Sam, via email, asks:
Hi Chippy. i want to know, after you fried the Everun Note. What is your final
thought of it? Is it worth buying and for the price mark of $900? Would you buy
one yourself?
Yes, I fried the Everun note by plugging in the wrong power cable. Luckily I had two good weeks of solid testing with it as my personal ultra mobile PC before I killed it. Here’s my personal (PERSONAL!) thoughts on it right now.
I am impressed and excited by the Everun Note. It proves that independent manufacturers, free of marketing restraints, can create a device far more powerful than we’re seeing on the market today. If this had an easy docking solution, it would make a very very useful hot-desk / ultra mobile PC solution. Even without it, you can do things that just aren’t possible on other devices. Its a reliable power-house.
MORE DETAILS ON THE EVERUN NOTE IN THE DATASHEET.
After using the Note though, I’ve learnt that I don’t need a lot of processing power. I used the device in power saving mode nearly 100% of the time. Why? Because I was always mobile with it and battery life was more important than processing power to me. The second thing that I need is connectivity. Without 3G, a device is useless in mobile situations. With tethering, a device is useful. With a built-in factory fitted reliable and high quality 3G solution, a device is good enough to rely on for productivity work. This is why I’m currently carrying round an old Samsung Q1b. 1.0Ghz 800×480 UMPC. It has long battery life and an excellent built-in 3G solution. So the answer is, no. I won’t be buying a Raon Digital Everun Note until I can see a min 3hr battery life (4-6 with an extended battery) and a good quality 3G solution.
The Everun Note is an awesome little device. Great keyboard, stylish, useful in almost every situation you might yourself in but not quite meeting my personal criteria.
Shame really, with better battery and 3g it looks pretty perfect.
Looking forward to the live session tonight! :)
In past years, many I know have been focused on “over-clocking” to get more out of their processors. More power is ok when you are hooked up to “the Mains” or AC power.
Today, when mobile you need just enough power to do what you want. Would “under-clocking”, or being able to scale down a processor’s CPU, allow for the ability to then save battery power?
Just a question if anyone knows?
If so, then how would this be done with a device like the Everun Note? There are “free” BIOS options (for example the OLPC XO runs on a “free” bios I think). Using a free bios, then could it be possible for more keyboard input underclocking options to be used (where you replace the bios of the UNIT you buy with a free custom bios that can include the options you need in the bios, vs living with what you get from some manufacturer whose engineers have tunnel vision and no feel for what consumers really need?
PS- of course we will have to see if Pixel Qi’s claims of a 5 fold less power use with those screens are truthful (when we first see those devices in Q1 of 2009 for testing). So, under-clocking and power saving screens, would that the answer? Is this possible?
i see overclocking as being the engine modification of the IT world.
many dont do it for practical benefits, but for the thrill of being able to push something beyond the specified capabilities.
as for under-clocking, most cpus have that feature today.
my dual core amd, can go from 2Ghz to 1Ghz if i tell it to, in both windows and linux. and thats a desktop cpu.
in windows, all one need to do is change a setting under power management, from desktop or always on to laptop or similar.
in linux its a similar manner of swapping out one “governor” for another.
the os will clock it back up if the cpu load stays at 100% for some amount of time, or something like that.
iirc the everun note even has a special button that will lock the cpu in minimal speed mode, to really maximize battery life.
What Chippy wants is the CPU to be scaled back even more sometimes (the size of the Everun Note and it’s battery, means that it has to use even less power then it does to be a usable mobile device…! The size and keyboard is very good. However, It is obvious that the Everun Note does not scale down enough (power-wise). The OLPC XO was designed to use less power yet it still is good to watch YouTube videos. Yep, OLPC, even tries to scale back on power use with it’s Mesh Networking power use too! Why not copy the design of OLPC XO into the Everun Note case design (with touchscreen), add more ram, larger SSD, (and bigger processor that can be scaled back to very very low if that is all that is needed at times)?
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1
“Power consumption
The laptop will consume about 2 W of power during normal use, far less than the 10 W to 45 W of conventional laptops.[3] With build 656 power consumption is between 5 and 8 watts. (Measured on G1G1 laptop) Future software builds should meet the target of 2 watts.
In e-book mode, which is still under development and has not yet been released, all hardware sub-systems are intended to be powered down except the monochrome display. When the user moves to a different page the system will wake up, draw the new page on the display and then go back to sleep. Power consumption in this future “e-book mode” is estimated to be 0.3 W to 0.8 W”.
“Wireless networking using an “Extended Range†802.11b/g and 802.11s (mesh) Marvell 8388 wireless chip, chosen due to its ability to autonomously forward packets in the mesh even if the CPU is powered off. When connected in a mesh, it is run at a low bitrate (2 Mbit/s) to minimize power consumption. Despite the wireless chip’s minimalism, it supports WPA.[16] An ARM processor is included”.
well the everun note uses a laptop cpu from amd iirc, not something atom-like. so therefor the cpu may not have the ability to clock as far back as possibly wanted.
but im not really familiar with the internals of the XO. only keep in mind that recently the cpu in general have become so power efficient that other things cause more drain then it, even at peak load.
didnt one of the atom-related chipsets drain x10 the number of watts vs the cpu?
