a bluetooth headset if you wish. The Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard is one that jkOnTheRun praises and many seem to like as the first accessory to get for any UMPC.

The Samsung Q1 comes in many more versions. In Korea, a special version of the original was released, the Q1 SSD. It has a 32 GB flash drive instead of the 40 GB 1.8" platter harddrive. The advantage of this is obvious, no moving parts, silent and fast operation. With access times under 1 ms and decent transfer speeds it boots up and loads any application way faster than a disk based version. It also consumes less power, a major benefit in a UMPC. The disadvantage though is price. Its a very costly disk that will double the price on the device. By many this is still considered the cheapest SSD drive available though. Expect this to become available in all portable devices. SSD drives is the future!

Recently Samsung also released two more versions of the Q1. A version pretty equal to the original Q1 but with a Pentium M 1 GHz with speedstep technology, newer chipset, a 60 gb hd and 1 GB memory. This is the most complete specification of the Q1 series giving you the best performance UMPC. Imagine how this could be with an SSD drive in it. The second version they released was one kitted with a Via C7 1 GHz CPU and fitting chipset. They also improved the screen on this version, but nerfed some features giving it mono speakers and mono mic as well as removing the ethernet port and the CF port. The advantage is naturally way better battery lifetime. People report of up to 4 hours on the standard 3 cell battery which is almost double that of the original Q1. If you can live with the specs and lower performance then this is definitaly the UMPC for you.

This autumn, Asus released their R2H UMPC which has a nice brushed aluminium case instead of the black plastic of the Samsung. It also has an integrated GPS, fingerprint reader and webcamera! It uses the same Celeron 900 MHz CPU as the original Samsung Q1. The first version sold in Europe was nerfed without either the gps or the webcamera as well as a 40 gb disk and 512 MB ram. The US version however had all the bells an whistles, with a 60 gb disk and 768 MB ram as well as the extended battery instead. One major letdown on the original tests of the R2H was the short battery lifetime with the standard battery, shorter than the Q1. The extended battery solves some of this, but at the same time adds bulk and weight to a device that was already more heavy than the Samsung. It is also said to become very hot and the extended battery supposedly blocks the wireless signal pretty badly compared to the Samsung Q1. The fingerprint reader is nice if you have several users of the UMPC and/or want some kind of security. The GPS has a varying degree of reported success, with some praising it and some simply not getting any signal on it at all. I have still not seen any review showing the webcamera except that people say it doesnt handle low light situations very well. Reports are also coming that the Asus does not have any L2 cache, which I find really strange as I thought this to be a standard implementation of the Celeron 900 MHz CPU. Other than that the R2H has a mono speaker and a mono mic.

TabletKiosk comes in several versions, actually the same CPU selection as the Samsung. The TabletKiosks however come with an SD card reader instead of a CF reader, and this reader supposedly performs like it should also. One major benefit of the TabletKiosk is the docking station / cradle. This is a feature that I think all UMPCs should have since it makes it so much easier to hook the device up to a monitor/ethernet/sound/keyboard/mouse just by docking the device. Other than that the TabletKiosk has a mouse pointer and buttons like the R2H, something that is missing from the Samsung UMPCs. Many say that they simply cannot live without the ability to control a mouse pointer, while I dont really understand why you need a mouse at all when you have this brilliant touch screen. More about this in a later post. A drawback of the TabletKiosk UMPCs is their price. They are a few hundred dollars more expensive than the competition. This can be a dealbreaker for many. Oh and it only has a mono speaker and mic like the R2H.

There are many more UMPCs coming out now but these are the major ones that you should consider.

UMPC - a new kind of PC

The past months I have closely watched a new kind of device being made available to the masses - the UMPC. UMPC is a short for Ultra Mobile PC. So what is a UMPC? Its not a PDA and its not a laptop. A PDA is too small and not a general purpose PC, and a laptop is often too big and cumbersome, although also a portable device. A UMPC is something in between. It has many similarities to a tablet PC, and I believe the touch screen is one of the most important features of it. Many also feel that it doesnt require an integrated keyboard - if you do add one it only becomes yet another small laptop.

