HTC Shift Supports Intel's New Ultra Mobile Platform 2007

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070417corp_a.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20070417ar' target='_blank'>http://www.intel.com/pressroom/arch...epri_20070417ar</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Anand Chandrasekher, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Ultra Mobility Group, described the evolution of the personal mobile Internet, outlined changes in Intel's silicon roadmap that will create radical reductions in power requirements and innovative new packaging technology, and disclosed a range of leading industry players Intel is working with to establish the MID and ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) categories. Chandrasekher introduced the Intel® Ultra Mobile platform 2007 (formerly codenamed "McCaslin") for MIDs and UMPCs and said systems will be available over the summer from Aigo*, Asus*, Fujitsu*, Haier*, HTC* and Samsung*. The Intel Ultra Mobile platform 2007 is based on the Intel processor A100 and A110, the Intel 945GU Express Chipset and the Intel ICH7U I/O Controller Hub."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20070418-htcshift.jpg" /><br /><br />Based on a hands-on with a prototype last month, it was <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=54524">revealed</a> that a VIA CPU formed a part of the guts and gore of the HTC Shift. However, a <a href="http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070417corp_a.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20070417ar">press release</a> out of the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing indicates that the device will be powered by Intel's new Ultra Mobile Platform 2007, which in engineering terms, translates to their optimized A100/A110 processors, the 945GU Express Chipset, and the ICH7U I/O Controller Hub. Combined with a plethora of wireless capabilities, a slide-and-tilt 7" display, a QWERTY keyboard, and a 30GB HDD, among others, the Windows Vista-based HTC Shift is hard to resist. Come Q3, it would be a surprise to see it not fly off store shelves and into the hands of mobile geeks.

[Jason Lee]

oooo.. if it actually has an intel processor i might need one. ;)

I got a really good deal on a 17" wide screen laptop a few months ago. It has replaced my aging desktop (pIII *cough*) and bulky alienware laptop but there is still room in my life for some little bitty very portable computer that i would use as my "primary machine" (the one with all my PIM data, email, and such) that i could very easily take to work with me every day. The shift keeps looking better by the day.

[SteveHoward999]

I saw this a couple of days ago. Looks lovely. Apparently it will run Vista Business *with* the Aero interface, which means it's got decent specs. I'm excited!

I too have a 17 inch laptop, which I am very happy with. But for short business trips, this would be just perfect. It would be nice to have no hand luggage on those long flights :-)

[ricksfiona]

I currently have a TabletKiosk 7200 and while it's been 'pretty good', haven't been as happy with it as I would like to be. It's just not a very polished product. While I will probably keep my 7200 for another year, I have a good idea what I'll replace it with :-)

[x51vuser]

how come it has mechanical HDD ? It is 2007 now.

[SteveHoward999]

how come it has mechanical HDD ? It is 2007 now.

Price.

[x51vuser]

to put more expensisve mechanical drive just to drive the price of unit up does not say well about HTC

[ADBrown]

to put more expensisve mechanical drive just to drive the price of unit up does not say well about HTC

No, mechanical drives are far, far cheaper than equivalently sized solid-state drives. A 30 GB SSD would probably cost more than the rest of the unit put together.

[x51vuser]

mechanical hdd is about cf mem card these days if bought in bulk, you can easily make ssd from cf, interface is almost the same

[Jason Dunn]

I saw this a couple of days ago. Looks lovely. Apparently it will run Vista Business *with* the Aero interface, which means it's got decent specs. I'm excited!

Yup, I saw this in person and it supports the full Vista Aero experience - pretty cool stuff on such a small device. I saw an Intel logo in the system tray - meaning it was running an Intel GPU...

[Jason Dunn]

to put more expensisve mechanical drive just to drive the price of unit up does not say well about HTC

I think it says that they're running a business and it's important to strike a balance between price and great technology - flash-based drives are great and offer many benefits, but the unit is ALREADY going to be expensive. Putting a 30 GB flash drive in there would likely bump the price past $2K...but who knows, maybe if it sells well there will be a 2008 model with a flash drive (which I think will be more common in 2008).

[jlp]

mechanical hdd is about cf mem card these days if bought in bulk, you can easily make ssd from cf, interface is almost the same

I don't know about the price thing though I really doubt it.

HOWEVER CF card used as SDD in a UMPC are MUCH SLOWER!!

[Nurhisham Hussein]

mechanical hdd is about cf mem card these days if bought in bulk, you can easily make ssd from cf, interface is almost the same

Apart from jlp's point about the slowness of flash based memory used in memory cards, you also have to consider robustness. One of the other reasons why SSDs are so expensive is because the flash memory used has write cycles in the millions, not thousands as in memory cards. When you consider the kind of heavy disk access that a full desktop OS like Vista or XP typically do with virtual memory, internet caches and such, a storage solution using CF based flash memory might have a useful life measured in weeks and months, rather than the years-long useful life of current SSD technology (one calculation (http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html) I've seen estimated useful life of over fifty years).