Over at Handtops.com a Kohjinsha SA1 owner, crisp, has posted his opinions on this tiny tiny notebook PC. Kohjinsha – my new baby describes a happy buying experience from Conics.net (about £700 after import into the UK.) and a happy user. I note a negative comment about the keyboard however.
A second, more detailed review and a series of follow-up posts can be found at SuperDaves soapbox. This picture is great. Just look how small it is. Incredible!
Dave also has some issues with the ‘very firm’ keyboard but apart from that he’s another happy chap. Battery life looks to be around the 3.5 hours average usage mark (down to 2.5 with video and over 4 hours with WiFi off, best-of-class at the moment.) there’s confirmation that it’s a LED backlit screen (no word on outdoor readability yet,) and the bootup to login time is a very impressive 25 seconds. Video performance is as expected, good. Native DVD resolution Xvid files at 1500kbps with 5.1 sound are performing flawlessly. I’m also impressed that Dave’s running iTunes without any issues. I couldn’t get that running on the Vega which has pretty much the same architecture. One other really nice point is that its got a 2.5″ hdd inside. That means 160GB goodness if you’re prepared to break the seal and do the upgrade and turn it into the ultimate uber-PMP.
Dave’s got some posts on his Linux testing with the Kohji and I’m sure he’ll be posting more. I’ll be adding his RSS feed to my reader list.
More info on the Kohjinsha SA1 can be found on our datasheet.
My thoughts at this stage are a mix of excitement and worry. This is close to my ideal device but if that keyboard is really low quality then it loses much of its advantage. Especially when there’s no touch screen. I’d rather be using a PepperPad style device that can be held in two hands than a notebook/laptop with a keyboard that doesn’t work properly.
Thanks Dave and Crisp for your postings.
Steve.