Most UMPCs today come with a 7" screen which is just right for this kind of device. The reason is simple to see from the number of scenarios you can use this form factor in. I will list a few here:

- In your sofa, web surfing or playing games
- In your home or office, calendar and contacts
- In your car, playing music and using it for navigation
- On vacation, kids can watch a dvd
- In a meeting, you can take notes, show documents or presentations
- In the bed, reading an ebook
- In your photobag, backup of memory cards and a teethered shooting device
- Anywhere, a telephone or video conferencing tool

These are just some examples of use. If you compare these to a pda or a general purpose laptop you will often see that they either dont have a big enough screen, not enough CPU power, or will just be too cumbersome to bring with you. The only real alternative is a tablet PC - and in my eyes a UMPC is just a small form factor tablet PC. If you do require a keyboard you can always connect one in a USB port or wirelessly through bluetooth.

One selling point of the UMPC is the battery life, which unfortunately up to now has not been too good. Recently there is a shift to more efficient components to make the battery life stretch to 5 hours on a normal 3-cell battery, which is quite good for such a device. These devices arent meant to be used continously like a work PC, but now and then, having the device in standby mode when not in use. A UMPC can often be slow to boot up, but bringing it back from standby is very quick according to user reviews.

The UMPC shown in this article is the Samsung Q1, which exist in 4 versions today, one with a Celeron 900 MHz, another with a Pentium M 1GHz, a third with a Via C7 CPU, and finally the original Celeron 900 MHz but with an SSD drive instead of a harddrive. I will comment the UMPC choices in another article, but my good eye is now fixed on the Samsung Q1 Pentium M edition.

My ongoing HTPC project

I have for some while been tinkering with a home built HTPC based on the mCubed hFX case which is a totally passive cooling system. By connecting heat pipes to CPU and GPU and leading the heat to two massive heatsinks on either side of the case you can effectively cool a pretty powerful CPU. Mine is using a Pentium M 740 (1,7 GHz) which the system keeps very cool. I also use a passive PSU that doesnt even get lukewarm simply because the total powerdraw of the system is very low. The end result is a dead silent PC! One very well suited for living rooms! The only thing humming in the device is a 3.5" harddrive mounted in a Vertical Silence. This drive does get very hot though and I really wish I could swap this with a flash based drive so I can get that movable part out of the equation. Will probably experiment some with a SATA CF adapter and a sandisk extreme card.

The software that I was planning to use, Meedio Pro, was suddenly discontinued because the people who made it was "bought" by Yahoo. So I looked around and I am now using the open source project called MediaPortal. This works somewhat, although it has required quite a bit of tweaking to get everything up and running as I want. Especially with the XMLTV epg downloading. A part of me want to get Microsoft WinXP Media Center just to make things easier, but I have to check if I get the flexibility I want with it.

Go to my dedicated website - my htpc project - to get more information about how to build an amazing HTPC. :) Dont hesitate to mail me anytime with questions.

Its been a while...

...since my last blog post. During this time I havent spent much time with my photography either, and naturally no new investments in that direction. The lens in the previous post is still interesting, but I have realized I only need anything like that if I have a full frame camera. The 17-40mm works brilliantly as it is now and has been used a lot.

The main photographic event lately has been wedding photography for some friends who married high up in the Norwegian mountains, by a big dam, the Sysen-dam. The scenery is spectactular (hoping to link a few shots here) and the wedding was very unusual in this regard. My 20D and the two main lenses, the 17-40mm f4 and 70-200mm f2.8L IS performed brilliantly and I got some nice shots that hopefully will make the bride and groom happy.

