Apparently the next generation of Ultra Mobile PCs is on the way, and this time they'll be smaller, have longer battery life, and lower power consumption.
Engadget has been following the progress (or lack thereof) of UMPCs pretty extensively. But what caught my eye in this latest update is that the Yahoo branded UMPC being shown off here is running a mobile version of Yahoo! Go TV, the product launched by Yahoo after it purchased media center software maker Meedio.
I don't really expect anyone to throw a TV tuner into a UMPC, although theoretically you could plug a USB tuner in. But I don't think the UMPC would really make sense as a full-fledged PVR. It would, however be one heck of a portable media player, especially if we ever see a UMPC released for $500.
Obviously you can use a UMPC to watch movies or listen to music. But if you can also run a customized version of Yahoo's PVR/media center software, perhaps you could stream audio, photos and video from your desktop to your mobile device, access movie listings, weather forecasts etc.
Okay, now that I think about it, you can probably configure a UMPC to do all of those things without Yahoo's software, but you wouldn't have that purple background!
1. I'm certain (at least right now) Y!Go4UMPC is not a different product. It's just Y!G4TV slapped on a UMPC device. You will notice in the video that the Music portion plays "From CD".
Y!G starts at around 47:00
mms://a559.v286038.c28603.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/559/28603/v0001/intelstudio.download.akamai.com/10670/idf/event3/092706_dp/dp_high.wmv
Posted at 9:36AM on Sep 30th 2006 by Kel