We know that Acer was planning an entry in the oh-so-hip UMPC market fairly soon and confirming that a lot of information has come leaked out today.

Here’s the scoop as it stands:

Specification:

No word on the price from the forum leak but digitimes.com seems to think it will be at 299 euros (US$469.49)

News Source: 3Fire , Mobile01

Picture source: UMPCPortal

Gizmodo managed to get a sneak peek at Dell’s forthcoming into the UMPC market. Dell had earlier announced that they will be releasing a product sometime in the Summer to compete with the likes of HP and Asus. There is no word on the specifications, screen size or price, but one can certainly expect some information soon. Atleast with the red colour it’d be safe to say the ultraportable will be coming in a variety of colours too.

However what stood out the most is the unconventional key layout. The function keys have been totally let go and the Shift, Caps Lock and other keys have been dramatically reduced in size too in order to give enough width to the letter key which tend to be more frequently used. Another thing visible in the pictures is the lack of a bezel. While no information is given on the screen size either, my guess is it might hold a 10″ screen in a 8.9″ casing similar in size to the HP 2133. More pictures on Gizmodo while a HP vs Dell comparison has been posted below.

Link: Gizmodo Gallery

Steve ‘Sweaty’ Ballmer and Bill Gates showcased one of the major features of Windows 7. They use the Dell Latitude XT (which is already available in the market) to showcase the operating system which looked a lot like Surface, except (obviously on a smaller surface). The usage was quite fluid and refreshing and one can see this being useful in a variety of situations. This is brilliant work building on the already mature tablet PC platform perfected by Windows over XP and Vista. It’s interesting to note at this point Micorosft has been in the touch screen sector since 2000 with Windows Mobile and since 2002 with Windows XP Tablet Edition.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Windows users often get a lot of flak from Apple fanboys about lack of the Operating systems’s ability to do shiny 3D UI stuff. However what most people (including Windows users) fail to understand is that Microsoft really wants the user to take control of the system and use it the way they want it. Which is why there exists such a vast 3rd party application library to do tasks from the most minute to the extremely complex ones. And the same applies to the UI aspect too; 3rd party applications give users an incredible amount of control so they can personalise anything from their wallpaper to the logon and boot screens.

I found these screenshots floating around on the internet with some claiming them to be that of Windows 7. But it doesn’t take a computer scientist to figure out the fake. However a lot of them are real interfaces built on 3rd party applications and they’re just what’s needed to prove my point. Windows is customisable to such an extent where you can completely change the look and feel of it beyond recognition. I’ll stop babbling right about here and let you have a look at them.

It was this very month, in fact this very week of May when Facebook was opened up to my university among others in the UK. Judging from my profile ID (223400006) I’d like to think I was #6 to sign up. Facebook has changed immensely since, and not always for the good. From opening up to general public to releasing the Application Platform, an old school user (I’m not talking about me) wouldn’t recognise the Facebook he/she saw today from the one back then. However this isn’t a post to bitch about ‘features’ I dislike. Instead I’ll talk about where I see Facebook headed, or want to see it headed.

As it stands now, Facebook is pretty popular Social networking platform. I have all my friends on here and I can see what they have been upto in a variety of ways. Their photos, reading their walls, their notes (blog posts), events they are attending and most importantly status updates. I can find out common interests too by looking at their profile or the outlandish groups they join. Communication is done via public wall posts or Messaging, which Facebook hopes will replace email but more on that later.

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