I watched with great interest and anticipation the GottaBeMobile InkShow video review of the Q1 Ultra last night. I took notes as I watched and have a fair bit of feedback on the review. The quality of the review is really good. Dennis does a really fantastic job of talking around the device and the macro work on the camera is excellent. You really get to see the whole device in detail. What camera are you using Dennis? The later parts of the review look at more detail about performance and, of course, inking! I have also had a chance to use the Q1 Ultra for about 30 minutes (admittedly, not really long enough to have a fully qualified opinion on the device) and I’ve read as much as is possible on the device. I have a lot of opinions on the Q1 Ultra and I remain fairly positive about the device (my purchase order is still being processed!) but I want to air my notes to try and get a few more answers and to stimulate more conversation on what I believe to be one of the best ultra mobile PC products there is right now. Read on!
Did Dennis optimize? I think most Vista ultra mobile PC users have learned by now that the out-of-the-box Vista experience is poor and that a number of optimizations are needed before Vista springs to life and becomes usable. I’m talking about indexing, automatic updates, windows defender, pre-fetch hacks, anti-phishing filter and reducing screen candy. I tested the Medion ultra mobile PC recently and out-of-the-box it was a real slouch of a machine. A horrible experience. After optimizations, I got a much much better experience and you can see this in the video I produced that shows multiple concurrent app’s running. The Medion is a VIA-based device and should perform at around the same speed as the Q1 ultra in real-world situations. In some respects, Dennis would be right not to optimize. Customers should not be expected to go out and trawl the Internet for Vista optimization tips however, in my opinion, Vista should be pre-optimized and its a mistake that its shipping without optimizations. I think we’ll see software coming in the near future that’s going to do those optimizations (either an Origami group product,a service pack, a manufacturers build or a third party product) and that a pre-optimized Vista will be the norm for UMPCs.
On the mouse pointer, I think Dennis was too kind! Its terrible. Its not a mouse pointer at all. Its a marketing tool. There is no substitute for a synaptics analogue, pressure sensitive mouse pointer and this was my biggest disappointment when I first played with the Q1 Ultra. (see comments in this news article.) OK, its better than nothing but to me, should be ignored if you’re looking for a real mouse pointer. (Trust me – in two handed sofa/bed/relaxing mode there’s nothing better than a thumbboard and a synaptics mouse pointer on the frame.)
Power profile. It looks like Dennis was plugged into the mains during the software tests. I assume he had the ultra mobile PC set to max performance mode under mains power? We need to check this.
Keyboard. I know what you mean about scanning left to right for the split keyboard Dennis! I had the same issue with the PepperPad but its a problem that goes away and in fact, because its a problem, you learn to improve very quickly. I’m not talking about approaching 100% typing speed but 50% should be possible on that thumbboard for most users. That’s way faster than handwriting on the screen and tapping the on screen keyboard and slide out keyboards such as the Sony and Medion. I am more positive now about the thumboard than I was when I first tried it.
How were heavy web pages? The ones you showed, Dennis, were fairly simple. How about igoogle or reader? Those should tax the CPU.
Responsiveness. Despite Dennis’ comments erring on the negative, I thought the response from the apps was actually quite good. I think this indicates that he was expecting something like desktop-level performance. I don’t think this (or using MS Office) represents what the average user will be buying this ultra mobile PC for and I think we have to consider that Dennis is testing as a tablet PC user. Tablet PCs are generally much more powerful.
No backlighting on the keys. Damn! That’s a disappointment. I’ll have to use my USB LED lamp.
No toggle SHIFT, CTRL, ALT. Again, very bad. I’m disappointed with that. Shift, ALT and CTRL are going to be difficult. Software mod can fix that perhaps?
Regarding ‘inking’. (Here we go! Me and Dennis always have a nice little discussion about this!) I’m from the ‘Touch but No-Ink’ camp and Dennis is from the other side of the fence. He’s right to test inking on the Q1 ultra and right to highlight that its a problem. Inking is something that’s on the device and therefore, if you want inking, you’d expect it to work. My feeling is that although its part of the software, its only there because you can’t take it away. The Q1 Ultra is a touch screen device and you can not disable handwriting recognition on a tablet PC (AFAIK.) Obvioulsy Mr Product Manger is going to use this a a tool for promoting the Q1 Ultra but I think it should be ignored. The Q1 ultra is not targeted at those that like natural handwriting/ink input.
And while we’re on the subject of inking I want to highlight that in the tests Dennis did (keyboard, on screen keyboard and handwriting) he said that the handwriting was the fastest. It wasn’t! The on screen keyboard was the fastest. It took 24 seconds and appeared to be perfect. The handwriting took 27 seconds and appeared to contain errors! In addition, it took nearly 10 seconds to get the stylus, open the TIP and switch it to handwriting mode. In total, it was barely faster than using the keyboard and I’d wager that after a month, the keyboard will be faster than any of the on-screen methods for nearly all people. [Ducks to avoid incoming flak from the ink fans!] Before you flame me, consider the average user. Consider mass-market users coming from notebooks and desktop PCs. Consider that the target user for this device is not a user that has used a tablet PC before.
Battery life. You quoted marketing figures for battery life. I think we should ignore those but it does seem that the Q1 Ultra is showing huge increases in battery life. 3-4 hours is really a great step forward. Its a huge plus point for the Q1 Ultra.
Ignore Crystalmark stats results. Its worse than marketing figures and just promotes forum arguments ;-)
Desktop replacement. Samsung tell reviewers that this is not a desktop replacement device. Intel say the same thing and are also public about the fact that they do not want to increase the processing power of UMPCs. They want to decrease heat, size and increase battery life. Why? Because they have a multi-million pound notebook business to protect of course. While the Q1 ultra is not a desktop replacement, the Pentium-M versions were. If I had a million to spend, I’d design and produce a ultra mobile PC at 1Ghz that could be used with docking stations and notebook sleeves and a desktop and notebook replacement and kill the home notebook and desktop market. (and probably wake up with a horses head next to me!) I don’t think you’ll ever see large manufacturers letting UMPCs cut across established notebook or desktop markets. They will also do everything they can to guide reviewers. Fingers crossed that one day, battery tech will advanced and Santa Rosa type platforms will reach sub 8W average drain figures and designers then have the chance to design a really powerful module-based UMPC. One ultra mobile PC per person would do a lot to save unnecessary usage of high-end desktops and notebooks for checking eBay auction stats. Sorry. I’m losing track here. Back to the review…
And finally, what I consider one of the most important aspects of the Q1 Ultra and the component that is the most significant result of Intel’s work with its partners. The screen. Dennis talked about the brightness (I was disappointed to see the reflection issue. Well highlighted (no pun!) Dennis) but forgot to mention that this is the first 7″ ultra mobile PC with a native 1024×600 screen resolution. 600000 pixels instead of 380000 pixels. That is a huge huge bonus and a chance to massively increase productivity on these screens. For the first time we have a ultra mobile PC that conforms to the minimum screen size requirements of Vista while preserving one-meter readability. Combined with the 300nits brightness and the power-saving that this LED backlit component is adding it makes for a specification well worth bigging up!
One last note. I know that reviewing devices is very very difficult. Especially on video. Dennis has done a superb job with the InkShow. Airing the notes (and my opinion) is just somethign I want to do to get more discussion going. I get the Q1 U in a few weeks and then Dennis has his chance to air his notes on my review and I really hope he does because we, all of us, including me, can only learn more from it. Again, the GottaBeMobile video InkShow is here.
