Screen
The 1024×600, 4.8” screen is impressive. High quality images and videos look fantastic. Colors are good and the brightness too. The glossy finish helps fingers slide across the touchscreen for dragging actions but in sunlight, the glossy screen is an annoyance. Watching videos on a sunny day is a no-no. The other issue with the screen is the high resolution. Default windows XP fonts and window elements such as scrollbars and close buttons can be difficult to use and see. The XP font size needs to be set at the 120dpi level to improve readability. ClearType is recommended too.
Viliv S5 photo galleries here.
Screen Viewing Angle
Viewing angle in the horizontal plane is good from both sides. It’s viewable from below too but there’s a big drop-off in clarity and brightness when viewed from above.
On screen keyboard and haptics.
The on screen keyboard is well thought out. It’s activated using the dedicated button (bottom right on the frame) and also uses haptic feedback. A small vibration provides feedback that you’ve pressed a key and for an on screen keyboard, it’s a reasonable experience. There’s no word completion though and numerics are hidden under a ‘Mode’ button. Function keys are missing too. There’s also a problem with focus. Some applications push themselves in front of the keyboard. Most noticeable was the Awesome Bar in Firefox which is a great help when matching typed characters against web history and search. Unfortunately, the selections cover the keyboard and if your next key is hidden by the options, you’re in trouble.
On screen keyboard and firefox drop-down issue. (Click to enlarge.)
Overall, the OSK is useful and for a media consumption and navigation device where the most you will be typing is a URL or password, it wouldn’t have made sense to reduce the battery size to fit a slider or clamshell keyboard into the design.
CubeUI
The CubeUI software is an interesting application. At first it felt like a fun addition to the package but after a while we found ourselves turning it off in favour of the standard, and often quicker, XP desktop. We see where it could be useful though. It can house over 100 applications, shortcuts or bookmarks, includes an easy way to control BT and Wifi, a nice calendar and weather application and is easy to push into the background if you need to access raw XP.
FastWeb Browser
Viliv have included a touch-friendly browser which we believe is based on uZard by Logicplant. The UI is simple and easy to use but the browser itself is slow. The reason is that Viliv have implemented a proxy server, in Korea (fastweb.myviliv.com port 7999.) For users in Korea this is obviously going to be a fast and efficient solution but outside Korea, its not. From our location in Germany, traffic was router over Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco and out through a series of routers in Asia resulting in 0.5 second round trip times. Apart from the potential privacy issues, its slow. Not recommended.
Additional Software:
- I-Viliv update manager: No updates were found through this but we assume it will provide easy access to Viliv software updates.
- Viliv Manager: A simple application for controlling Wifi, Bluetooth, screen brightness, vibration and enabling CubeUI to start on Windows boot. Most of these options are duplicated in CubeUI itself.
- Music studio: A simple music player. Some controls appear in Korean and the application doesn’t run in full screen. A basic application.
- Viliv Player: Plays back video and, where possible, enables hardware decoding. See below.
Infra Red.
We can only assume that the IR panel is for a future upgrade because there doesn’t appear to be any hardware associated with it. We tested with a Media Center remote and got no response.
Performance.
We’ve tested the Menlow platform extensively on 4 different PCs now and we’re extremely happy with it’s balance of performance and efficiency for mobile usage. We pages load promptly and media playback works well. As a synthetic test, we ran CrystalMark:
CrystalMark test results
CPU, GPU and Memory scores are all on par with other 1.3Ghz devices we’ve tested. The hard drive scores are typical of a 1.8” drive and, compared to some of the new SSD drives we are seeing, quite slow. Given that this is targeted as a media device though, a 64GB SSD would have added $200 or more to the price so that speed/capacity trade-off is acceptable.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I see that Mobilx have removed any mention of Viliv from their website. Is America the only place to get one of these? I was hoping that the one with the keyboard would be released in Europe soon.
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May 11th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Ive noticed that aswell. And having it sent from conics costs me 100 bucks, so thats a bit steep.
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May 11th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Chipping under gaming you mention UMID…
Nice review, confirms that I won’t be getting one, though it is nice.
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May 11th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I wish they would have thought twice about the USB location though. wibrain/e-king learned from their mistakes, viliv should too.
My choice was between this device because of its pocketability, and the E-king i1 because of its productivity, but since mobilx has sniped the S5 from their webshop now, I guess theres no more choice to be made for me. :’)
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May 11th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Great Review!! I wish I would get one.
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May 11th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Probably we’ll have a distribution in Spain of the Viliv s5 in todoumpc.com. This shop says that the model
in the shop probably the ssd with hdspa.
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May 11th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
SSD might be costly, but it would give the batterylife a nice little extra bump.
I wish I could speak a word of spanish. :’) I have no clue what im paying for if I buy from that site.