However, I have also learned a few things about wedding photography (this is my second), and that is that its hard to take control and arrange a good shoot. We had a plan to rig a neutral background using a couple of bedsheets so that I could get some nice potraits. And it worked fine for that except that the sheets were too thin making the woodwork shine its yellowish hue through it. Still I managed to isolate them fine in Photoshop later to replace the background. However, the biggest problem proved to be that everyone else in the party wanted to take pictures as well. This often made the bride and groom look in different directions and there was all sorts of distractions. It didnt get much better as people wanted all kinds of constellations of the family in the shots too. Since the bedsheets didnt look very nice (very wrinkled) and they hardly was wide enough to fill the frame everyone in the party probably has som terrible looking pictures on their compact cameras now. This again requires me to fix a lot more pictures than I had imagined (I was aiming for shots only with the bride and groom). So I guess the real issue now is just to limit the amount of pictures to work with.

Digitally there is some new ground to cover since I have problems making a believable backdrop when their feet are visible. It almost looks as if they are floating, and it requires some work "grounding" them in the shots. I have had some success by keeping the wriggly bedsheets where they are standing and I think I will go with that in the end, but fading upwards into a better looking background. A real challenge to get that professional edge.

During the shoot I used one single Canon 550EX flash which pointing up to the white ceiling which reflected a nice and diffuse light that worked fine for me to shoot at ISO 100 and 200. There is a hint of yellowish hue due to the wooden panels on the walls around but nothing bad. Will add a shot here later if I am allowed by the happy couple! :)

Canon 24-105mm f4L IS lens

Yup, this is the lens I am saving up for now. Previously I have been seriously thinking about getting the older 24-70mm f2.8L, but realize that this lens will be a typical carry around lens meaning that IS will be very handy too. So I'd rather loose one stop of light and gain 2-3 faster shutterspeed steps instead on this new lens. From the reviews this lens is very sharp wide open too, meaning that it would do excellently as a portrait lens too. It is also the perfect zoom for a full frame camera if I ever can afford the new Canon 5D camera. My 17-40mm is actually 27mm on my 1.6 crop 20D, and I have kinda gotten used to that being my "landscape" wideangle. On a fullframe the new lenses 24mm will be even better, and even more a typical walkaround lens. Just have to start saving up some money now! :)

New Wacom Intuos3 A5 (6x8) Tablet

Finally ordered myself a tablet that I have been wanting for a long time! If you do extensive work in Photoshop you will definitely benefit from one of these. Being able to do precise selections and paint masks with a pen is so much better than fiddling with the mouse and trying to move it the right way. The supplied pen is also pretty broad so its less of a strain to hold than a normal pencil. The pressure sensitivety works wonders in photoshop where you can do very small details by applying pressure. Especially important for masks. It also has a number of shortcut keys as well as two touch strips. I have mapped some of the buttons to common photoshop shortcuts such TAB for switching between full screen and normal, as well as undo and some others. Defaultly the left shortcuts are well specified with Alt, Ctrl, Shift and Space. That way you can do quite a lot of work without even touching the keyboard. The left touch strip I use for zooming, which works well, and the right I plan to map to pensize adjustments. I wont be using the supplied mouse since I already have a good bluetooth mouse with the Logitech Dinovo keyboard. The size of the tablet is just right, A6 was too small and A4 was too big imo, so the A5 (6x8) size fits me perfectly. Its definitely a digital photographers must have tool!

Someone is spamming my blog

A company is consistently spamming my blog with comments to visit their webpage, so I am closing the ability for non-members to comment. You have to register to be able to comment now. I am pretty sick and tired of people who spam like this, they have no respect whatsoever of other peoples time and need. So if you see a posting that doesnt make sense and links to another site, dont click it or you will be supporting this idiotic spammer!

The ultimate online game!

