Engadget China meets Aigo's first UMPC: The Patriot

Engadget China has just gotten its hands on an old friend of ours, a UMPC based on Intel's McCaslin MID spec. Recently we've seen this same design on the Amtek U560, but this version bears the Aigo badge proudly. Of course, since this (the company's first foray into the UMPC market) is based on the 2007 archetype, the Patriot has some of those bulky, Hummer-esque design qualities that don't hold up to the newer, sleeker, and smaller Menlow-based models (which Intel is heading towards for 2008), but under that jumbo exterior there's an 800MHz, Vista-ready heart of gold. Honestly, we do question the choice of putting function buttons smack-dab in the center of QWERTY keyboard, but hey -- no one is perfect -- judge for yourself in Engadget China's hands on gallery.

[wabguard-email @ Jul 9th 2007 11:48PM]

Why on earth do people want vista on a UMPC. I want quick response time and good battery life, so I would go with something a bit less memory hungry and processor intensive. Win 98 or XP or best yet... Ubuntu!! :)

[Diogo @ Jul 10th 2007 12:59AM]

Why? Believe me, it's MUCH better than XP tablet ed. (the writing recognition for example) and it's not slower as you might think, I'd say it is a bit more responsive actually (maybe because of how Vista handles the memory).

I've been running it since RC2 and I really can't go back to XP.

[Dave @ Jul 10th 2007 1:28AM]

Seems to me the keyboard layout is good for thumb input. But perhaps I am biased since I really like the "split" layout of my natural keyboards.

[kkazakov13 @ Jul 10th 2007 1:37AM]

Vista ... 800 MHz ... this is madness. My boss's laptop is centrino duo with 2Gb of RAM and when he runs his vista that came with the laptop ... well, this thing is crappy slow. Example - dearchivation of 460 files zipped into 40mb took 1 HOUR !!! on vista. It took me 20 seconds to make it on much slower machine on my Slackware. Even XP can do better!

[cowabunger @ Jul 10th 2007 2:23AM]

Oh come on, this looks like you took a Sony UX and beat it with an ugly stick.

[AbuKhaleel @ Jul 10th 2007 3:07AM]

Looking to the picture, I thought it is a VOIP phone, not umpc :)

[wingman @ Jul 10th 2007 3:29AM]

I tried Sony UX with Vista and it ran pretty good. I also been a happy Vista tablet PC user for 7 months...thats on my 1.1 ghz TC1100.

[Generic @ Jul 10th 2007 3:44AM]

Hey guys, don't you think that the function keys in the middle of the keyboard stay away while thumb-typing.

As a matter of fact, I love the keyboard design.

[yxyxcyxc @ Jul 10th 2007 4:25AM]

Fortunately, I am not a patriot, so I won't have to buy this.

[Anthony Crum @ Jul 10th 2007 9:42AM]

Typing causes wrist strain because your wrists are in an unnatural position. This negative affect would be increased by the small keyboard. The split layout reduces wrist strain. (for those of us able to type two handed on smaller keyboards) I think it is a great idea. Wish my jornada 720 had a split keyboard.

[donguotao @ Jul 11th 2007 1:35PM]

Check out this new UMPC docking solution by PLX.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5Xv-D0xKg

That's pretty cool if it uses just a USB cable!