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Windows Mobile or Ultra Portable PC ?

I have an OQO to play around with for a while, this is a fully functional PC in a palm sized (depending on the size of your hand) form factor. The device runs on a Transmeta processor which seems to scale from 300MHz to 1GHz depending on processor load – the OQO came with Windows XP Professional installed, has a 20GB hard drive, and 256MB Ram – the device has built in WiFi (when I used the device at home it detected my 802.11g and 802.11b networks), and built in Bluetooth support, has USB and 1394 ports, and audio out (no native audio on the device, so you can’t listen to music without headphones – my Shure e3c headphones work really well with the OQO, and my other wma/mp3 players).

So, a quick review of the OQO. I took some photos of the device against an iPaq 3850 so you get an idea of the size of the device.

Side by side comparison of Pocket PC and the OQO

Here’s the OQO and Pocket PC next to each other so you can see the depth of the devices, so far the devices are very similar in size, right ?

The OQO has a screen that runs at 800x480px default resolution, which seems to be good enough for web browsing, reading RSS feeds, using Windows Media Player, Outlook etc… I’m certainly not planning on installing Visual Studio .NET 2003, I’m not sure the screen is large enough for coding!

The screen on the OQO slides up to reveal a thumbpad keyboard, and has a ‘nipple’ style mouse navigation control on the right side of the keyboard (left and right mouse buttons are on the left side of the keyboard) – this combination works pretty well for thumb input – it’s not good enough for your typical speed typist though…

One of the things I really like about the OQO is the innovative extension cable that comes with the device, this plugs into a connector on the base of the OQO and provides Video Out (nice for Powerpoint!), 1394, USB, Ethernet, Audio, and power in – really, really (really) neat. 

Add a bluetooth keyboard (I have a Think Outside Bluetooth Keyboard) and you have a really usable device.

What’s really neat is the device is a PC, so it should run all desktop applicaitons… Battery life seems to be around 2 hours which is nowhere close to the typical battery life on my Pocket PC or Smartphone devices, boot times are typical PC boot times (unless coming back from Standby or Hibernate), the device is certainly nowhere close to "instant on" like the Pocket PC and Smartphone, one of the major downsides is the device doesn’t get any data if it’s not on a WiFi network (unlike my Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphone devices which get updated e-mail over GPRS, and give me the ability to browse the web and run local applications that consume data from XML Web Services over the GPRS connection), and the device runs pretty darn hot (good for keeping your hands warm on a cold and frosty morning)…

If you have any comments or thoughts on why you would choose Windows Mobile or ultra portable PC, then let me know…

– Mike

 

Posted: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 10:44 AM by mikehall

Comments

Jeff Parker said:

Is this XP Embeded? Its not full XP is it? If this is full XP then this is just too sweet. Low baterry life but still sweet. You know I am waiting on the pull out screens like from the movie I think it was "Red Planet" where an exploratory team went to mars to figure out what happened to the algie they put there to create oxygen. They had this mini computer the screens were a thin piece of plastic that rolled up. Seems to me anymore the biggest part of a computer anymore is the monitors.
# March 1, 2005 12:06 PM

Mike said:

Hey Jeff,

Yes, this is running a full install of Windows XP Professional SP2 - I've currently installed Office, blogjet, Doppler, my music collection, MSN Messenger 7.0, and still have a ton of H/D space to play with...

- Mike
# March 1, 2005 12:10 PM

Jeff Parker said:

Hmm, now thats just pretty impressive. You know if I could hook up a monitor and full sized keyboard and mouse, like say a docking station, this would really make for a nice laptop. I use a laptop at work and it sits in a docking station mainly because I love a good full sized keyboard for coding and a nice big monitor. When I take it home I actually have a KVM switch for my stuff at home I just hook it into. My biggest complaint about taking my laptop home is the size and bulkyness of it. So as a laptop replacement this could be very cool. But as a pocket PC replacement I don't know about.