Follow-up – Google search gives us some good ideas! On the links below just delete the dash ( – ) in h-ttp//www.etc!
From here:
h-ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclocking
There is this interesting idea (jkk are you reading this):
“Linux – The Linux kernel, as well as other open-source kernels, include a feature known as CPU frequency modulation. This feature, often known as cpufreq, gives the system administrator a variable level of control over the CPU’s clock speed. The kernel includes five governors by default: conservative, ondemand, performance, powersave, and userspace. The conservative and ondemand governors adjust the clock speed depending on the CPU load, but each with different algorithms. The ondemand governor jumps to maximum frequency on CPU load and decreases the frequency step by step on CPU idle, whereas the conservative governor increases the frequency step by step on CPU load and jumps to lowest frequency on CPU idle. The performance, powersave and userspace governors set the clock speed statically: performance to the highest available, powersave to the lowest available, and userspace to a frequency determined and controlled by the user”.
More ideas:
h-ttp://www.silentpcreview.com/article37-page1.html
A sample case study where performance was measured while under-clocking the system;
h-ttp://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1798&page=1
i fully agree on the cpu thing.
about the only time that cpu power really becomes a issue is media editing, and even then ram amounts may become a bigger bottleneck then cpu.
For XP,the Atom has enough processing power indeed.
But not for Vista.
Also, I would prefer a system that would support further down clocking as well.
Only, it’s much cheaper and faster to lower the multiplier, than lowering the FSB speed.
I read an article a while ago,that engineers are capable of lowering FSB speeds per Mhz, but that dynamically increasing and decreasing this process had to be done in steps; and many applications would experience a few ms lag while up throttling the frequency.
I read the multiplier could be much easier lowered to half it’s speed, basically using the FSB speed only on the positive cycle.
Every negative cycle the CPU would send and receive zero data.
So technically the CPU would be running at full speed (eg:1,6Ghz), only now the down cycle of the 2 does not process anything (effectively running @ 800Mhz), resulting in power saving of 30-45% of the cpu.
Same goes for the memory.
In other words, for now the dynamically fine throttling of the CPU you won’t find in cheap UMPC’s since the hardware supporting this is quite expensive (it’s not only the CPU that will be adjusted when adjusting the FSB, the north/southbridge as well, which could lead to instability with USB devices, and CD-rom drives and the likes…)
With regards to the poor battery life, I notice that Dynamism is selling the Everun Note with many options such as bigger hard disk (100GB) but the interesting one is they also offer the extended battery as a choice too.
The main reason why the extra CPU power in the Everun Note is a must for me is because I love PC gaming but I do not like having to lug around a heavy Laptop to do it or be constrained to my big Desktop.
When I go on short trips away from home, I like having the option of PC gaming but I carry enough heavy bags with me to not want to add a 15 inch Laptop to the weight so the Everun Note is the perfect compromise.
This is why I find this extra processing power so great.
The other reason is simply because I can do some tasks as quick as my Desktop and in some cases even faster.
The fact that I am still saying this even with my Everun being sent in for a replacement also says how much I love this device lol.
I don’t know if gaming on a 7″ screen is going to be comfortable.
the keyboard is small, and the mouse isn’t really meant for gaming (I mean, it’s basically like a joystick like the earlier laptops had or so…only on infra red).
The only thing this device has is sufficient processing power to process most 3D shoot em ups from say 2006-2007 and before.
Also, if the everun only supports upto 1 RAM stick,I would recommend waiting for a better gaming device that supports dual DDR.
You probably won’t find a device like this with sufficient battery life for under $1000.
Did Raon put 3G into the last Everun?
Any idea when the black one is coming?
No, you had to either buy it from one of their agents who installed or do it yourself
Everun D60H WWAN (Option GTM378):
http://d60h.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/09/d60h-wwan.html
Is that an offical 3G upgrade or an option?
sorry I meant “offical option or a 3rd party add on?”
3G generally always is official.
I have yet to see a 3G USB puck!
While maybe some of you want the mini notebook as a portable internet solution (3G), I personally would want one to fulfill my need to create webpages, and do some programming on the go.
Secondary I would like it to run linux, to be able to further develop my linux skills on the go.
Thirdly,when I get tired, I’d love to play a nice sim, or little game that’s just good enough to relax.
No 3D shoot em ups I mean!
I can imagine some people wanting to use the device as a GPS device using a GPS puck, and 3G.
Sounds really awesome to me!
But I believe unless you’re someone regularly making hikes, or get lost often, for me I’d practically use it the first 2 months, after which hardly ever… It’d be a waste of money..
