Sharp Willcom D4 reviewed and caught on video

Those chaps at Akihabara News are always getting their hands on the latest gear in Japan and the Sharp Willcom D4 is certainly in that category.  Only announced a short while back the D4 is the first handheld to appear with the Intel Atom processor running Vista, I believe.  Not very fast if their video is an indication of performance of the D4 (it's an early prototype though) but the entire world seems to be waiting for the Atom to appear in devices.  Take a look at the high-definition video they shot and see what you think about the Vista performance.  The device itself is very cool and oh, so small!

Comments

[Bob Kawaratani]

As you and others have indicated, one big bottleneck for performance for Windows Vista is memory. The D4 has 1 GB of ram and its not upgradable according to Sharp's FAQ. Sharp is making more than its share of lust worthy gadgets these days. I'm trying to comeup with a scenario that my wife will buy for letting me add one to our Wilcom phone account....

[ArchiMark]

@Bob,

Maybe I can talk ol' Brett at Conics to give us a 'group discount' if we order a few of these lil' bad boys at once....

;-)

[Mike Cane]

I don't understand this. DailyMotion says my lousy 1.8GHz Celeron can't do the HD vid. Do I want SD? OK. Then I get nada! I pull up the menu and do LOW res (the humilation!) and not only is it like a blown-up FLV, but it's choppy!

I don't understand how I can watch ginormous video with vlc (smoothly!), but stuff that like that craps out when I try it in a browser! Maybe browsers should just embed vlc!!

Anyway, I didn't get to see the vid at all (awww!). No loss. I was idly curious. It's not like that thing will escape from Japan. If it gets to 2.0, it might.

[Al]

I am very interested in this computer as all the rest of the UMPC's are toys to me and not functional. There are millions whom want a simple laptop in your pocket; that is a touch type keyboard and full windows OS. I hope Sharp gets Vista to run well if not can't they just ship it with XP? Either OS as long as it works would make me ready to buy one!