Pocket PC's are very handy and relatively cheap, sometimes considered disposable. Lost, broken, ect your out a few hundred dollars but these, your out a couple thousand. Pocket PC's do not store a large amount of critical data and the data carried on them is usually sinced with a main PC as a backup. So imagine your laptop containing a lot of your life work backed up to the server or not suddenly drops out of your pocket at Starbucks. So this, as cool as it is, could be a security risk. But for roaming around the country giving presentations and so on this would be a definate cool tool.
# March 1, 2005 12:37 PM

Mike said:

Since the device supports USB there's no reason you couldn't attach a USB mouse and keyboard (there's only one USB port, so you would need a USB hub) - or... enable RDP and connect to the device from your desktop PC, I ran the unit at 1024x768 over RDP yesterday, seemed to work pretty well.

- Mike
# March 1, 2005 1:03 PM

James Kendrick said:

Mike, welcome to the ultra portable club! These are devices with so much utility it's almost unbelievable. I use the Sony U750 and absolutely love mine. I installed the Tablet OS on it and turned it into a 5" Tablet PC. Here's an article I wrote with some photos of my miniature desktop setup:

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2004/11/complete_deskto.html
# March 1, 2005 1:46 PM

Mike said:

James, great article, thanks for the link - why did you decide on a Sony ultra portable over a PDA device like Pocket PC ?

- Mike
# March 1, 2005 1:52 PM

James Kendrick said:

Mike, full WinXP. Tablet OS. The Sony UPC has become my main computer that is with me all the time. I plop it into the dock when in my home office and it becomes a compute core at that point. Drives an external monitor up to 1600x1200 and I hook a wireless KB and mouse. The main thing is the sheer versatility of having a real computer with me. I wrote an article about how I use the Sony on a typical day you might find interesting since you have the OQO now:

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2004/08/a_typical_day_w.html

There is a ton of information about useful s/w for the UPC that you might find interesting on jkOTR- just look under the Sony U category. For web surfing definitely look at Liquid Surf for zooming the web page in and out.
# March 1, 2005 2:06 PM

boooooo said:

I would have been more impressed if it came out 2 years ago like it was supposed to.
# March 1, 2005 2:59 PM

$2000 and the battery lasts _how_ long? said:

"Battery life seems to be around 2 hours"

If that's truly the case (maybe you got a bad battery or something?), the oqo is a joke.
# March 1, 2005 3:05 PM

Steven Hughes said:

Mike,

You can install the Tablet PC OS on the OQO as well. Spencer Goad, who runs Tablet PC Buzz(http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/) did and said it works pretty well, but doesn't use it as much as his Smartphone due to the instant on feature. He is supposed to be posting a review of the OQO soon on Tablet PC Buzz when he finds some time, which I am sure will be pretty in depth.

Also in talking to the folks at OQO they had some stylus problems in the upper corners of the device. I pointed out that it may be a shielding problem with their video inverter which may be causing interference problems with their stylus, but the corner problem doesn't exist with a 'normal' Tablet PC Wacom Stylus, only the short OQO stylus exhibited this problem hopefully this problem has been fixed. The geared keyboard slideout is really cool and much better designed than the slide out on the HTC Blue Angel, which slides in a groove and slightly rubs against the Mg case.

It is a pretty slick device and they have a few cool new accessories planned for the future. I think newer extended smart batteries was one of them. With the radios off I averaged around 3 hours of use with a new battery. I only had limited time with it and will hopefully have some longer time with one in the future.

Basically the OQO is small niche device for those that need a uPC and can't find a sweet spot with either a full blown laptop,Tablet PC or PDA, but maybe the next evolution of the PC in the future if the right tradeoffs are met. Hopefully Transmeta's rumors of them killing their processor line won't end the lineage of devices like OQO unless they have a design based around a Centrino M or AMD Mobile processor in the works.

Have fun with it I am sure you will find some interesting ways to use it!! :)
# March 2, 2005 5:09 AM

Windows Embedded Blog Windows Mobile or Ultra Portable PC | Portable Greenhouse said:

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# June 15, 2009 3:52 PM
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