Thanko Wristband Battery for your MID

It is always handy to carry extra battery juice with you. This one is really ‘handy’. The capacity of the battery is 1500mAh and it supports charging of MIDs including the W-Zero3 Sharp MID as-well-as iPod and iPhone.

Commentary: While 1500mAh may not be enough to fill the whole tank, but should be good for providing an hour or two of runtime depending upon the task that you doing on your device.

Sharp Netwalker Tablet hitting Japan next month

Japanese folks rejoice! Sharp will be bringing their new NetWalker tablet in the month of May (2010). Powered by an i.MX515 Freescale CPU, it features 5-inch display, 8GB of flash storage, 512MB RAM, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Unlike most of the MIDs in the market, this one packs a good 1024×600 pixels (others have WVGA, 800×480 display). Now, if they could priced a bit low..$660 (61,200 Yen).

Kohjinsha PM MID (UMID M1) compared to Sharp PC-Z1 NetWalker

PCwatch has compared two of the recently unveiled MIDs, Kohjinsha PM MID and Sharp’s PC-Z1 NetWalker. The Sharp PC-Z1 Netwalker is longer than the Kohjinsha, but that allowed Sharp to fit in a bigger keyboard than Kohjinsha PM MID. Sharp Netwalker has slightly wider buttons and has six row of function keys.

Kohjinsha PM MID relies solely on touch screen for navigation whereas the Sharp has managed to fit in a optical mouse. Sharp Netwalker MID has better battery life which is very important for such a small on-the-go device.

Both of these are not available officially in either US or EU

One very important thing that PCwatch forgot to mention: Kohjinsha PM MID is a x86-based device, which means that it can run almost any desktop OS (limited by storage memory). It comes installed with Windows XP, whereas the Sharp Netwalker has a non x86 hardware and runs Ubuntu

Sharp PC-Z1 MID/Smartbook – Not that impressive after all – Quick Look

At the IFA, Sharp unveiled a small Smartbook that is much smaller than the regular netbooks that we usually see in the market. The Sharp PC-Z1 is very small, even more compact than the now obsolete, EEE 701. Not only its dimensions are smaller than the EEE 701, but it’s much lighter too (just 400gm).

Hardware-wise, the Sharp PC-Z1 does not has good keyboard. Well, you cannot have a compact device with touch-type-able keyboard. Can you? Moving ahead, the screen is great. It packs a lot of pixels (1024×600) into its 5-inch display, which is at par with the Fujitsu U810/U1010 that was released a couple of years back. However, unlike Fujitsu, this does not run Vista or Windows XP. In fact, it cannot even run one even if you wish to as it is not an x86 device.

Ubuntu is there to save us, but given the unpleasant fact that it took 10 seconds just to launch Firefox, it is disheartening for many of us. Openoffice writer took 40 seconds to load! So, although you will be able to enjoy great battery life (Sharp claims 10 hours), you will have to adapt yourself to slow performance.

It will be on sale in Japan later this month for the price of 350 Euros.

Commentary: From the looks of it, I’m sure, it is gratifying, but once you start using the device, it is then you realize the mistake you did when buying such a slow piece of hardware. I confess, I’ll call this device a pass

Sharp NetWalker – PC-Z1 – cheap 5-inch MID and runs full Ubuntu 9.04 OS!

A tiny 5-inch little MID device called the NetWalker PC-Z1 have been introduced by Sharp. This MID device has a 5-inch 1024×600 touch screen display and is backed by a FreeScale i.MX515 CPU (800 MHz) with 512MB RAM, 4GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi (b/g only) and small QWERTY keyboard. It runs Ubuntu 9.04 as the OS.

It also has SDHC port, 1 USB and 1 mini-USB port. Sharp must have done several tweaks under the hood and that is why it sports a 3 second wake up time and 10 hours of battery life! However, we despise the fact that it comes with an internal battery. Weighing 409gm and measuring just 161 x 109 x 20 mm, this is way smaller than the VAIO P, which is ‘touted’ as a Pocket PC

The PC-Z1 features a quick launch function (approx. 3 seconds) similar to mobile phones, enabling users to conveniently check e-mail while on the road. Also, a long battery running time (approx. 10 hours) allows users to fully enjoy net services, such as videos or blogs. The high-resolution, 5-inch touch-screen LCD enables intuitive touch operation while the full keyboard provides for comfortable text input. Additionally, in business settings, users can create documents, spreadsheets, presentation materials, etc., and edit them stress free.

As it is using FreeScale MX515 processor, it cannot be there in the US as it is banned there.

It is expected to hit market on 25 September 2009 for 44,800 yen ($480) in Japan and will be available in White, Red or Black.

Commentary: We are so excited to know that it runs full Ubuntu OS and not a proprietary Linux distro. Another great thing about it is that Sharp went for high resolution and not WVGA (800×480). This MID is made for professionals who always wanted full Firefox experience in their hands all the time. We dug into their press release and found that it will be able to run Flash (version 8) based files without any hiccups. However, sites using Java won’t work at all.