My colleague Johan brought in a new UMPC to the office today. He’s helping the distributor (a friend of his) getting an Ubuntu based linux distribution working on it as a private project, so he has it for testing purposes.

The name of the unit is “Posh-Book” (view link in IE…) and I must say it’s a bit out there. Remember me bragging about being able to handle a pink sleeve for my A1, well, I’m not sure I could carry something described as “posh”. Hehe

In all other aspects it seems to be quite competent both in hardware and design. It ships with a 10″ screen, VIA C7®-M 1.6GHz Processor (NaNo), 1 GB memory and a 2.5″ 120GB SATA drive. One cool thing is that it’s operating system specification read “GNU Linux operating systems (MS Windows Compatible)”, that is GNU first and MS second

For me, the processor being a VIA is a plus as I love everything that’s not entirely standard. On the downside it has been described as a bit hungrier for power and therefor shortening battery life.

Even though it carries a 10″ screen it’s resolution is set to 1024×600, same as Aspire One (9″ screen) and others. It’s weight is estimated by the manufacturer to around 1.3kg, including a three cell li-on battery which is estimated to deliver 2.5 hours of power. No HSDPA/3G module is built-in, so if you’re in need of such solutions you’ll still have to carry your 3G-dongle.

Something I liked was the color of the keyboard that broke of cleanly from the white shell. They orange notations on the keys looked ok IRL as well.

The unit will ship in two different versions, and the number of available USB ports is one of the thing that differs. This is the P102 model I’m guessing as it only had 2 USB ports. See the full spec. for more info.

The keyboard worked quite OK and it passed the “I can write ‘Daniel’ without breaking any fingers”-test. Not a very scientific test, but it worked out OK for me in the past when selecting a netbook

And finally some pics comparing my A1 to the Posh:

New toys are fun to look at… Too bad I didn’t get to break it open, that would have made my day complete

Cheers,