The Gadgeteer Reviews the OQO Model 01+ Ultra PC

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/oqo_model_01_ultra_personal_computer' target='_blank'>http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review...rsonal_computer</a><br /><br /></div><i>"When Judie and I first saw the OQO advertised in late 2004, we were both pretty interested in it. The size looked perfect, and the built in keyboard was way convenient. But when we finally got to see one in person at CES 2005, we weren't impressed at all with the display. It was just too dim. We decided to wait till the next generation, hoping for massive improvements. The improved model 01+ has been available for awhile now and late last year I decided to pick one up..."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/ekkie_gadgeteer_oqo_01plus.jpg" /><br /><br />It never hurts to hear another opinion, right? As is the trend with nearly all the reviews I've seen so far, it's clear that OQO has improved their miniature PC concept with this latest offering, but is it good enough for practical everyday use? Find out what they think!

[macattack]

The number of deficiencies isn't that large, but they sound like real deal-breakers to me for a $2000 device. At that price point, this machine shouldn't have such obvious weak points, espeicially in a 2.0 revision.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

It's not a 2.0 revision - this is more of a dot release. I believe OQO2 should be out nearer the end of this year.

[whydidnt]

It's a pretty fair, accurate review. While I don't have any issue with the brightness of the screen, the included "touch" screen is a joke. It will not calibrate correctly and is very difficult to use along the edges of the screen. I almost never use the stylus with mine as it is far too frustrating. If ever a device was begging for a standard PPC style touch screen this is it.

OQO has never really indicated why they went with the tablet style electro-magnetic screen, but they really should reconsider this one bit of design. I can live with just about everything else on the device, including the questionable battery life and warmth.

[UnLoGiC]

If the next version of this device stays in the same price range I'll definitely get one to replace both my X50v and my laptop. Being the hardware addict I am it's hard to resist the idea of replacing the compromise of the PDA and the clumsy size of the laptop!

[Typhoon]

It will get better when the day comes when a UPC comes with persistent flash memory instead of volatile RAM. Imagine that...instant on &amp; off.

But I still think this devie is mediocre. Isn't the Intel P-M 600MHz much faster than Transmeta 1 GHz CPU?

[UnLoGiC]

It will get better when the day comes when a UPC comes with persistent flash memory instead of volatile RAM. Imagine that...instant on &amp; off.

But I still think this devie is mediocre. Isn't the Intel P-M 600MHz much faster than Transmeta 1 GHz CPU?

Remeber flash memmory is slow and you seldom need more speed than a P-M 600MHz can supply if your not doing games, gfx rendering, etc which i dont think suits the UPC too well in the first place.

My point is most usual tasks like surfing, watching movies, listning to mp3's and even compiling code doesnt need more speed than a Transmeta 1 GHz can supply.

I work as a java developer and i keep my laptop (running linux) in "on demand mode" all day long which changes the speed of the cpu depending on the cpu usage and it mostly hovers around 600 mhz even when I'm using eclipse which is a pretty massive application.

What I on the other hand find more important is the ammount of ram avaible and it's speed. Running out of ram makes even the fastest CPU you can find grind to a halt! ...unless you got your swapfile on a ramdrive or something...

[Darius Wey]

PPC Tablet contest question split and moved to here. (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=45973)

- DW

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

It will get better when the day comes when a UPC comes with persistent flash memory instead of volatile RAM. Imagine that...instant on &amp; off.
Remeber flash memmory is slow and you seldom need more speed than a P-M 600MHz can supply if your not doing games, gfx rendering, etc which i dont think suits the UPC too well in the first place.
I think Typhoon may be referring to Intel's Robson cache technology (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=43859) which Intel demo'd around October of last year. They're looking to use this sometime in the near future to enable instant on/off of laptops/PCs as well as dramatically cut down boot times.

[UnLoGiC]

Oh, that looks like a step in the right direction!