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UMPC Portal is reporting that Kohjinsha is breaking it’s recent silence with a new UMPC, the SK3, designed to run Windows 7.  The device looks great from the pictures (all serious information appears to still be in Japanese) and will be available in Japan by the end of the month today.

I came very close to buying a Kohjinsha device some months ago but it ended up being pushed off my wishlist by other more mainstream small touchscreen devices (like my current main Netbook, the Gigabyte M912M). However, the look of this one, especially presented like a Franklin planner on serious steroids as it is here, is very appealing to me. It seems like it is trying to fill the no-man’s land between MID and Netbook…if such a place actually exists. The Windows 7 angle also sounds interesting. Maybe this will be a winner for Kohjinsha and get them back on the Euro/US UMPC map.

Check out the partial specs, according to UMPC Portal, after the jump.

• Model id SK3KX06GA

• CPU type Intel Atom (Silverthorne)

• CPU speed 1330 Mhz

• Graphics Intel GMA 500

• OS Windows XP Home

• Display Size 7″ 1024 X 600

• RAM 1024 MB

• Hard Disk 60 GB, 1.8”, 4200RPM

• Battery capacity 17 (Wh)

• Claimed battery life 3.2hrs (Jeita test)

• Weight 720g

• Size (w/h/d mm) 193/132/30 mm

Physical Interfaces

ExpressCard/34

Ethernet 10/100

VGA

Line-out / Headphone

Multi-format card reader

MIC-in

Micro SD slot

USB2.0 (x2)

Wireless Interfaces

802.11b/g/n

BT2.0

Additional Specs

WebCam

WebCam 3.0mp

GPS

The UMPC Master himself, Chippy, is already concerned about the battery life, saying…

Kohjinsha have a habit of creating impressive designs but losing focus on battery life. Two years ago when the SH8 was released I expressed disappointment at the 2hr battery life. That was 2 generations of device ago. Then, the SC3 was released and it was at that point we decided to run a poll. Under 3% of people found 2hrs to be an acceptable battery life. It looks like the SK3 won’t be much better and with new UMPCs turning in 5hr+ battery life, it appears worse than ever before.

Zealot (446 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).