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May 11th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Sorry for my poor level of english.
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May 11th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Just spoken to Dynamism and mine is in today’s post. Luckily this review hasn’t made me want to change my mind!!
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May 11th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
It is a very nice device, but my UX380n has still a better performance
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May 11th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
I hope your wallet has better preformance too.
For some people price matters too.
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May 12th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Chippy,
On one previous video i saw that applications were launched by drawing symbols on the screen. Did you test this very interesting UI feature?
Did you open the device? Can the HDD be replaced, for example by SSD and WiMAX
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May 12th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Squirrel. There’s no gesture-based s/w on this. You might be thinking of StreetDeck which works nicely on the S5 and includes gesture-based commends.
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May 12th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Yes the internal drive can be replaced… I have tested mine with a Mtron MOBI 3000 1.8″ ZIF drive and also a a compact flash card using a zif to CF converter from Addonics.
No idea on the WIMAX tho…
Also the ram cannot be replaced or changed as it is embedded into the board.
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May 13th, 2009 at 12:39 am
maybe intel echo peak 5150 (half size)
http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/products/wireless/wimax/wifi/index.htmusb is needed for wimax (pci-e for wi-fi, but it’s aleady built in)
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May 12th, 2009 at 5:01 am
@squirrel
I think that is StrokeIt and not the UI
Nice review!
Can you please say a word about Portraitmode (browsing and reading ebooks)?
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May 12th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Rotation works although there’s no shortcut button or on-screen menu apart from the Intel graphics software and shortcut. (CTRL-ALT-Cursor keys.)
Touch still works ok.
Because of the vertical viewing angle limitations (it fades quickly when viewed from above), there’s a slight problem because when you hold the device close to the eyes, each eye gets a different color / contrast level. It’s a bit like the effect you get when wearing red/blue 3d glasses. It only occurs when you hold the device close, i think most people could put up with it and some people may not even notice it. It happens with a lot of devices but is more pronounced on hi-res handhelds because you hold the screen closer to the eyes.
Steve
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May 12th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Goodd review! It is one more confirmation not to buy this strange device.
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May 12th, 2009 at 10:32 am
haha. Like it!
As with all UMPCs and MIDs, form factors and software vary wildly. It’s a very personalised segment of computers. The real personal computer!
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May 12th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Hi Chippy
Great review thanks!
Do you have any idea if there’s enough room for an 1.8″ 8mm hdd?? It’s the only thing I need to know before I’ll get mine!
Cheers
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May 12th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Great review Chippy,
I see you are planning to test MapFactor Pc Navigator 9 on the S5.
I’m using Pc Navigator 8 on my Aigo and aside from the obvious battery life issue it is working very nicely,
the interface is very well suited to the touch screen (The menus and icons seem to stay the same size no matter what resolution you have the device screen set to) which i think will be a useful feature on the S3 as the resloution is so high.
Even on the Aigo voice commands are clearly heard (which again i think will be better on the S5)
I will be very interested to see your impressions of the Pc Navigator 9 on the S5, from what i have experienced on the Aigo it should make the S5 into a near perfect Navigation device.
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May 12th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Chippy,
nice review thanks. Just one question: you know something about the release of S5 with SSD and HSDPA? I didn’t participate to the previous Dynamism rush sale, and I don’t know if to participate in the one on this Thursday, because I was waiting for the device with these features. But if it is a matter to wait too long, it is not a good point to wait.
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May 12th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
May, June? No details at the moment. I’m guessing if Viliv are focusing on north america right now that European (HSDPA) launch could get pushed out into June.
S
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May 12th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I’ve just received my S5 from Dynamism. Now just why does the US distribution not include that nifty plastic encasing? Alas, it would have been perfect for some of my work related use. Any chance you’ll sell yours?
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May 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Its not mine. All on loan from Viliv! Sorry.
S
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May 12th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Thanks Chippy,
if it is few months to see available the HSDPA and SSD it’s worth it to wait. Since with an eventual USB modem would be not so confortable to handle for the USB position.
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May 12th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I had a chance to look at this up close in South Korea last week. It does feel pretty solid and the touchscreen was precise. The reason I didn’t purchase it was the resolution was way too small for my old eyes. It may appeal to you younger folks… The price came to $531 after the conversion which is more than I had guessed.
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May 13th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Hi DK. It’s a good point.
It’s not the resolution that’s too high, it’s the default font size in pixels (or ‘points’) that’s too small.
There’s a setting in all versions of Windows (from XP and up, and most other desktop OS’) that allows you to boost the default font size which results in bigger fonts that are the same size as on bigger screens (actually screens with a lower pixels-per-inch to be more accurate) but better defined.
The only downside to this is that you lose the ability to put a lot of text of the screen and that some applications don’t play well with the settings.
