Origamiportal. Despite the name, its still the best place to be if you want to talk UMPC's. (and that's coming from someone that runs a UMPC forum!) Grandall, a member and new Q1 Ultra owner there, kindly gave me permission to pull out and summarize some of the things he's been reporting about his Q1 Ultra (Vista) over the last few days. The thread is still going strong (92 replies as I write this!) so tune in here to follow the news.
A quick disclaimer before I start. This is third party info. I'm obviously sanity checking as I go but don't blame either myself or Grandall if...well you get the idea. Here we go in chrono' order:
Screen:
The screen seems very good for inking so far. It's as good or better than my Fujitsu P1510 and LG C1. It's very responsive to light touches.
Overall feel for speed: Not bad. I'll play with it more and try out movies this evening. It feels a bit less responsive than the Fujitsu P1510 (with a 1.1GHz Pentium M), but that's probably as much Vista as the CPU speed difference. Regardless, I don't feel that it's unreasonably slow relative to my expectations.
On the battery:
This morning I've been testing it on batteries, and after an hour of heavy use with the default Samsung settings it says it's at 70% battery. So maybe 3.5-4 hours of fairly heavy use, a bit more just listening to music and reading email.
To add to this, I just used it for slightly more than an hour with what I would count as light use: Outlook was running getting email, some looking at spreadsheets in Excel, and a short amount of web surfing, and it was at 80% battery after that. So about five hours of light use seems reasonable.
Video performance:
I tried this [Coral Reef WMV 6mbps video - ed.] , and it ran smoothly on battery in Windows Media Center. The regular Media Player had problems with it, but it didn't seem related to the processor wasn't pegged at 100%. There must have been something else going on there. Anyway, so yes, it can play that type of HD video.
There's not much bloat, per se. It comes with McAfee Security Center running, and a 90-day trial of that. I will probably uninstall that and replace it with AVG Free, but otherwise I don't see anything I need to get rid of. There are a number of other programs related to the functions of the Q1. It's also preloaded with Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, and other generally harmless things.
The 60GB drive is reported by Windows as 55GB. Of that, 10GB is reserved as a recovery partition. Vista Home Premium and the other applications take about 10GB at first load. That left about 35GB free on the C drive.
The CPU is single core.
Gaming?
I loaded Neverwinter Nights (the original, not 2), and it runs in 1024x600 resolution with low detail reasonably OK. The controls seem to work pretty well, as the stylus works perfectly, with left hand holding the Q1 and thumb on either the mini keyboard or mouse knob, and right holding the stylus and pressing buttons. While I wouldn't use the word "fast" to describe it, it works well enough to be amusing
How's the keyboard?
Mixed feelings on the keyboard. For short text like quick emails, it's fine. For something like entering a strong password, with mixed-case letters, numbers, and symbols, it's torture since there aren't dedicated number keys and almost all symbols require pressing another button first. It's especially bad for passwords that are hidden on the screen since you can't be quite sure if you didn't hit the wrong key or get a symbol to show up. So I'd say that it's very nice to have it there compared with not having a keyboard at all, but it's not something I'd want to use too often. Someone who is more used to typing on similar keyboards (like Blackberrys) might find it more natural than I do.
Thanks to Grandall for the permission to re-post.
' />
Origamiportal. Despite the name, its still the best place to be if you want to talk UMPC's. (and that's coming from someone that runs a UMPC forum!) Grandall, a member and new Q1 Ultra owner there, kindly gave me permission to pull out and summarize some of the things he's been reporting about his Q1 Ultra (Vista) over the last few days. The thread is still going strong (92 replies as I write this!) so tune in here to follow the news.
A quick disclaimer before I start. This is third party info. I'm obviously sanity checking as I go but don't blame either myself or Grandall if...well you get the idea. Here we go in chrono' order:
Screen:
The screen seems very good for inking so far. It's as good or better than my Fujitsu P1510 and LG C1. It's very responsive to light touches.
Overall feel for speed: Not bad. I'll play with it more and try out movies this evening. It feels a bit less responsive than the Fujitsu P1510 (with a 1.1GHz Pentium M), but that's probably as much Vista as the CPU speed difference. Regardless, I don't feel that it's unreasonably slow relative to my expectations.
On the battery:
This morning I've been testing it on batteries, and after an hour of heavy use with the default Samsung settings it says it's at 70% battery. So maybe 3.5-4 hours of fairly heavy use, a bit more just listening to music and reading email.
To add to this, I just used it for slightly more than an hour with what I would count as light use: Outlook was running getting email, some looking at spreadsheets in Excel, and a short amount of web surfing, and it was at 80% battery after that. So about five hours of light use seems reasonable.
Video performance:
I tried this [Coral Reef WMV 6mbps video - ed.] , and it ran smoothly on battery in Windows Media Center. The regular Media Player had problems with it, but it didn't seem related to the processor wasn't pegged at 100%. There must have been something else going on there. Anyway, so yes, it can play that type of HD video.
There's not much bloat, per se. It comes with McAfee Security Center running, and a 90-day trial of that. I will probably uninstall that and replace it with AVG Free, but otherwise I don't see anything I need to get rid of. There are a number of other programs related to the functions of the Q1. It's also preloaded with Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, and other generally harmless things.
