Although it's still proudly donning the proverbial prototype badge,
a nifty machine from Compal was spotted at Computex running Windows CE 5.0
in favor of the battery-draining XP or Vista. Simply dubbed the UMD (Ultra
Mobile Device), this ultraportable supposedly pulled double duty as a smartphone
and even played nice with HSDPA. The unit has a 532MHz Freescale i.MX31
processor, 512MB of NAND Flash memory, 256MB of DDR RAM, a 4.3-inch WVGA
display, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, a slide out QWERTY keyboard,
trackpad, hot keys, built-in speaker and microphone, a 1.3-megapixel CMOS
camera, SIM card slot, and a miniSD slot to hold excess media. Additionally, it
boasted USB connectivity, a headphone jack, a meager five-watt power consumption
rating that enabled nearly five hours of battery life, and the obligatory media
playing and Skype-friendly applications that you would expect on such a
multifaceted device. If this is priced right (i.e. "Under $400") and the
availability happens (Compal is Taiwan-based and doesn't throw its gear west)
this could be a saucy little dark horse.