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May 12th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
I wrote an email to viliv about 2 weeks ago asking them when the S5 Premium Air will be available in the US and europe and thats what they answeared:
…..
We don’t release yet S5 Air/S7 with SSD and HSDPA in Europe and USA.
(we are talking about several potential partners about launching date and the price of S5 but we haven’t decide it yet)
…..
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May 13th, 2009 at 2:48 am
Do they have an english version of that site? did you just scour the page for an email?
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May 13th, 2009 at 4:54 am
yes they do, but there is still much under construction…
http://www.myviliv.com/eng/index.html
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May 13th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I don’t know… it seems that waiting for a more pocketable and functional Tegra Windows Mobile (or Android) phone seems like the better solution.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/mobile_games_demos.html
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May 13th, 2009 at 2:13 am
Yes, we all think about ARM Cortex (Tegra=ARM Cortex+GeForce+UI), so let’s wait Computex (June 2-6) where Nvidia promise to say when the devices on it will be lauched
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May 13th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Sorry, Tegra is based on ARM11, so it’s not so interesting for universal MID, more for 1080p video and 3D graphics
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May 13th, 2009 at 2:56 am
I know this isnt exactly built for any kind of gaming, but I’d really like to see “Quake 3 Arena” benchmarked, i would think even an underpowered machine could handle it.
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May 13th, 2009 at 10:49 am
What??? No Mic and no SD/Micro SD slot? Even the PSP has a memory slot (granted it’s the stupid Memory Stick).
Uggh, why make such a great device and not include those things. Seems like a no brainer. Geez, at least include it in the Premium models.
Now the hard decision, go for the current model or wait until they fix these glaring annoying problems.
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May 13th, 2009 at 10:57 am
No Mic I can live with, no memory card slot is silly, but I can get over it.
After five minutes with this device (just arrived in UK from Dynamism) and I have to say I’m pretty impressed, the build is great and XP seems to just work. The potential deal breaker for me isn’t the memory card slot, mic or lack of keyboard, it could be the lack of stylus/place to put stylus.
The thing on the lanyard works fine, but it’s already annoying me…
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May 13th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Oh, and if you are waiting for a card slot and mic, then I think the wait will be long. If they are a problem look for another device…
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May 13th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Oh wow, really no SD card? Not even microSD? That makes my decision final, E-king i1 it is then. I have about 32gb worth of SD 8gb cards laying around, and not being able to use these them would be a big loss. As for no mic, I guess a bluetooth headset is nicer to use anyway.
Another detail that made me doubt the S5, was the USB port location. The thing would become useless with an external drive hooked up to it. You would be barely able to hold on to it, not to mention typing on it.
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May 13th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Had another quick play (I really should be doing some work).
Leather case is very nice, and you can use it as a kick stand (at least on a still surface, would need to test a train), would have been nice if they had made that a deliberate feature like Samsung did with the Q1 case, it wouldn’t have been difficult.
The case does have a stylus and place to put it. Surely that means they realised it would be a good idea to have one in the unit?
So I think I’ll keep it in the case, rather than keep the lanyard on. Neither ideal.
Runs all my normal websites beautifully. Need to see if I can find a way to do an increase zoom in firefox from some kind of shortcut. Default text is a little small. It’s probably mentioned in the review, but browse with firefox and install grab and drag. Perfect!
HD seems to have a regular annoying tick. I think there is a thread on Pocketables on it. Will have to check that later.
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May 13th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Seems like they could easily get rid of the antenna and put a stylus silo in it’s place on models exported from the country.
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May 15th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Just bought one of these beauties on dynamism and was wondering if anyone knows of a compatible uk mains adaptor (charger) that I can purchase?
I expect that the default charger will be a 2pin and different voltage than uk
Reply (threaded)
May 15th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Power supply is a worldwide 100-240volts so works fine in the UK.
All you need is one of these at a massive $1.92 delivered to the UK. (Be warned dealextreme can be an addictive place):
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2709
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May 16th, 2009 at 8:17 am
Hi guys
Do you think this can play warcraft 3? It’s not really a modern game, considering the age, but I’m not sure if the GPU is able to handle it..
thanks
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May 21st, 2009 at 7:32 am
Chippy,
I am wondering how to use the virtual keyboard in a pre boot environment, like for example in Bios or in multi boot menu etc..?
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May 21st, 2009 at 9:56 am
You couldn’t, you would need a USB keyboard.
In a boot menu, or in the bios, the buttons on the device would provide certain functionality such as cursor control and enter.
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June 16th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Is it OANDA software possible on this UMPC ?
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August 1st, 2009 at 12:27 am
How much space free after Installing a clean OS? ~28GB?
