I’m afraid I don’t have time to do a written review of my Windows 7 experience with the U820 but I can say that it’s good. So good that I took some time this morning to quickly go over the device and how it works with Windows 7. Highlights for me (over the Vista build I was running) are:
- Improved boot-up time
- Cleaner, quicker, more reliable log-in using fingerprint reader
- Divx and H.264 support out of the box.
- Hardware support for H.264 decoding out of the box
- Great battery life (between 2 and 5 hours depending on use)
- Vastly improved on-screen-keyboard experience
Windows 7 really does spell the end of XP on UMPCs in my opinion. The only question now is, cost. How much will a touch-enabled version of W7 cost?
The video below is relatively long at 19 minutes. YouTube’s HQ processing may take time so check back later if you want an HQ version.
Note: This video edited and processed using Windows Live Movie Maker Beta with the YouTube upload plugin on the U/B50N. The render time is much longer than with the old version of Movie Maker (in this case, way over 1hr to process 19 mins of VGA MJPEG 14mb/s source video) but the editing and posting process using this method is very very simple. I’ll have to do some more testing to see if it’s a valid option for UMPCs.
Thanks to Conics for the loan of the Loox. They have the 2GB version with an SSD option so check it out.
New article: Video: Overview of Windows 7 on Fujitsu Loox U/B50N. (U820/U2010.) http://cli.gs/EgMpZW
Ive been hovering around this device for a while, the slightly large formfactor and earily dainty looking screen hinge keeping me a bit at bay. But after seeing this device going along swimmingly with some hefty video processing on a platform as great as win7, im beginning to take a liking to it.
However though, availability seems to abysmal in europe.
Chippy, do you know if theres a european outlet for fujitsu were I could inquire about pricing and shipping and such?
Just a small question about the device, particularly its screen. Is it really that awefully glossy? I could hardly see anything and you seem to be indoor in normal daylight. I could imagine howmuch worse that could get when you take it outside or near a window.
Yes. It’s quite difficult to look at the screen when it’s bright outside, but that’s true for a lot of devices.
I second that. the screen is very glossy. I’m outside with it right now and its ok but its an overcast day.
How would you compare its outdoor usability to the E-king i1?
the screen is much the same. the wibrain i1 had a wider viewing angle though.
One question, only one: in Win7, do you still need the drag & drop add-on for firefox?
yes
Then what’s the point about Win7’s awareness of touch while all the apps still need to be re-written? As Firefox does touch perfectly fine on XP, why other apps want Win7?
MS can only add touch support to user controls they made.
They aren’t going to go breaking other programs that make their own controls.
If FF wants to use touch they probably only have to listen for the new touch messages
Yes I new that (I did lots of Windows programming), i.e., there might be some new touch messages in the message loop to make touch handling easier, but a toolkit can be easily introduced into XP like what FF3 and Opera10 did. I.e., Win7 does not really solve the problem. I thought MS figured out how to convert touch-and-move into scrolling messages, so all current apps can do touch-scrolling like what HTC did to Windows Mobile.
Dewar Steve,
I have the U810 and when the screen is rotated, my WiFi signal goes down to zero. When I flip the screen around (when the keys are under the LCD) the WiFi signal goes up and I can surf.
Can you test this on your unit to see if your signal goes down when used in tablet mode.
Thank you,
JohnD
Doesnt seem to have any effect here. 3 bars in both modes.
JohnD sounds like the antenna wire needs to be replaced. I hope u have warranty .
Thanks for putting 7 on this I’ve been waiting for this review since 7s release . When the 2ghz version comes out in North America i’m buying it!
I know you disabled Aero, but did you notice any sort of visual corruption during video playback in Media Player with Aero turned on.
It seems as if I can only get video to playback properly with Aero turned off and I was wondering if it was just me.
Video and general UI performance is terrible with aero on. Somehow, transparency effects hit the performance badly. This shouldn’t happen but I guess it’s a driver issue.
What I ended up doing was copying the Media Player exe from Program Files to my desktop. That allowed me to change the compatibility settings and therefore choose the Disable Desktop Compositing option for running the program.
That said, the system does in fact seem to be much snappier with Aero off.
Does origami work on 7?
I’m not sure. I assume so but in theory, its only licensed software. There are hacked versions about though. I’ll have a quick look to see if I can find it and test it.
oe2.0 downloads and runs
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B0EDD346-75BA-4185-B6AA-0A49940AFBDE&displaylang=en
The graphical elements are a little slow but its a nice little addition.
Thanks for bringing the question up.
Great review!! I just had a question: at around 5:35 you mention using a power monitoring software – I’m sorry I can’t figure out its name. Can you please let me know the name of the software you used for monitoring battery utilization?
Thanks
The program is called ‘perfmon.exe’ and it’s with all versions of windows. XP and up.
More info on perfmon here.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/mobile-platforms-need-power-conserving-applications/
Ð’Ñем привет! Я тут новенький. Примите в компанию? :)
Hi,
After seeing your review i purchase the U2010 while on Holiday,
after thing is working apart from the finger print software,
which kept giving the same message something like “operating system windows 2000 or above for the software to work”,
so how did you get it to work????
i’m currently using – http://www.authentec.com/win7beta32.cfm
which is only a beta,
The XP Tablet FM drivers work under Windows 7,
am still torn between which OS to actually keep on this,
i tried linux, ubuntu and gOS,
OSX i could only get kallyways complie to work 10.5.4
for video had to change the device id,
but really poor video playback at the moment in leopard,
another thing few weeks back my wifi started dropping on and off,
i would loose signal,
it kept doing this and i tried everything,
and then decided to take it apart,
and notice the antenna cable had come off,
it really not a good place to put it right under the left/right mouse buttons…