Cowon's Atom-powered W2 MID gets teased, gets Windows 7
By Tim Stevens 
posted January 8th 2010 9:51AM
posted January 8th 2010 9:51AM
When Cowon's latest leaked back at the beginning of November we knew just about everything we really needed to know except for one crucial bit of intel: what it looked like. Now the company has thoughtfully taken care of that, throwing up a teaser page for the product that shows off a simple, sophisticated brushed metal exterior punctuated only by a pair of buttons on either side and three LED status lights. It's perhaps a bit chunky, with a wide bezel and a little more depth than we'd like, but it should be reasonably comfortable to use whenever it releases. The 4.8-inch, 1024 x 600 touchscreen LCD is confirmed, backed by a 1.3GHz Intel Atom processor that is probably going to struggle a little bit to keep up with Windows 7, which the company has chosen to bless this device's (unannounced) storage with. That's all we know for now.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Meh, a little too chunky.
that's what she said!
@M3 when will this tablet madness end??
@M3
Struggle a little bit with Windows 7 is an understatement. It's going to struggle a lot. They think they can just slap Windows 7 on any Atom-powered device and get away with it. Wrong!
a little too clunky and weird looking. i want a tablet that says sexy all over it lol
@tatester48
you probably said the same thing about girfriends, and look what you ended up with.
@andreab
That's neither funny nor cool, what's the point?
I assume you don't even know tatester48 so saying he's got an ugly girlfriend is fairly dumb IMHO.
@oldpass56 haha thanks =]
Nice design. But I'm guessing that this will have a resistive touch screen, bad battery life and bad software performance considering those specs and Cowons previous form in this area (Q5W).
With this size screen, Tegra or snapdragon would be a much better choice.
@Mojzu Yeah, especially if they were going to go with Win7. This is probably going to end up being something like the Archos 9. Well if its possible to install another OS into this it might not be too bad though, but it probably won't be great off the shelf.
@Mojzu
I may be wrong, but isn't Tegra an ARM11 processor with only 600MHz MPCore?
And Snapdragon is a 1GHz core (also an ARM A8 processor?)
IMHO Win7 would run just fine on an atom processor
anyone care to enlighten me?
@Adapada
Windows won't run on any ARM based chip, but I don't think the loss of Win7 + Atom would be greatly mourned on this device. I think the kinds of people likely to buy this device would prefer the greater battery life and UI enhancements that would arise from dropping Win7. As unless there's a great deal of customisation here, it'll be awful to use Win7 on a 4.8" screen.
@Mojzu
ah ok. But Cowon IS known for their superior battery life on some devices (S9, iaudio7 and D2/D2+)
I guess we'll see how this turns out.
Personally, if it has tremendous battery life like other cowon devices, I'll probably pick this up
It's Cowon not Cowan you noob
@(Unverified) No need to be a dick about it. It was obviously a typo as it's spelled correctly in the post title.
@(Unverified) I'm not your noob, friend.
And it was indeed a typo. Fixed.
I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium on a 1.22Ghz Atom z530, with Intel MID graphics, and it is absolutely fine.
thats sexy design, the 1.3Ghz atom killed my dream
Forget the Zune phone, I'd rather see a Cowon phone with Windows mobile and the awesome Cowon sound.
looks like a housebrick with 2x2 framing and a dodgy spray job. minging
I like the brushed steel look. Always have...... But this is underpowered for even the most tenacious of fans......
I'm a huge fan of COWON and I love their s9. I was eagerly awaiting the successor to their Q5W, and although this looks really nice I'm a bit disappointed in the Atom. Would've at least liked a Tegra 2.
Wow uh, I'd get it if it wasn't for the ugly metal sort of look. It's like someone took a slab of aluminum and cut out a hole for a screen and attempted to make the scratches look like a sort of detail and went over it several times with iron wool.
As long as this has 1gb of RAM and an SSD, Win7 will fly on it. All naysayers obviously haven't experienced it on similarly spec'd devices.
I rather like the plain, industrial design. It'll be on the extreme upper limit of pocketability though.
Do mids ever get released or do they only get announced?
@Wwhat
Exactly, that's what I was thinking...
Screw you Cowan - with the problems and delays of the Q5 Getting to nth americ a few yrs ago I gave up on your crap ! Murararahahahahh. - I got a archos! - doh!! At least it was supported crap.... Now I am a iZombie.... ;)
If this was a brick - then yes indeed it would be sexy. For a tablet designed in 2010 this feels like 10 inch amber monitor hooked up to VIC 20. Honestly.
That is literally a brick.
If it were the same Atom as in all the Netbooks out there, or even a Pinetrail Atom-I'd definitely get one of these (too bad it isn't).
Pointless and underpowered. Why bother even making it.
I like the looks =)
No! Not window :( I wish they'd put linux on it :( Hopefully it has USB so you can remove windows.