The 60GB drive is reported by Windows as 55GB. Of that, 10GB is reserved as a recovery partition. Vista Home Premium and the other applications take about 10GB at first load. That left about 35GB free on the C drive.
The CPU is single core.
Gaming?
I loaded Neverwinter Nights (the original, not 2), and it runs in 1024x600 resolution with low detail reasonably OK. The controls seem to work pretty well, as the stylus works perfectly, with left hand holding the Q1 and thumb on either the mini keyboard or mouse knob, and right holding the stylus and pressing buttons. While I wouldn't use the word "fast" to describe it, it works well enough to be amusing
How's the keyboard?
Mixed feelings on the keyboard. For short text like quick emails, it's fine. For something like entering a strong password, with mixed-case letters, numbers, and symbols, it's torture since there aren't dedicated number keys and almost all symbols require pressing another button first. It's especially bad for passwords that are hidden on the screen since you can't be quite sure if you didn't hit the wrong key or get a symbol to show up. So I'd say that it's very nice to have it there compared with not having a keyboard at all, but it's not something I'd want to use too often. Someone who is more used to typing on similar keyboards (like Blackberrys) might find it more natural than I do.
Thanks to Grandall for the permission to re-post.
' />
Q1 Ultra. Owner reveals all!
Posted on 03 June 2007, Last updated on 22 May 2015 by Steve Paine
The buzz about the Q1 Ultra is big! I’ll be honest, I thought I might be able to secure one for last week but it fell through and I’m pretty jealous (in a nice way!) that you guys over in the good ole U S of, have got them already. Fortunately the new owners aren’t keeping all the info to themselves. There’s a huge amount of posting going on over at Origamiportal. Despite the name, its still the best place to be if you want to talk UMPC’s. (and that’s coming from someone that runs a ultra mobile PC forum!)
Grandall, a member and new Q1 Ultra owner there, kindly gave me permission to pull out and summarize some of the things he’s been reporting about his Q1 Ultra (Vista) over the last few days. The thread is still going strong (92 replies as I write this!) so tune in here to follow the news.
A quick disclaimer before I start. This is third party info. I’m obviously sanity checking as I go but don’t blame either myself or Grandall if…well you get the idea. Here we go in chrono’ order:
Screen:
The screen seems very good for inking so far. It’s as good or better than my Fujitsu P1510 and LG C1. It’s very responsive to light touches.
Overall feel for speed: Not bad. I’ll play with it more and try out movies this evening. It feels a bit less responsive than the Fujitsu P1510 (with a 1.1GHz Pentium M), but that’s probably as much Vista as the CPU speed difference. Regardless, I don’t feel that it’s unreasonably slow relative to my expectations.
On the battery:
This morning I’ve been testing it on batteries, and after an hour of heavy use with the default Samsung settings it says it’s at 70% battery. So maybe 3.5-4 hours of fairly heavy use, a bit more just listening to music and reading email.
To add to this, I just used it for slightly more than an hour with what I would count as light use: Outlook was running getting email, some looking at spreadsheets in Excel, and a short amount of web surfing, and it was at 80% battery after that. So about five hours of light use seems reasonable.
Video performance:
I tried this [Coral Reef WMV 6mbps video – ed.] , and it ran smoothly on battery in Windows Media Center. The regular Media Player had problems with it, but it didn’t seem related to the processor wasn’t pegged at 100%. There must have been something else going on there. Anyway, so yes, it can play that type of HD video.
There’s not much bloat, per se. It comes with McAfee Security Center running, and a 90-day trial of that. I will probably uninstall that and replace it with AVG Free, but otherwise I don’t see anything I need to get rid of. There are a number of other programs related to the functions of the Q1. It’s also preloaded with Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, and other generally harmless things.
The 60GB drive is reported by Windows as 55GB. Of that, 10GB is reserved as a recovery partition. Vista Home Premium and the other applications take about 10GB at first load. That left about 35GB free on the C drive.
The CPU is single core.
Gaming?
I loaded Neverwinter Nights (the original, not 2), and it runs in 1024×600 resolution with low detail reasonably OK. The controls seem to work pretty well, as the stylus works perfectly, with left hand holding the Q1 and thumb on either the mini keyboard or mouse knob, and right holding the stylus and pressing buttons. While I wouldn’t use the word “fast” to describe it, it works well enough to be amusing
How’s the keyboard?
Mixed feelings on the keyboard. For short text like quick emails, it’s fine. For something like entering a strong password, with mixed-case letters, numbers, and symbols, it’s torture since there aren’t dedicated number keys and almost all symbols require pressing another button first. It’s especially bad for passwords that are hidden on the screen since you can’t be quite sure if you didn’t hit the wrong key or get a symbol to show up. So I’d say that it’s very nice to have it there compared with not having a keyboard at all, but it’s not something I’d want to use too often. Someone who is more used to typing on similar keyboards (like Blackberrys) might find it more natural than I do.
Thanks to Grandall for the permission to re-post.
Technorati tags: umpc, samsung q1, q1 ultra
