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.

How much does it costs to run your PC? If you know how much the power costs in your area, and how much of it your computer uses, you can work it out. You might be surprised.

Fiona Gatt, over at VIA’s tech site, VIA Arena, has just written an article about building a 60 watt PC. For too long, she says, the PC industry has been wrapped up in building faster and faster computers, with little thought given to power consumption. Using the new VIA pc3500 motherboard I mentioned the other day, Fiona set out to see just how low she could get the wattage when running Windows Vista Basic and whether building a sub-60W PC was possible.

Fresh out of the box at VIA is a new motherboard for the desktop PC market. The VIA pc3500 was designed for super low power and can run Windows Vista at less than half the power required to get you a Category A certification with Energy Star. In addition, a system based around the VIA pc3500 mainboard draws only 1.09 watts in Sleep Mode, and 0.68 watts in Standby (Off Mode); it even draws under 35 watts when playing back a DVD, one of the most power-intensive computing applications.

VIA says the new boards were designed to meet the growing worldwide demand for energy-efficient PCs. As the latest addition to the VIA pc-1 Initiative mainboard line, the pc3500 aims to empower millions of people to improve their quality of life through technology, especially in emerging markets.