Besides, one can always make a planned trip, and download the roads and maps between start and finish of your trip.
So for me,3G isn’t really necessary.
Battery is! I’d prefer it to have 8 hours of battery, but probably will be lucky if I’d be able to find a device with a 5 or 6 hours charge.
I’ve found the minimum resolution I’d be willing to have on a 9″ screen would be 720p. enough to watch 720p HD movies, should I ever want to watch it.
Of course, the CPU & VPU processors should be powerful enough to decode 720p H264 movies.
I think the everun note is a bit too small for my likings. I think a 9″ screen will offer more typing and viewing comfort.
On the pocketable side, Everun Note will fit into loose fitting pants pockets. It is the best option for that level of a portable device. Smaller than Everun Note and you get really unusable keyboards. Everun Note, does not need the power that it has for most folks. Chippy hit the nail on the head. In fact the OLPC XO1 has enough power for this Everun Note Device. I like the form factor of the Everun Note… the CPU is way over the top of what I need in a portable device. Need 10 hours of battery. Again, why doesn’t someone package all of the insides of the OLPC XO, with more SSD, more RAM, backlit keyboard option, etc… into a Everun Note form factor. If they did, it would be the best seller of the year.
this device with an Atom would be killer
And slow too, useless for 3D gaming and could never be used for anything more than the current netbooks can be used for.
In short, it would not have anything much more to offer than the current competition.
at least we can say: finally those devices are reality! only like that the producers will make improvements. because they will know if their products are actually being sold or if they get criticism for specific functions/features.
in the end it boils down to what YOU personally prefer. so basically all the devices have a strong point. i was nearly ordering the everun note…then steve posted the news about the benq mid s6. now that’s what i want, small, pocketable, not extremely powerful so better battery life and..LINUX. forget windows or mac on these devices. those are large screen desktop operating systems with small menus and icons. we NEED new operating systems or user interface. i don’t understand why people want XP on a 4.8 gigabyte or benq?? apple with the iphone did the best thing, even though i’m not an apple fan..
ok, that was off topic. now why not the everun? sure, it has the power to replace a notebook or desktop for slower performance tasks, but… it does not have those mobility features i want: long battery life and smaller size. the benq mid is perfect. it’s smaller, very pocketable, linux and…it comes with 3G! basically the idea of these devices is to be connected anywhere where i cannot connect with a pc or laptop! at home i have my powerful notebook, in the office the same, outside while with friends or whatever i don’t need horsepower to do programming or whatever, but just be able to connect and check out some things without having the need to find a hotspot where i have to pay anyway…
ooook, that was a lot…
I just ordered an raon note … I really need a power.
So separately I ordered a mitron Mobi 3000 SSD ….
For 3g I only use iphone with ssh tunnel it’s very cheap and quick, In France all other 3G solutions are double priced…
At the moment I use the mtron SSD drive in a OQOe2 .. and the mtron is 50% quicker than the 64Gb samsung SSD .. so I get OQOe2 with 27000 Crystalmark only 22000 with samsung and 16000 with hitachiHD..
Till now, oqo was a little bit too weak with large spreadsheets (500mb).. so I expect the raon note to be perfact on this point… I hope that a large battery will be avaiable soon .. I need a real 3hours .. that’s the main weakness … 3g is really esay to get with ICS or Iphone I wouldn’t use UMPC battery for such 3g (wifi is better).
..500 MB spreadsheet? wow…just..wow…i can imagine that a fast HD is simply essential for a dataload like that
I have seen dynamism selling the extended battery but I am not sure if they actually have it in stock or whether it is just expected. I think it is a shame we are limited to only 1GB of RAM in the Everun note though.
I tried out the raon note today, but the optical mouse worked so poorly I couldn’t buy it. Such a shame because it’s a beauty. Is there any hope that this obvious problem will get fixed?
i have 1.. the optical mouse is genius., it does have a learning curve – and should be operated with your thumb only, as the larger surface area of your thumb gives it a greater range of reference image to sense as you traverse the sensor. I find it far superior to a touch pad or pressure nub. The true beauty is that it takes up far less room than a touchpad – enabling bigger keys than anything else its size (looking at sc3 ..) .. it fits in my pocket, and with the new vista ati drivers for x1200 – runs dreamscene AND aero flawlessly, (i typically have a couple of explorer windows open, newsbing, bit-torrent, firefox and msn messenger windows.. i’ve even had it loaded like that running dual-screen with dreamscene on both screens (extended desktop mode). I’m thoroughly impressed / love it .. if battery is an issue for you – get a spare battery, or the jazzy external one- both are tiny enough to go in even a shirt pocket.
Dajaco- does your optical mouse wiggle as did the unit I tested? The dynamism rep thought that this looseness in the part was what made the mouse work so poorly.
I searched on google and I had a hard time located the right info….until I found your blog.
is the extended battery for everun note available now ?