Samwell shows off Ruggedbook PC657 UMPC

Joining the slew of other handhelds computers that surfaced at Computex is the Ruggedbook PC657 from Samwell, which does indeed pack a beefy shell to protect the innards from whatever comes its way. The seven-inch UMPC includes a 800 x 600 resolution touchscreen, a 1.2GHz VIA C7M processor, Windows XP Professional, a PCMCIA slot, SDIO / MMC slots, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a fingerprint scanner, and an integrated camera. Additionally, it'll handle up to 1GB of RAM, offers up your choice of 30, 60, or 80GB 1.8-inch hard drives if you're not kosher with the built-in 2GB/4GB/8GB flash storage option, and allows you the luxury of slipping a DVB-H tuner or GPS module into the PC Card slot if you so desire. We hope you weren't counting on a price or release date directly from the show floor, but do click on for a few more hands-on pictures.

[Elwyn Jenkins @ Jun 15th 2007 8:02PM]

Looks good. But what covers the screen when not in use?

[Aaron @ Jun 15th 2007 9:21PM]

800x600 on a *7"* screen...yawn
The OQO 2 does that resolution on a 5"

[Jenn @ Jun 15th 2007 10:01PM]

TabletKiosk sells this as the TufTab v7112XT.

Kind of pricey, but preinstalled openSUSE Linux is offered as an option: http://www.tabletkiosk.com/tkstore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=35&idproduct=218

[??? @ Jun 15th 2007 10:17PM]

E GADS, the tray icons!

[joe_raby @ Jun 15th 2007 10:19PM]

It can't possibly be 800x600 on a screen like that - it's a widescreen display so it's likely 800x480 like all other similar UMPC's.

When will the UMPC makers realize that getting XP on a new system is a waste since there is literally less than a year of standard support left for it. We need to have all UMPC's shipping with Windows Vista with an option for Home Premium to improve consumer market share (which was one of the launch target markets). Aero support would be nice too. How hard is it to produce a low-power GPU that supports DirectX9 shaders??!

An SSD (solid-state drive) would be the ideal storage solution but I can understand that adding one will increase the price exponentially. Since UMPC's are designed to be secondary systems, having a smaller hard drive would be preferable to keep the price down. PCMCIA is dead though too. Forget these exclusive cell/WWAN contracts with providers and just put a bloody Expresscard slot in the thing so users can choose without paying a premium on the base unit! Doing so would make manufacturing for the global market much easier.

If you're going to put in VGA out, forget it! Think DVI-I instead. DVI will translate easily to either HDMI or VGA with a simple adapter, making it by-far the most versatile video out connection. Analog audio out is fine for a mini computer, or else use combined optical SPDIF/phono-out.

Then there's the price. The top price for such a device should be still under $800US, with the $600 range being favourable.

It's not asking much really. The system doesn't need to be a Core 2 Duo multitasking powerhouse or anything, just something that can keep pace with Windows Vista, and the VIA C7-M's seem to be doing that just fine. Shiny silver brushed aluminum enclosures aren't necessary either. For consumers to start buying them, they should really have a basic design. This particular one seems to have gotten it right. The plastic look and rubber bumpers may look cheap, but when a design like that saves you $300 over something fancy-looking but offers the same functionality, who cares?! Consumers that want to use these things will likely be the most abusive to them, so they have to stand up to everyday abuses. Think about it for a moment. Smaller electronics like MP3 players and TV remote controls get thrown around a lot more than bigger things like laptops and game consoles. UMPC's fit into the former class of electronics, given their size.

[remedy @ Jun 16th 2007 9:15AM]

Have you ever used ANY UMPC before? Trying to use Vista on a Desktop with 2GB of memory and a decently spec processor is hard enough. Try running the same desktop OS on something well under the specs of a Desktop in the palm of your hand and you'll see how much of an impact the OS is on the device itself. The problem with Vista on the UMPC is;

1)High demand on system resources. Which drive the cost up in hardware up to pacify performance of the OS in specifically.

2) Vista as an OS on mobile devices drain the battery dramatically because of a few vulnerable bugs in the OS itself. (not sure if MS even patched it yet or will at all.)

3)The OS is too slow to be used with such minor hardware. Hence, the use of XP Tablet edition is installed and used with satisfaction.

XP has full support. Not only from MS, but from the OEM it was purchased from. Most, if not all OEM's have to support the OS in its current state. Dell and HP make Support Resource packs available for the systems with their brand name on it. It's usually around 30-70MB download. It's similar to a Service pack without the name SP in it.

[Christian Martin @ Jun 15th 2007 10:28PM]

All I can think of when I see "Samwell" is that this thing must have the "What What in the Butt" video playing on repeat (go to Youtube and search for Samwell if you have somehow avoided this).

[Mac Dub @ Jun 16th 2007 4:32AM]

Did I miss something here? This is a RUGGEDBOOK, or so they say, and they've got a lady wearing a pearl bracelet showing it off. Shouldn't it be a guy in camouflage with a hunting rifle, or some WWE musclehead breaking a chair over it from the top ropes?

[joe_raby @ Jun 16th 2007 1:57PM]

"Trying to use Vista on a Desktop with 2GB of memory and a decently spec processor is hard enough."

