Samsung is giving away 2 Q1's each week through December 17th. Of course they're giving away all their Intel-based Q1's, but if you want a real UMPC with four hours of battery life, standard, just order a Samsung Q1b online for only $899.99 at Newegg or at CDW.

What's that incredibly handsome priest doing with his bible in the back room? Why, he's hacking into the security system at the Vatican, natch!

All those nifty gadgets you see in the latest spy thrillers always seem like they either couldn't possibly exist or they're out of reach. Actually, the little computer that's Tom Cruise tucks into his hollowed out bible is the OQO model 01+. It's not some prop that Hollywood has magically cooked up to look the part, it's an actual fully functioning computer that's available right now

I'm looking forward to seeing more of these devices in the marketplace and also in the hands of people on the street and in the coffee shops.

Today I ran into some misconceptions that the VIA VX700 chipset found on the Samsung Q1b does not support Microsoft DirectX 9. This is totally untrue, I have a Samsung Q1b sitting in front of me, straight from the manufacturer, with DirectX 9.0c pre-installed. I just ran through all the DirectX tests to make sure it can use Direct3D 9 interfaces and it passed all of them without a hitch.

Just to be sure, I downloaded the latest Microsoft DirectX update, installed it and tested it again without trouble. Here's the DXDiag.txt from that test.

I also grabbed a TabletKiosk eo v7110, which has the slightly older VIA VN800 Northbridge, and checked it out using DXDiag as well. It also reported that the integrated graphics supports Microsoft DirectX 9. You can examine the DXDiag.txt file for all the juicy details.

Besides the DirectX 9 problem, I noticed that people were confused about the amount of RAM available to the video cards. Integrated Graphics Processors (IGPs) use system memory for the video memory. The amount of memory reserved for the IGP is configurable in BIOS. Generally speaking, most systems with IGP chipsets are not expected to do heavy-duty video work and are configured to free up video memory in favor of general system usage. Both the VIA VX700 & VIA VN800 chipsets support 128MB of video memory.

And finally, all UMPCs have been designed to be Vista Ready. While Aero will not be available on any ultra mobile devices, this does not mean that Vista will not run. Please keep in mind, Vista runs very well without Aero.

I'm really happy to see all the in-depth looks at all of these ultra mobile devices, but I hope that some of these bloggers do a little more fact checking before reposting things as truth.