I knew there had to be one out there somewhere. The Founder Mininote has been available for some time in Asia so after an hour or so of searching and translating I managed to find a review of the Pentium version of the Mininote on a Chinese website. As far as I know, this is exactly the same as the TabletKiosk eo i7210 so it will give some good pointers as to what to expect when the device is released here.
The review is very hard to read but I picked up some information from the translation. Here is my interpretation of the main points (my own comments in red italics)
- Battery life: 2.5hours under general use. Not bad. Not exceptional.
- No extended battery available. I think this will be less of a problem with a docking station available but I might look for a second battery.
- ‘Engineering’ plastics. There are a few comments about the quality of the plastics and they don’t seem all that positive. In fact, overall I think the device looks rather industrial. Not as good as the Q1.
- Wifi is USB-based. Not Centrino chipset based. That will be power-disadvantage and might also trigger the C3 state problem that also occurs on the eo v7110.
- 3dmark 2001 SE – 3585 (eo i7110 is about 900, UX50 is around 2500.) Personally I’m not interested in 3DMark scores but its nice to know that the Intel graphics combined with the Pentium keep it ahead of the rest.
- 1.3Mp camera is good enough for web conferencing.
- Noticeable heat build-up. Fans started after 30 minutes. Noise was noticeable.
- The review sample only had Windows XP home edition. TabletKiosk versions have Windows XP Tablet Edition.
- Covered USB connectors look good.
- Mic and line-out on top is not the best positioning.
- Hardware brightness buttons.
- Stereo speakers “very clear voice soft music, while bass inadequate.”
- Backlit keys are good.
- Video output switch on the docking station. Looking at the icons, it seems to be a switch between TV and VGA outputs. I am really hoping that I’ll be able to drive a VGA monitor and the eo screen at the same time as separate screens.
- Pointer needs practice to get used to.
In general I get the feeling that this is a standard UMPC like we’ve seen before. Nothing groundbreaking. Personally I haven’t been expecting anything more than this because its probably a 2005 design and the only thing that I really found that made it stood out from the others was the included docking station. However, I’m a little curious now to see was gaming I can get going on it.
The heat and noise issues are the most worrying thing mentioned in the review. Quite what baseline this reviewer was using thought, we don’t know. To be honest, if it’s quieter than this Athlon-64 laptop I’m using right now, I’ll be happy!
Here are some picture edits from the review. There’s a lot more on the website. Google translation here. Original here.
Steve / Chippy
Carrypad data-sheet. eo i7210 eo i7209
tags: umpc, eo, i7210, review, founder, mininote, lucoms, solo
