Microsoft representatives were put in an uncomfortable position when the Asus Eee PC 900 was officially unveiled yesterday. One of Microsoft’s general managers, Thomas Bauer, was careful to say that its Origami interface was only for true UMPCs and not the Eee PC. Bauer had an even tougher time when he had to explain why Microsoft was promoting XP so actively, despite Vista superseding it a whole year ago.

If you prefer a ‘real’ UMPC, like the Samsung Q1 Ultra, then here are some interesting designs on  show at Cebit:

The Wibrain B1H has the biggest trackpad I’ve seen on a UMPC and a qwerty keyboard too. There were a dozen samples on display and the Wibrain is already on sale. The €700 (£530 approx) model has an impressive spec sheet, including a 4.8in 1,024x600 touch-screen LCD, 802.11g Wifi, Blutooth, a 60GB hard disk, 1GB Ram and a 1.2GHz Via C7M CPU.

Gigabyte did a last minute u-turn on its 7in Eee competitor, but released three UMPCs in a hand-held format instead.

The first, and the most exciting in my opinion, is the MID (mobile internet device) M528 with inbuilt GPS. It has a sliding qwerty keyboard, uses an 800MHz Intel Atom processor (on the Centrino Atom platform), 512MB Ram, a 4GB SSD, a 4.8in 800x480 touch-screen LCD, a VGA webcam, Blutooth, 802.11G Wifi. It weighs 340g, some 200g less than the Wibrain B1H, and runs Linux.

The other two, the UMPC M704 and M700 (the latter, pictured right, has Vista rather than XP, but no keyboard), have larger 7in 1,024x600 touch-screens, 768MB Ram and 40GB hard disks but use Via C7-M CPUs and UniChrome graphics which always prove to be less capable than the Intel competition in our tests.

Amtek’s U560 is another new UMPC I’ve spotted. It uses Intel’s 800MHz A110 processor with 512MB Ram, GMA 950 graphics and a 4.8in 1,024x600 LCD has a slide-up display, which proved to be successful on Sidekick mobile phones. It’s main drawback is its weight, which is 675g. It’ll go on sale this month for $600 (£305 excl Vat approx.)

Not content stealing the show with the Eee PC 900, Asus has also released two hand-held UMPCs, the R50 and R70.

The R50 features a "sun-readable" 5.6in touch-screen display and is based on Intel’s new Centrino Atom platform. It includes HSDPA and Wimax support, as well as a digital TV tuner, 12GB SSD for storage and twin webcams, back and front.

The R70 has a bigger 7in screen and adds a GPS module. Both run Vista on a 1.6GHz Atom CPU.