Posts Tagged ‘UMID’

Are netbooks still a bit too hefty for you?  Try a mobile Internet device from UMID Co., Ltd.  The South Korean company makes Intel Atom-powered MIDs that, lacking a better description, look like mini-netbooks.

Last year the company released its mBook M1 device that featured a 4.8” screen and 1.33 GHz Atom processor.  This year at CES, UMID followed up with the mBook BZ – a 0.8 pound device that features an Intel Atom Z515 processor running at 1.2 GHz, 4.8” display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, up to 64 GB of Flash storage, and a 7.4v Li-Ion battery that provides up to 7 hours of run time.

Thanks to the FCC, we have some great internal photos of the mBook BZ that show how the functionality of a netbook was squeezed into a 6.3” x 3.8” x 0.75” package.

The mBook BZ’s motherboard gives us a good indication of UMID’s engineering chops.  The board is packed on both sides with an assortment of processors and memory.

The Intel Atom Z515 takes a prominent position at the center of the motherboard.  To get an idea of how small this board is, keep in mind that the Atom measures on 13mm x 14mm.

To the left of the Atom is Intel’s Mobile Graphics Media Accelerator 950 GPU.  The GMA 950 can render 1.6 gigapixels and gigatexels per second, although the device only supports DirectX 9.  Either way, you probably won’t be doing much gaming on the mBook BZ’s 4.8” screen.

The mBook BZ offers up to 1 GB of memory provided by Hynix SDRAM.  You can see two Hynix modules beneath the Atom, while an additional two modules are on the other side of the motherboard.  Notice that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard itself, so don’t expect to upgrade your memory after the fact.

A Wi2Wi W2CBW003 processor is visible at the far left hand side of the motherboard.  This chip is actually a system-in-package that provides 802.11 g/b wireless as well as Bluetooth.  Wi2Wi specializes in wireless chips for small form factor devices, so the mBook BZ is right up their alley.

The mBook BZ’s storage is located on the back of the device’s motherboard.  The device is available with 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB of Flash.  Like system memory, the Flash memory is  soldered to the motherboard, and cannot be upgraded.

The mBook BZ’s tiny motherboard is quite an impressive piece of work by UMID.  Essentially the company squeezed a fully functional Windows 7 PC onto a board that’s not much larger than a post card.  Actually typing on the device’s keyboard, or editing documents on the 4.8” screen is, of course, a challenge of its own, but in terms of engineering it’s hard not to appreciate the work that UMID has done here.