This looks as a very promising ultraprotable laptop..

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/en/news-12751-SA1F00A%2C+we+now+have+more+information.html

7” LCD, res. 800x480
500MHz AMD GEODE CPU (fan less system!)
40GB(80GB) HDD
512MB(1GB) RAM
SD(SDIO!)/CF
Wi-Fi & Bluetooth.
weight 960g
size 218x163x25.4mm

Available in Japan from December. Price 89000Yen (40GB HDD version) - 750USD/650EUR..hmmm..hard decision..Iliad or this (versatile) beauty? ;)

Wellllll, I am curious how the GEODE performs. I've never used one...!

That does look very nice. I'm keeping my eye on it also. But 500MHz may be slow, and upgrading memory and hard drive and accessorizing can potentially add a lot of $ fast.

And there are supposed to be a bunch of new UMPC product announcements in January. If they include integrated "real" keyboards, I might just have to jump in with that round of devices.

Yep, the 500MHz CPU will most probably not be a "Speedy Gonzales", but I'm sure it will be just enough powerful for browsing, emailing and some other works on the go or a home computing sitting in a comfy chair. And as I hope, also reading ebooks. Most of today's UMPCs are simply too pricey to be bought for home computing or ebook reading ;) And this device looks really promising!

Looks interesting, but $750 is what I paid for my widescreen laptop with the dual core 1.6 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB hard drive.

In the US, the Kohjisha SA1F00 is available for preorder at Dynamism (http://www.dynamism.com/sa1/main.shtml) for $999 and up. This obviously includes a premium for import, English XP, etcetera.

The Pepper Pad 3 has a 533 MHz AMD Geode LX800 cpu and only 256 MB of memory, and it does e-books (FBReader) and web browsing (FireFox) with no problem under Linux. There have been reports that upgrading the PP3 to 1 GB of memory improved switching between multiple applications such as Open Office. So the SA1 with 512 MB and XP may be OK (an upgrade to 1 GB is available, but it would probably be cheaper to do this yourself).