|
 - Tough enough for a garbage truckI now have three q1 ultra premiums. All three units are used as data collection points for garbage route drivers. My oldest is over 5 months old and I love them, No Problems. All three units are inside of otter boxes. Only one con. When starting the unit without an auxiliary power source, the backlit level is too low making it almost impossible to use. Rating: - My best buy of the yearI have had my Q1 for over a month now. It's an exceptional buy. I ride a bike to work and this fits easily into my backpack, and even with the accessories is much lighter than the laptop that I use at work. My purchase was personal, my husband does a lot of work on our home computer and I wanted to be able to surf, order pictures for my family, etc. in the evenings. This unit is great because I can just sit on the couch, log in and it's there. The touch screen is easy to use as is the tablet input. The only negative I've found is that the handwriting tablet input doesn't work for certain fields (i.e. searching on google) but the onscreen keyboard does or I just use the keyboard on the unit. The keyboard on the unit is intuitive and not as difficult to use as it looks. I've been successful manipulating it when I need to. I use this for work as well. I like being able to walk around with my unit and access what I need anywhere on-site. I'm the tech director of a small school and it gives me what I need where I need it without weighing me down. I highly recommend this product. I have no idea why there are more of them out there. Rating:  - THE ONEFinally a UMPC that I am comfortable with. THIS IS THE ONE... I am previous owner of fujitsu u810. I decided to change to Q1 ultra premium for a bigger screen & faster processer. I never regret that decision. Pros: 1)One of the most sexy UMPC Design in the market and very solidly built, It looks like it can withstand some minor fall. 2)Ultra responsive touch screen. Feels like Iphone touch type. No need to apply any pressure or use finger nails to poke. A light touch with your fingers will do. 3)Speaker Sound is very good compared to U810. At least it is not the ultra high treble tiny sharp sound. It resembles my Nokia N800 speaker but has 2 speakers located at extreme left and right and play MP3 and in stereo. However I wish the speaker could be louder. 4)LCD is very bright (brighter than my laptop) Viewing angle is superb, no distortion at extreme left/right. I can now share a video without people tilting the head too much to get a good angle. 5)Keypad has been improved. Good for light typing but is a pain to type long documents. The longest I will type using the keypad is "The quick brown fox jumps over the fence". Any longer I will be frustrated. However if u are a user of palm treo or black berry, U will find it very easier to type but eyeball still gets tired from looking at extreme left and right. 6)The fan is located at the top. This is a very good design as hot air blows right up to the top. Compare to U810 it blows directly on my right hand. 7)Locations of all buttons are very well thought out. I can hold this for hours with both my hand w/o feeling fatigue and be able to use all of the touch control and keypad w/o shifting my hand. 8)Device runs pretty cool even after 3 hours usage. Its only as hot as your phone when use it for an hour talk time. It is luke warm at most. 9)Battery life is very impressive. It last 4.5 hrs. I put LCD at almost full brightness, CPU and WIFI at max performance. I watch 2 hours of DVD video, follow by watching youtubes and finish off by listening to mp3 and web surfing at the same time. I really think I can hit close to 5.5hrs if I tune down everything. 10)There is actually HSPDA module slot if u dare to open up. 11)I like the fact that the Ipod look alike wheel is programmable. It can program up to 3 buttons for one click (eg. Ctrl+shift+a/b/c). I have program all 4 buttons. 12)Scrolling is a breeze. Lots of option to choose from. From the joystick mode to the arrow keys to finger sliding scrolling like Iphone. 13)7" display is easy on the eyes. I dun need to increase the dpi anymore or zoom in firefox. 14)The back stand has adjustable angle. 15)Device runs pretty quiet even at almost full load. U will not notice it if u dun observe it. 16)The performance totally blows me away. Performance feels like I am using my laptop. It runs DVD quality video smoothly, multi-task n opening and closing of program as fast as my laptop. I also upgraded the ram to 2gb (bought at amazon for $50 bucks). To make full use of the memory I set the page file to zero. Now everything runs from memory which means everything runs even faster now. Finally a UMPC that feels like the speed of Laptop. Very impressive for a UMPC CONS: 1)Mouse control is terrible. I know they have improved but still terrible. U810 definitely beat this flat. First of all its located on the left, Why cant they put in on the right like the other UMPC. Its like writing with my left hand. I have to hover around a link b4 I can accurately click on it. I really prefer the IBM little red dot where I can really "feel" the mouse. With this u are pushing the mouse button around rather than rolling your thumb for more control. 