The first real venture for small portable computer came in the early 2000 when Intel launched the UMPC formfactor. These small handhelds never managed to gain much traction with high prices and poorly optimized hardware, but now a user at Micro PC Talk has given new life to a Sony UX490 UMPC, which was good when it launched in 2007, but it has now been updated to futuristic standards.
The mini computer has been updated from 1.2GHz Core 2 Solo U2200 to a lot quicker 1.33GHz Core 2 Duo U7700 CPU, which was then overclocked to 1.438GHz. It’s worth mentioning that the Core 2 Solo processor was soldered to the motherboard before the switch. The regular 48GB SSD has been swapped for a faster RunCore Pro IV 128GB SSD, and is now accompanied by HSPA modem and 802.11n WiFi circuitry. This required a slight mod of the heatsink and some other alterations.
The completed computer runs four different operating system; Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OS X. Sony UX490 UMPC has stepped into the future, without any help from the company that built it.