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August 21st, 2009 at 8:09 am
Anybody got any idea if the F-log model from korea means it includes the 3g module? Or we cannot get the S5 with 3g module from korea directly? tks
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August 27th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I received my s5 3g from Dynamism. Sadly they only supplied it with the battery charger with only north american type electric socket. That socket is changeable on the battery charger, so they could have supplied it with other regions socket too, especially when people send an order from Europe. That changeable socket part is a very cheap spare part but can be very annoying to the buyers not having that with the device. In my country, in Hungary, we use the german standard of electric socket.
Chippy, is it normal that dynamism sent the s5 with that only north american socke type?
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August 27th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Dynamism are a US based operation and get the S5s supplied to them for a US market. They choose to sell them internationally, but don’t have the parts for the rest of the world.
I agree it is annoying.
I couldn’t find the correct part and just paid a couple of euros for an adapter. Not sure what you have in Hungary, but something like this should do the trick?
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13525
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September 3rd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Did you test the wireless speed of the built-in marvel wlan adapter? Mine is disappointingly slow. I didn’t read thouhgts about that in this reveiew. Mine is under the factory installed windows xp home only could around 5Mbs (350-450 kbyte/sec file transfer speed tested in totalcommander and netmeter ) which is much below what 54Mbit/s standard in real world condition usually can (2300-2500kbyte/sec).
Chippy, did you notice that wlan bandwith issue? I updated the drivers and was playing all the settings of the wlan card, but nothing helped.
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September 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Finally since few days I got my S5 3G from Dynamism. The first impresssion is very good even the lack of a onboard microphone and webcam is incomprehensible (I knew anyway) the same for the lack of the card reader, but what has really surprised me is that is not even possible to use the microphone of a headset!!!! (there is only the place for the hearphone jack!!!) So it is necessary to use an USB headset or a Bluetooth one.
The onscreen keybord is ok since I will do mainly a “consumer” use of this device and not a “producer” one.
The 3G works good and was surprisingly positive to find the software to use the device as a cellphone for voice and sms.
The speed of the wireless connection is good.
Another remarks is about the documentation. The manuals are very poor and the support on the website is still not very helping.
Now I am wonderig how to do certain things, like:
- somebody knows how to scroll webpages( and maybe other documents like Word etc.) moving the finger on the touchscreen? I have seen this done on some youtube videos, like the one of the review of JKK. If I do that on the Chrome or Mozilla or IE I got the elements selected instead scrolling pages.
- someone knows how to install the drivers dowloaded from the myviliv website? They are not execurable files, so a not IT expert like me doesn’t know where to put these files.
Thanks
Fra
Reply (threaded)
September 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
ok, about the fact that is not possible to use a headset with microphone is not true!!! I just read this http://forum.pocketables.net/showthread.php?t=3164
Fra
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September 6th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Use Firefox as your browser and then get the ‘grab and drag’ plugin. It does what you need and makes Firefox the first choice browser for devices like this.
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September 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Thanks Marc I will try. Even my preferred web browser is Chrome. You know if there is the same functionality in it? I guess not till it is still under development. And what about other software like Acrobat Reader, Word etc:?
Fra
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September 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Chrome is my preferred browser too, but as it doesn’t support add-ons it can’t do this and won’t be the first choice for tablet devices until it does.
You also want to get the full screen add-on. It let’s you put a full screen icon on the toolbar. Useful for maximising screen space rather than trying to find it in a menu.
Not looked into other drag scrolling stuff for Windows, but do vaguely remember there being a thread over on Pocketables forums. A quick google suggests this may do the trick if you can adjust the settings??
http://lifehacker.com/399221/mouseimp-pro-makes-scrolling-windows-easier
September 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Ok Marc thanks again. I will give a look to that link.
Moreover… you know how to use handwriting recognition in windows xp? There are special software or there is something in windows wp?
Fra
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September 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
You need XP Tablet edition to do this.
Sadly you can’t buy it. So you can’t get it unless you have access to MSDN/technet or a ‘unofficial’ source.
There is a way of hacking in XP Tablet functionality onto XP and a website about how to do it somewhere, but I can’t find my link right now! (I’ll have another look in a minute.)
Again this has been discussed in the S5 forum on pocketables. I suggest you go and have a look over there as you’ll find some other useful tips.
Good luck!
September 6th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Here it is:
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?/topic/21199-tablet-pc-input-panel-for-xp-pro-home-mce-and-original-windows-7-mat/
Quite confusing as they talk about lots of things in one post and the English isn’t perfect.
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September 6th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
ok, thanks once again Marc.
now I have allot to study
Fra
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November 11th, 2009 at 2:12 am
not sure if this has been posted but, I have a problem with the awesome bar on firefox when I use the on screen keyboard. So to fix this I followed the direction here
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/17/dont-think-the-firefox-3-awesome-bar-is-awesome-heres-how-t
and set the value to 2. Now it does not interfere with my keyboard
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