Hack a Day » umpc

Changing the EEEPC 701 form factor

Caleb Kraft — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:00:23 +0000

Over at the EeeUser forums, [PvP_lostnight] is designing a kit to convert your EEEPC to a different form factor. He is modeling the design after the Samsung Q1 UMPC. The kits will eventually be for sale, but as you can see from the pictures, there’s a long way to go. He seems to be taking lots of input from the forum members, so go there and help him make it perfect.

[thanks Tony]

Posted in handhelds hacks, netbook hacks, news

Eee PC 900 touchscreen

Juan Aguilar — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:00:00 +0000

Jkkmobile has just posted their touchscreen hack for an Eee PC 900, and it looks great. Installation of this kit is pretty easy, just fit the panel to the screen, connect the controller to the USB lines, close it up, calibrate it, and you’re done. The controller board is placed on top of the WiFi card. Jkkmobile has informed us of touchscreens for older Eee PCs before, but this is one of the first we’ve seen for a 900+ model. The post lists a few sources for touchscreen kits, but no word on which one they used.

MSI Wind under FCC review

Juan Aguilar — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:40:00 +0000

Those of us who have been eagerly waiting to get their mitts on an MSI Wind can see some light at the end of the tunnel, as it is currently under review for domestic sale by the FCC. The Wind is MSI’s answer to Asus’s game-changing ultraportable, the Eee PC, and has slightly better specs. It features an Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM. It also has built in bluetooth and webcam. Check out a few shots of the Wind’s internal parts at jkkmobile or grab them all from the FCC’s site.

Ubuntu released for MIDs

Eliot — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:40:00 +0000

Ubuntu MID edition has been released for handheld Mobile Internet Devices. It’s targeting devices based on Intel’s A100/110 and the new Centrino Atom platforms. Successors to the UMPC, MIDs are usually small formfactor and have a touchscreen, plus a physical keyboard. UMPC portal has a examples of devices that are currently supported by this release, inluding plamtops like the Kohjinsha SH6. This release is only for x86 devices, so don’t expect it to be ported to the ARM based Nokia N800/810. The user interface is based on the Hildon framework and we’re glad people are attempting to think beyond a standard UI. We hope they plan on punching up the use of the color brown in the final though; it just wouldn’t be an Ubuntu release without it.

[via Linux Devices]

Add USB ports and a flash drive to you UMPC

Will O'Brien — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:16:00 +0000

[ThoughtFix] sent in our first ever UMPC hack. It’s along the lines of laptop mods we’ve seen before, but he deserves credit for opening up the already tightly packed inside of his UMPC, tapping the USB interface on his bluetooth card, adding a hub and an internal usb flash drive to provide readyboost to speed up Vista.