This is Steve Paine, a.k.a Chippy. Chippy’s an Englishman living in Germany and working to promote the new category of Ultra Mobile devices (UMPCs) that are starting to spring up everywhere. As part of this he planned the Solar UMPC Tour, in which he’d take a bike, camping equipment, an off-the-shelf UMPC and solar kit to the south of Germany, and cycle down the Rhine for about a week…all the while continuing to work on his websites UMPCPortal and Solar-UMPC using his Samsung Q1b. What’s more, he planned to do it all using only power from the sun.

Originally scheduled to kick-off in late May, Chippy was hampered by weather which wasn’t exactly of the sort that was helpful to his solar-powered aims. But he finally got underway this past Sunday, and is now approaching the halfway mark of his trip. You can check out his progress, and all the build-up, on his site.

With VIA as his main sponsor (the Samsung Q1b is powered by the super energy efficient VIA C7-M processor), Chippy is pedaling his 25kg bike at a fairly respectable clip of about 20km/h, and should reach his target on schedule. He’s having a few problems with cloud cover, and the resulting solar charging issues, but he’s hanging in there at the moment.

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Ya Li

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

Hello Ben

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