jkOnTheRun Provides Video Preview of the Vulcan FlipStart

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/03/jkontherun_firs.html' target='_blank'>http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkonthe...herun_firs.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The FlipStart is essentially a tiny laptop complete with a full QWERTY keyboard, trackpad, trackstick, integrated EV-DO, and a secondary display in the LID... The unit I am using has a Pentium M 1.1 GHz processor with 500 MB of RAM, A 30 GB hard drive, Windows XP SP2, integrated EV-DO, and a web cam... I recorded a 20 minute quick overview of the littlest laptop and have posted it here for your viewing pleasure."</i><br /><br />A UMPC with a secondary display? Check out the link to see this little guy in action and then drop us your thoughts on how you see this comparing with the Sony and OQO incumbents.

[SteveHoward999]

On the run? Could he have gone any slower? After about 5 minutes I switched off. Still haven't seen the lid open!

[christak]

Same here... and I'm fairly interested in the FlipStart...

[doc]

4 years ago, when I had first heard about this I was all over it for $2000. Since then we've now seen Sony release an updated portable, and we've seen the UMPC released for over a year now. All of them less than $2K. The Samsung Q1 was selling for $800 last month.

They've since changed the design/size of this thing twice, this is the third design of seen of the FlipStart. Each design has gotten bigger and bigger.

If they stay with a price anywhere near $2000 it will definitely not be worth it. 4 years later I'm really not at all impressed with it. I'd rather by a Q2, or even a Fujitsu 1610 for $2000.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

The real showstopper for me with the Flipstart is the lack of a touchscreen - that means your only way of interacting with the device is through the thumb-board and touch-pad/mouse buttons. On a device this small I think a touchscreen is almost mandatory, because the where and how of user-device interaction would be considerably different to a 'traditional' laptop.

[rookcnu]

Okay - a bit large,... no touch screen, and really thick.

Keyboard looks to be a bit large for a true "thumb board". Is it just me? Do you hold it with two hands on each side and use your thumbs to type? My wife has very tiny hands. Not sure that she could use her thumbs with this thing and be able to reach. Notice that he never uses his thumbs in the demonstration, he is actually hunting and pecking with his fingers.

I did like the co-host for the video - his dog.