I have. I've used Windows Vista on a Pentium 4 1.4GHz (the very first generation P4 - a socket 423) with 1GB of RAMBUS in all of it's severely high-latency glory, and it runs just as well as Windows XP, mind you that's even WITHOUT Aero, which means that the GUI is rendered in software and doesn't benefit from hardware acceleration. That's hardly anything up-to-date. I would bet money that the C7-M @ 1.5GHz would run circles around that system. Intel has their A100 and A110 processors too, which have very low-power consumption and operate at fairly low clock speeds but still offer plenty of "oomph" for mobile applcations. I'd like to see the performance a bit better, and have it based on the Core microarchitecture, myself. Ideally, one of Intel's Silverthorn processors coupled with Intel WiFi-N and an Intel mobile chipset would be the platform of choice. ("Centrino Micro" maybe?)

"Vista as an OS on mobile devices drain the battery dramatically because of a few vulnerable bugs in the OS itself. (not sure if MS even patched it yet or will at all.)"

There is no vulnerability in Vista that does that and saying so is just FUD - the power drain is caused by relatively inefficient GPU's rendering Aero. You can turn Aero off and Vista runs approximately for the same length of time as XP on the same hardware (but gives you more control over power management settings too - so you can often squeeze even more runtime out of the batteries). I can run Vista for well over 2.5hrs on a standard battery on a Core Duo T2300 15" laptop running Aero when the power management settings are set to "Balanced". I get MAYBE 3hrs MAX on XP, and yet the performance for that runtime is nowhere close.

"XP has full support."

Now, yes. But in a years time, it won't. As for new features, it won't have any between now and then. Vista will have updates such as a new kernel in SP1 (being released later this year around the same time as Windows Server 2008). XP will just stagnate from now until it's end-of-life. Using it afterwards will just be as much of a security risk as using Windows 98 is now.

"Most, if not all OEM's have to support the OS in its current state."

And when Microsoft ends support, so do the OEM's. Most OEM's only cover support for 1 year too - as part of the 1 year parts and labour warranty. Many OEM's (Dell is one of them), actually charge for phone support though, which you did not even note. For 1 year of phone support with up to 5 support incidents, Dell charges anywhere from $300-$450US depending on the model of system you buy. OEM customer support is not what I'm talking about here though - I'm talking about Microsoft's support of their own product and the timeframe of which they'll include free updates, not that any kind of update will heighten it's security to the high level of Vista's.

"Dell and HP make Support Resource packs available for the systems with their brand name on it. It's usually around 30-70MB download. It's similar to a Service pack without the name SP in it."

Oh yes, I'm familiar with what Dell and HP call a "Support Resource" - a monitoring application that continually advertises accessories and consumables from their store. That is NOT a Service Pack, nor is it even close! What it is close to is adware.

[remedy @ Jun 17th 2007 1:01AM]

You still haven't answered the main question: Have you ever used a UMPC with Vista on it? If the answer is no. Then you pretty much ended any relevance on the discussion. We've been shipping the devices with Vista since turn of the year and, it's not a usable device. Not because of the hardware, but the resource demand that the OS puts on the hardware itself. The Hardware runs fine with XPT and Ubuntu.

[Joe @ Jun 17th 2007 11:47PM]

"Have you ever used a UMPC with Vista on it?"

Yes, I have. I've used it on a TabletKiosk eo TufTab review unit with a C7-M 1.2GHz and 1GB of RAM, as well as a v7110 with a C7-M 1.0GHz and 512MB (Windows Vista Business in both cases, because Home Premium functions require a better GPU, and the Business "premium" features don't require 1GB of RAM). In the case of the v7110, I found it sluggish when opening multiple programs until I upgraded the RAM to 1GB, with which it was quite snappy and very similar in performance to the 1.2GHz, which wasn't surprising. 512MB is alright running Vista if you're sticking to 1 or 2 low-end programs at a time, but don't expect Photoshop to run that well on it, nor multitasking to be impressive. It runs about equal to XP with 256MB on an older system. Both installations were done by me using an external USB2 optical drive. They were NOT stock installations by TabletKiosk. They were FAR from being unusable too! I installed Office 2007 Enterprise on them (from my Microsoft Action Pack Subscription - to test them) and it was still fast to load up. Word and Excel both load in a matter of seconds. I also loaded up Microsoft Expression Design trial and tried some basic image manipulation and it was still fairly fast considering the low clock speed. I put a 1GB "80x" SD card in the TufTab and allowed ReadyBoost to run, and performance was even better in high-end applications. As a test, I tried loading up a VERY-high DPI Photoshop CS2 document (the file is 500MB and contains multiple layers) that consists of almost 900MB of raw data as Photoshop reports it, and I could still paint on layers inside that document without any issues. It impressed me quite a bit. I was actually expecting performance to be very poor, but it kept up with me as I drew on the screen.

[Joe @ Jun 17th 2007 11:47PM]

"We've been shipping the devices with Vista since turn of the year and, it's not a usable device."

That's a clear indication that you don't know what you're doing, since you didn't test the platform, nor do you care about the customer experience. A good reseller or system builder would have done that first before they shipped them. It's called "Quality Assurance"!