[update: 4.25 hours battery life under load. Report here.]
Finally, as if they were waiting for Hugo to air his unboxing video, the German customs people released my Vega today and I've just finished the first round of photography and three or four hours playing with it.
My first opinions are good to very good. Way better than I expected. As I suggested in the previous Vega post, this is going to make a great home/car PC.
I was shocked at how small it was when I opened it up. The same thing happened to me when I opened the Easybook P7. Somehow its just hard to imagine full XP machine on this scale and that's what makes it so surprising.
The other surprising thing is the battery life. This thing just goes on forever. I plugged in the battery at about 5pm and as I write this at 12pm, there is still 20% battery left. I estimate that I've been actively using it for well over 3 hours and the rest of the time the device was on but the screen was off. That's exceptional. Unfortunately, notebook hardware control doesn't pick up the battery capacity or drain figures so I can't get a real-time figure on expected battery life. I'll do a more formal test soon.
The controls exceeded my expectations too. The little silver disk on the left is not just a cursor disc, its a proper mouse button. Not as good as the one on the Easybook P7 / eo v7110 but very useable. The additional buttons also work well. I'm starting to get used to them now and I can see that they will make window and menu activities very quick indeed. All the function keys are present there too so shortcuts in a lot of programs can be used well.
As Hugo said in his video review at Ubertablet, the screen quality is excellent. I need to test it in direct sunlight but in bright conditions outside it seemed very good. It will go up to 1024x768 which is really too small to use. The default 800x480 is the best resolution for normal use.
Cool too is the USB mass storage feature. When the device is off or in standby, you can use it as a USB mass storage device. It's a very easy way to transfer files to and from the device. It doesn't work when the device is on which makes sense. Two OS's accessing the same disk is asking for trouble!
The device is not super fast but again, it's better than I expected. I suspect that when a number of applications are running, the 256Mb RAM is going to run out quickly but for explorer, winamp, trillian and skype there was more than enough memory. Boot-up time is.[testing now].....60 seconds to Windows login sound. Standby boot-up time is 5 seconds.
Linux? Yes, boot from Live CD works into Ubuntu so if you want to run a web server on it, go ahead and give it a go! It even detected a firewire interface so I assume that's on the chipset but not present as a physical interface. Don't expect the GUI to work very well though as the keys and touchscreen don't work. Open office worked fine although from a CD-ROM its too slow.
On the downside, the lack of built in WiFi is a killer. I hate the USB WiFi stick. Its such a good looking device and then you have to plug the the stick in. I don't know why Raon thought they should leave it out. Mad. The same goes for Bluetooth. Without Bluetooth, it will seriously limit it's use in a car. GPS, Cellphones and Audio devices could all be integrated with this device but if you have to put a USB stick in, it will reduce it's appeal.
The buttons are not backlit which got me annoyed as soon as I settled down on the sofa this evening. I had to turn up the lights which wasn't the effect I was looking for. The unit also gets hot which isn't so comfortable for the hands.
The VGA adaptor cable was missing from this review sample so I couldn't check the output to a screen and the on screen keyboard is a bit of a mix of English and Korean. I guess they'll tidy that up for the release versions.
Tomorrow I'll install some more heavyweight applications on it to see what sort of performance one can expect. I'm not expecting anything in the 3D department but the rumor is that full-screen video should be possible due to the 2D hardware in the AMD chipset.
All in all, its a really impressive device. Definitely not 'business class' but certainly useable as a high-end media player, a personal storage, email and browsing device, skype phone and navigation unit.
The gallery is here.
Vega data sheet, (specifications, images and links to other Vega resources)
Steve / Chippy
tags: vega, umpc, lx800, ultra portable
According to news from Hugo Ortega in Australia, Tegatech have been appointed as a Samsung partner for the distribution of the Q1 UMPC in that region.
Germany. 
