WL Fantasies...

Ok this has gotta stop NOW!!! Been fantasizing about UMPCs for the entire day!!! Enuff of this damn UMPC porn WL!!!

Anyway WL was thinking:

At the S$600 pricepoint one could get:
1) A new ASUS Eee PC 4GB, upgraded to 1GB RAM.
2) A second-hand Kohjinsha SA series, probably with 6mth+ warranty remaining.
3) Possibly by Q2 2008, a second-hand Kohjinsha SH series, probably with 6mth+ warranty remaining.

Now the Kohjinsha SA series uses a AMD Geode CPU, and I think that's a bit too slow. Really. Even for basic stuff. Should check with Melvyn. The SH series with the Intel Stealey processors might be better. I'm reckoning that the 600Mhz Stealey on the Kohjinsha is equivalent to the underclocked 600Mhz Celeron on the Eee PC.

Now at the S$800-900 pricepoint, there's pretty nothing much here except:
1) Brand new Kohjinsha
2) Brand new 2nd-generation Eee PC clones

Ultimately here, we're paying S$300 extra for new stuff. And honestly, I don't think it's worth it considering that Kohjinsha has quite a OK track record so far. In addition, it's unlikely to have any 2nd-generation Eee PC clones by Q2 2008, as they will be released at Q2 2008 or later.

Now at the S$1200-1300 pricepoint, and I'm speculating that based on the eBay trends, I can get a refurbished Fujitsu P1510/P1610 Tablet-UMPC hybrid (as I would term it), and it comes with 1-year international warranty. Of course, at this range we can get some high-end Kojinsha or 2nd-generation Eee PC clones, but those can't stand up to the P1610 Tablet-UMPC hybrid.

And the P1510/P1610 has been the object of WL fantasies for the entire day.

Basically put, the P1510/P1610 is technically a Tablet convertible with a 8.9" screen (passive digitizer). Here's the real deal... it weighs 1kg, which is as heavy as any Kojinsha or Eee PC or their future clones!!! How chio can you get man?!?! Plus, the P1510/1610 runs on a 1.2Ghz ULV (the difference is in the generation, the former is Dothan the latter is Yonah). But, the bottomline is that the CPU power can kick the shit out of the Celeron 900Mhz, Intel Stealey variants (up to 800Mhz) and even the future upcoming Intel Atom architecture!!!

It's strange then that the P1510 (a late 2005-release model) and the P1610 (a late 2006-release model) is such an ideal solution.

So the $1,000,000 question is - Is it justified to spend the extra S$600, essentially doubling the price for a larger 9" screen with real Tablet functionality?