According a friend of a friend of a friend, or rather The Inquirer reporting on a subscription-based article from Microprocessor Report, Intel’s Atom processor is going to better than VIA’s Isaiah processor in terms of power dissipation.  Nothing is mentioned in terms of performance, but in UMPCs that fit in your pocket the power consumption is really more important we think.

Basically, it’s all a matter of how long your little UMPC lasts without finding somewhere to plug it into, or before it burns a hole in your pocket.

And it is, as usual, to do with the operating system you are running, the size of the screen and the usual familiar notebook stuff. No change there, then.

In its latest report, MPR editor Tom H said: “Even the new Isiaiah microarchitecture from Via Technologies – formerly the low power X86 leaders – can’t match Atom’s TDPs.”

TDP stands for thermal design power, and MPR editor Tom Halfhill reckons the Atom will make the grade.