2. Wowie Zowie Hardware

As Gates reminded everyone in his keynote, "the big advances in the Windows PC have all been planned and rallied around at the WinHEC Conference over the last 15 years." It's an opportunity to reward the partners who have already adopted the new technology with a place in the keynote, like the Fujitsu UMPC that Bill Gates showed off and to remind everyone else that sticking with Microsoft is in their best interest.

This is Fujitsu's FMV-U8240 UMPC in standard display-keyboard configuration. Image courtesy Fujitsu Limited.

Fujitsu is claiming this is "the world's smallest tablet-convertible UMPC" which is almost certainly true because at the moment it's the only tablet-convertible UMPC. Other UMPCs with keyboards put them on the side of the screen (Samsung) or have them slide out from under the screen (the OQO and the HTC Shift). The FMV-U8240 has the now-familiar central hinge so you can open it like a laptop, swivel the screen round and clip it down flat to use as a slate. It has a 1024 by 600 resolution 5.8" widescreen, in slate mode it's about 1" (27mm) thick and it weighs 20.5 ounces (580g).

Using the FMV-U8240

The FMV-U8240 packs a lot of features into a very small package: a fingerprint sensor, two lights that shine over the keyboard so you can type when the lights are out during a presentation, both SD and Compact Flash slots and Wi-Fi but not Bluetooth. The standard battery lasts 4 hours if you're running Windows XP but Fujitsu is only claiming 3.5 hours of battery life with Vista, which no-one on Microsoft's UMPC team at the show could explain; double both those times if you get the extended battery. Under the hood is Intel's new Ultra Mobile Platform with the 800MHz Stealey processor. The FMV-U8240 will likely sell for around $1,200 and be available in the USA by mid- to late-summer.

In the exhibition hall, the FMV-U8240 shared a display case with the winners of Microsoft's Next-Gen PC design competition. "Made in China" looked like a tray for eating a very elegant TV dinner off, but it has a touch screen and a pair of chopsticks you can use as a pen: "I saw so many PCs in the market that were made in China", explains designer John Leung, "but none of which were actually made for China".