Regardless of whether you think that the UMPC needs saving or not, it is clear that the ultra-mobile PC has not been the success that manufacturers had hoped it would be. These systems, which are now generally in or approaching their second generation, seemed great when they were announced, but were unable to hit reasonable price points.

Dutch integrator Van Der Led (VDL) Designs has announced a clone of the Asus Eee PC ultra-mini PC (UMPC) notebook. The WiFi-enabled "Jisus" UMPC is equipped with a Chinese-made 1GHz Loongson CPU, has an 8.9-inch display, and runs Ubuntu Linux.

Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers (UMPC) are so hot right now that major PC manufacturers are competing to create the lightest, fastest and sexiest-looking portable machines imaginable. Most of these emerging sub-notebooks are pre-installed with Linux, and I wasn't surprised.

With Lenovo's recent announcement that they will be launching their own UMPC, running either Linux or Windows, a potential opportunity for Linux's UMPC success to vastly expand has just appeared.

The battle for the inexpensive UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PC) market has begun. Several companies already have them; such as the CloudBook from Everex and the EeePC from Asus. Both look “okay” but it would be hard to call them aesthetically pleasing. ECS will be introducing its version of a UMPC and it looks like the smaller brother to the MacBook

In case there’s anyone left out there who doesn’t get that the UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) is a big deal for the Linux desktop consider that arguably the most important business Linux desktop, Novell’s SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP2) is now available on MSI’s (Micro-Star International) new Wind Notebook.

The official website for E-Lead Electronic's Noahpad UMPC has just gone live: www.noahpad.com. Along with the announcement emailed to me this morning came a full press release (below) containing several references to the Eee PC and some clarification about the "dual large touch pads" and backwards typing mentioned in the previous promotional material.

Back in March, I tried to find as many Linux-based UMPCs as I could. At the time, I found 18, which was expanded to 20 with the help of commenters. After many more Linux-based UMPC releases, I decided to see how many more I could find. The first 20 on the list below are from the previous list.

Who knew that the biggest desktop Linux show of 2008 would turn out to be the June Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan, where the next generation of Linux desktop hardware was put on display? In fact, Linux was at the heart of no fewer than four different ultra mobile PCs (UMPC).