Hands-on with aigo MID

aigo MID (Gigabyte M528 in US) is 4.8 inches Intel Atom (Z500) based MID which is one of the first group MIDs presented in the world. (BenQ MID in another way is the first MID shown in IDF 2007 as a full function demo. unit). Before I meet the real machine of aigo MID, the first point in which aigo MID attracts my interest is it's Intel Atom processor (also known as Silverthorne). Intel Atom almost the main topic to be presented in IDF Spring 2008. Most of the devices and prototypes using Intel Atom or Diamondville were demonstrated in the IDF and I found aigo MID and LG MID were the representatives for MID engineering design.

The advantage of the Intel Atom (Silverthorne type + Intel Poulsbo) over it precedent, A100/ A100 (McCaslin), is not only the 45nm manufacturing process but also the theoretically 10 times less power consumption which means MID will have much more battery life than the current A100/A110 based UMPC or ULCPC.


My First Impression:
Apart from the interior Intel Atom processor, my first impression on aigo MID is it's size and weight! It is a real small and light and even lighter than Raon Digital Everun which is the smallest UMPC I've played before!
When you holding it, it is just like you are holding a PSP or NDS but with a x86 processing power! My HTC TyTN II weights ~200g and aigo MID is just 352g but with a larger screen size (4.8 in 800 x 480 res.) and full function browser which is what I have expected on a mobile internet device.

Performance and Battery life:
I think most of you may ask the performance of the Intel Atom (Z500) 800 MHz. I do not change it to Windows (smoothly) so far (I just got it for two days~~).
I will pass it to my colleague Pauliu to have a full function test (if we can change it to Windows XP “successfully” – a little bit trick has to be overcome first).
But what I have experienced so far, the Intel Atom Z500 did pretty well in this Linux OS. I seldom felt it laps or hang-ups during normal use.
The Midinux OS very suitable to Intel Atom based device (and I think Microsoft will not want to see this especially they don't like Touch Screen device running WinXP OS).
However, the battery life does not show what Intel promised (theoretically)~~ I don't see 10 times longer in battery life~~(that is for sure >.< )
The battery capacity is 2700mAh, 3.7V (~10Wh). For a normal use, surfing internet with Wifi on and simple text input may give you about 2 hours operating time. Even worse than EeePC 900 and Kohjinsha SR8 !!! However, I did not count exactly the running time. Hope I will have time to test it again (both in Windows and Linux environments)