Lately I havent been doing much photography, and the main reason for that (besides the obvious time it takes being a father to a newborn) is playing World of Warcraft. This game is dangerously addictive, just like any title Blizzard has released. Being an old fan of the Diablo 2 game I felt immediately that WOW was going to be good. I tried the beta version when they opened the Europe beta test and was hooked overnight. They have found a great balance of story, characters, questing, building your character, skills, professions, spells and social gaming. Some people say the graphics are too simple, but I think it works excellent for this type of game, a bit cartoonish and fairytale-like. Being able to join parties to solve tough quests is also required in this game, its pretty hard to do the elite quests solo unless you are a much higher level player than the monsters (or "mobs" as they are called in the jargon). The auction house allows you to trade stuff also, and I think they have found a very good system to keep the economy in control so that those gold, silver and coppers are actually worth something. I like the fact that you can play it the way you want, hard core quester, farming for items, or build your professions through practice and getting new recipies. Even stopping for some fishing is nice to do in this game! So if you feel your photography interest has been down a bit, nothing better than to fill your time with some World of Warcraft! :)

New LCD monitor, PC, and baby! :)

Its been a while since my last post now, and much has happened. The Canon 20D is a really great camera and I recommend it to anyone needing a semi-pro camera. Canon has also released the new 350D camera which seems like a nice starter camera. Good thing it also comes in black since I felt the grey plastic was a bit cheesy.

I guess the greatest news is becoming a father to a little baby girl! But since this is a blog about photography and related issues I wont go into the specs. :) Its everything a baby can be, except the special little thing that I'm the father. Couldnt be more happy, she is truly beautiful!

Well, I borrowed a Canon 380EX flash from my brother to try it out for some indoor baby shots, and must say I have changed my view on flash photography. When using a white ceiling as a reflector, its simple to take hand held ISO 100 shots at shutter 1/60. Got some very nice shots of mother and child with this simple setup and I guess a flash is whats in store next for my photography gear. Except that I spent all my savings on a new computer instead. :)

Yeah, first a new excellent screen, a Dell 2001FP 20" LCD! Its a very good IPS panel, the same one NEC use in its excellent 2080UX screen. But at almost half the price you cant beat the the Dell deal. It has gotten some critique for the backpanel light coming through a bit, and they are right, blacks arent completely black. But still its pretty close to perfect in color reproduction according to colorimeter tests that has been done. Be warned that a lot of LCDs today dont have true 24 bit color resolution, but actually 18 bit and emulate the colors inbetween with an algorithm that shifts colors on each pixel. A good sign is to look for a screen that has 16,7 million colors and not 16,2 (which is the 18 bit panels). The Dell screen is very nice and big, with a 1600x1200 resolution which is brilliant for working with photography. When I reviewed my photos on it for the first time I felt I was looking on slides again. This high resolution and brightness surely makes the pictures come alive compared to my 3-year old LG CRT. LCD has come a long way over the last years and you cant go wrong with the 20" Dell 2001FP! If you do have more money to burn, go for the NEC 2080UX which is even better.

The Dell 20" has both VGA and DVI inputs, but from reviews and experience, the VGA input is not very good. I'm sure its ok, but once you experience this screen with a DVI signal you'll know what I mean. Since my old graphics board, a GeForce3 Ti500, only had a VGA output I had to look for another card. I had wanted to upgrade it anyway since I like playing games now and then. So the decision fell for the new 6600GT which is good value for money. Since i also wanted to leave the old AGP world for the new PCI-Express systems I also got a new motherboard and a new CPU. The motherboard, an Asus P5GD1, is a very nice package at a decent price, and the CPU, an Intel 530J 3.0 GHz is good enough performance. Why pay almost triple the money for something that is 0.6 GHz faster? I already had a 1GB matched pair of 512MB PC3200 memory sticks in my old system so they went over in the new system, doing what they were made for, dual rate running at 800 MHz!

The new computer system is very nice to work with, and more responsive than my old, absolutely excellent for photography editing in Photoshop. I have some more ideas for the system which I will comment here in a later blog. But for now, please come with questions or comments if you have em, I'm always happy for some feedback.