2)LCD screen looks like there is some protective plastic layer over it (I may be wrong). I prefer the old screen q1 screen where it is glossy. The new version looks like its neither matt nor glossy. Its half - half. But really it is not a big deal. 3)Wifi connection could be better. Its nothing wrong with it just takes longer to connect after I resume it. It is definitely slower than my Laptop. Not a big issue though. EDIT: May 5th: Its actually as fast as my laptop, I turn off the wifi batt saver. 4)Keypad could have a backlight. My Treo has it, U810 got 2 head lamp, why Samsung did not think of it. Its bad in the evening when the LCD is bright in contrast the Keypad is hardly visible. Conclusion: The previous Q1 is a device I wanted to buy a long time ago but I hold off due to occasional stuttering when playing video. But the Q1 ultra premium is a total different animal. Its feels as fast as my laptop (I ran 7 firefox tabs, stream wireless Divx videos from my HP server, outlook 2007, words/Excel 2007, Norton 2008, ACDPhoto editor & many fancy widgets all at the same time) w/o a stutter. If u are looking for a portable device that can bring to office and to the couch with the power to run all your multimedia on gorgeous 7" display.... THIS IS IT.... Note: I gave it a 4.5 stars due to terrible mouse control. I actually disable it and use the touch screen instead. Edit: I bought this at amazon for 1299. Its now 1,326.95 Rating: - GREAT MACHINE, though mine has one annoying defect..Edit: 3/26/08 - Five Stars ***** Replacement unit is working perfectly! -------------------------------------- After a week of ownership I'll say this device does exactly what was expected and at a reasonable speed. Hard drive could be a little faster during bootup, but is responsive during general use. Given the tiny keyboard, don't expect this to be a laptop replacement.. rather a very portable computer for those not requiring lots of data entry. I planned to use mine for couchtop browsing, light email, portable media entertainment, and to perform mobile wireless surveys for my occupation. By many accounts the previous gen Q1's and OQO's A110 cpu is underpowered, so I chose the Q1UP with a Core Solo processor. PROs: --- Processor is well matched to the machine (no speed demon but not slow either). Programs start quickly, DVD rips play without stutter. Beautiful and bright screen, web pages fit nicely width-wise and buttons make scrolling easy. Small fonts are extremely clear and readable (though some may have trouble with this). DVD rips and photos look great. (A remote would be nice!) Passive digitizer works well, and unlike my other tablet's active screen I love being able to use my fingers, reducing stylus usage somewhat. Haven't really done any inking so can't comment on palm-on-the-screen issues. You can play Solitaire with a finger! With it's PSP-like shape it looks like it will be fun to play games. Mouse can be switched to joystick mode with a button press. Don't load Oblivion though.. its not meant for high-end 3D games. Rear camera quality (1.3mp) is surprisingly good, at least as viewed from the screen. Front facing camera (0.3mp) is of decent quality and more than adequate for video chat. Split-Qwerty thumb-keyboard: fine for short entry like URLs, filenames and short emails. Thank goodness this is the improved kb, as anything less would be quite difficult. Button size is similar to that of my Treo 700. I wasn't expecting to get much typing done this way but its so much better than always having to do tablet entry. Included is a program called 'Dialkeys' which throws a larger thumb-board on the screen and is better for longer entries.. it does eat up some screen space. Being left-handed, I like the mouse on the left. Battery life seems good given this model comes with the extended battery. Watched a 2 hour DVD rip with screen on full brightness and still had 3+ hours of regular usage left. Rated life is 7.5 hours. Comes with a USB cable for transferring files between computers. Plug both ends in and Voila', a file-manager-like program appears on both machines allowing easy transfer of files. No software installation necessary, it just works. CONs: --- None really, except for an annoying problem with my unit: (Update: Unit replaced, problem gone!) When picking up or otherwise handling the unit, the 'Play Camera' program starts and takes a picture. (Should only happen when touching the shutter button) Subsequent handling causes many pictures to be taken and after 5 minutes I might have 50 pics that need to be deleted. No use killing the program, as it will usually start up again. The shutter button moves freely and isn't bound up, so I don't understand why the slight case flexing causes it to take a picture. Oddly it doesn't always happen, but 75% of the time does. I'm hoping its a defect with my particular unit as I plan to swap it for the same model.
|
