ULTR A-MOBILE COMPUTERS & YOU

WHATEVER YOU WANT to call these things, in this feature we’ll be exploring the history of the ultimate in tiny computers—not including the now-ubiquitous smartphone. We’ll start with early and ground-breaking models in the 1980s, through to the more mature models in the ‘90s. We’ll also take a look at the UMPC craze of the 2000s and the wilderness years that followed, and dive deep into the resurrection of this form currently taking place in China, examining the models that are on the market today and where they’re going in the future.

HOW CAN I STILL USE THESE THINGS?

If you said “palmtop” in the ‘90s, these are the machines that came to mind: Portable Digital Assistants (PDAs), most of which were powered by Palm OS.

While it may be handy to keep a running version of Windows XP for old proprietary software, these machines could be ideal candidates for lightweight modern operating systems, such as “lite” Linux distributions, BSD variants, AROS, or Haiku.

Most netbooks are too big to be called ultraportable but are usually the first thing people mention when asked about tiny computers.

Shenzhen is often dubbed “China’s Silicon Valley”, with a techno culture unlike anywhere in the world. What would normally take months of development in the West takes weeks in Shenzhen. Rather than supplying traditional brick-andmortar stores, most companies sell online. Huge bazaars of electronic components allow developers instant access to the parts they require. Need an arcade button? Then simply go to the stall selling buttons. Need an analog stick? There’s probably a stall for that too.

So how do you classify these computers? Well, to pull some rules out of nowhere, we’re going to define these as something that can fit ideally in your pocket; has some kind of integrated keyboard; and something that has a screen that comes in under 9-inches, at a stretch, though less than eight would be ideal.

For anyone still using these computers, the main task is usually writing. They provide simple text editing, without the clutter and noise of a modern OS. Some use their old-fashioned Lotus spreadsheets, or as Linux dumb terminals.

These devices sat somewhere between proper computers and simple electronic organizers. Instead of a small keyboard, these Palm OS devices mainly used stylus input, with users required to learn the Graffiti handwriting recognition system. Data was transferred between your PDA and PC with a sync-cable or infra-red adapters.

For those willing to dig inside their machines, a modern SSD or IDE to SD-card adapter could provide an upgrade for anything lumbered with a mechanical hard drive. Other than increased reliability, these modern replacements should provide improvements to both performance and battery life.

While numerous products could claim to be the first netbook, the Asus Eee PC in 2007 kickstarted the category. The Eee PC was nine inches wide, with a 7-inch display and a decent keyboard. Costs and power consumption were cut by removing optical drives, and early models shipped with a custom version of Xandros Linux and a 4GB SSD.

In Shenzhen, it’s not uncommon to see people rummaging through bins, however, they’re looking for old phones to salvage parts, rather than searching for food.

For simplicity’s sake, we also need to establish what to call these things too. We’ve decided to settle on “pocket computers” for smaller machines, and “ultra-portable” for the bigger offerings, though it’s worth pointing out these are pretty interchangeable terms, too.

Some of the more powerful devices here can be a way to play DOS games, or use OS/2 or Windows 3.x (or Windows 9.x with later machines) on real hardware. Of course, copying files between these machines and modern computers can be a challenge.