Kevin Tofel gave the WiBrain B1H a review last week and Ctitanic has just followed up with his review. Both provide a good overview of the unique features and negative points of the device. Kevin suggests that a lower-priced version without a touchscreen would be a good offering and I agree it would give the end-user a nice choice. If you don’t want to use the device in a car or with any touch-optimised software then its a good option. Frank on the other hand wants to see the OS giving more touchscreen capabilities. He criticizes the decision to ship the device with XP Home saying that it cuts the capabilities of the device by 25%. Obviously that’s only true if some of your work is done using XP TE features. For many, maybe even most people, it won’t make any difference. Again, the option would be nice though.
Both reviews confirm my first impressions report that showed a maximum of three hours in-use battery life although I’d put average in-use life at around 2.75hrs unless you’re careful with backlight settings or run the device at a lower CPU speed setting. Both reviews also confirm fan noise!
One thing is for sure for me, becuase of the WiBrain I now prefer a 1024×600 screen to an 800×480 at 4.8″ and above. Previously I was having a problem with such a high resolution on such a small screen but by bumping the DPI up to 125, you get the same physical size fonts as with an 800×480 with the advantage that they are sharper. By setting icon sizes to large and running browsing at 125% (especially good in IE7) you also get a better clarity than in 800×480. I’ve also widened my scroll bars up to 26 pixels which enables me to thumb-scroll using the touchscreen. The disadvantage of this of course is that you need to set it up and it can affect some software that doesn’t scale itself properly. As my software-suite runs within a browser, it doesn’t really affect me. If all else fails, running the WiBrain at 800×480 interpolated isn’t bad at all so you really get the best of both worlds.
So, two good reviews well worth reading. My review is on its way but may take a few more days due to some background tasks I have with UMPCPortal at the moment (sponsors, advertising, tax, server maintenance, CeBIT organisation….)
For more info on the WiBrain, see the product page.
