As noted in the other post, I just received my Q1 (bought off of Ebay) this weekend. Very excited and impressed so far. I'll try to update this thread periodically. I won't cover as much of the technical aspects, I think that's been done in many other places. Instead I'll try to give a more personal review of usability, as a few others here have.

Just some background, I'm definitely a gadget hound when it comes to multimedia devices. I try to be good/conservative but some times these things come along and I just can't resist. Particularly when they look to be a really nice piece of engineering, and the Q1 really fits the bill. Most of the more "prominent" reviews seemed really poor, which surprised me a bit. But seeing that the user impressions on Cnet and some more personal reviews were much more favorable convinced me this was something I needed to try for myself.

I started to realize that the bad reviews tended to be people who spent a short time with the unit, and were simply looking for faults to find and things the Q1 couldn't do, as opposed to the real users whose optimism and creativity led them to all the things it *can* (or can potentially) do. I prefer to live on the latter side.

That said, my general feeling for the Q1 (and perhaps the whole UMPC concept) is that it prevents an almost unique piece of hardware that will hopefuly allow its users to think outside their traditional box. Comparing the Q1 directly to a regular PDA or a notebook or a media player doesn't really make sense; the whole point is that it can function similarly to all of these units. It may not do any single thing as good as a more traditional piece of dedicated hardware, but it stands alone in its form factor and ultimately in its best feature: versatility. One second its a multimedia movie player, the next a full browser, then a nice handheld game machine, (with an attachment) a GPS unit for the car, etc etc. Again, there are devices that do each of these functions better, but none I know of that do them all in the same package and convenient form factor.

The screen is gorgeous and a very nice size upgrade from my old Archos AV500 and iPod, or any of the old PDAs I've tried. Sure it's not pocket portable but I'm willing to compromise for the larger, nicer screen. The key is that it's still small and light enough that I can carry it around to more non-traditional spots, i.e. places I wouldn't necessarily bring my laptop. So it becomes a great companion on the deck, in bed, on the sofa, in the car, on the kitchen table, or yes, even in the bathroom I'm sure there are some who might argue a mini laptop goes just as well in any of those spots, but for me, this unit is the first I've actually felt comfortable holding in these odd spots. Moving to the tablet interface is actually more natural for certain things (and this is coming from someone who is a keyboard fanatic).


... to be continued...

Nice overview of the device.

I am glad you have found a use for the UMPC in your bathroom. :)

Keep us posted on you experiences with the device.

Morning Story

Here is a slightly embellished morning timeline meant to give an impression of the Q1's versatility in action.:

After getting up in the morning, I boot the Q1 up. Carrying it out, I prop it up on the kitchen table and proceed to get breakfast. By the time I'm back at the table, Windows has loaded and I'm ready to go. I tap on explorer and bring up my home page (Google customized). My gmail account says I have new mail so I tap and quickly check it while eating breakfast. There's a song stuck in my head from the previous night, so I tap on iTunes and do a little search for the song title. Soon enough I have the song loaded up and playing while I finish eating and checking the news online.

Done with that, I head to the bathroom and prop the Q1 up by the sink. Load up an episode of The Office to play while I'm shaving and washing up, almost nick myself laughing when a punchline hits. After that, I pick it up and head back to my room, attach an external hard drive (gotta love USB these days) and make a few taps, transferring some files over I'd been meaning to get to later. Plug a USB stick in the other slot and copy some key files onto that. Files transfer while I'm getting dressed.

I download and then run a quick install on a game demo, and in minutes it's loaded up. Spend another 10 minutes playing the new game before finally shutting down and heading out to work...


(Again, this isn't to say I couldn't have accomplished the same tasks with a variety of other devices, but to do them all this effectively with a single unit is pretty darn cool. Plus there are certain things that I generally would just not consider doing on a larger, or smaller, device.)

Gaming Update 1

I told myself before buying the Q1 I wasn't going to concern myself with gaming capabilities (mainly focusing on the multimedia and internet). But, I'm a gamer at heart and couldn't resist. It's interesting to check out some older classic games, and note which are effective with a tablet device. I haven't had a lot of time to really play, so these are just initial thoughts. I tried to focus on games I really loved, as well as games I thought would work well with a pen interface. I'm thinking turn based strategy and puzzle games will be the best shot.

Diablo 2: Took me a while to get this installed (what an annoying install procedure). Finally got it up and running at 800x600. Looks excellent on the small screen. I haven't spent much time playing, but a twitch game like this will need a mouse and keyboard.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2/3: I tried part 3 first but the 800x600 seemed to give it some trouble. I may need to try a few other tricks again to get it working right. I'm happy to say, though, that HOMM2 (downloaded a trial) looks pretty nice and holds up well. I only played a few turns but it seems like the tablet interface meshes well.

Master of Orion 2: Loaded up and ran with no incident. Again I only played a couple of turns and it's been such a long time I didn't remember exactly how to play. However it looked decent and the classic gameplay was fully intact and playable with the tablet.

Might and Magic VI: Installed and loaded without incident. It did NOT look very good, the dated semi 3D graphics were kind of ugly. I could move awkwardly with the left joystick (serving as arrows) but looks like the game really needs a mouse/keyboard to play. So the good news is it works fine, the bad is that it's not very tablet friendly. I'll probably uninstall it.

Bridge: It took me a long time to find a bridge program that looked decent and I was happy with. I couldn't find any old CDs so finally I downloaded Omar Sharif 2 (after trying the demo). Looks great and plays fine at 800x600, bidding was a little hard to hit with the pen but other than that the game played great. Nice match for a tablet.

Mahjong: This was my other problem child. I wanted a classic (table style) mahjong game and there just aren't many around. I had an old Shanghai Dynasty CD but had trouble getting it running. Finally settled (for now) on HK Mahjong Pro. Also downloaded and purchased, and as above it plays excellently as a tablet based game.

Sudoku: Only checked out the included Sudoku very briefly, but if you like these types of puzzles, this is the perfect tablet game, giving you the whole pen and paper feel.

I can think of a variety of puzzle games that would probably work great (bejeweled and Shanghai come to mind). Now I'm in the market for a good turn-based RPG that plays effectively on a tablet (so a simple, all mouse interface would be the best). If anyone has recommendations, please let me know.

Addressing the Critics

I've been genuinely surprised at the amount of negative reviews for the Q1, but in particular the whiny, biting tone of some of the commentaries. It's like some of these people took things personally for some reason. Anyway, I'll try to present a semi-objective viewpoint and look at the good and bad.

(Lack of) Keyboard - to this, all I can say is it's primarily a TABLET. Would I have loved a magical stowaway keyboard that didn't change the size or shape of the unit? Of course! But is it still fully functional without one? Yes! I've been using the stylus for about 90% of my keyboard needs (and again I am a big keyboard fan in real life), either writing things in or tapping. The handwriting recognition is the best I've worked with, and I've played with stuff since the Newton. I haven't tried Dialkeys after all the bad comments, but I really haven't seen a need to. The stylus itself seems to get a bad rap too, but I'm perfectly fine with it; I guess I'm not that picky. For any substantial typing, I just plug in a USB keyboard and am instantaneously typing. Pretty slick if you ask me.

Battery Life - from what I've seen, the included battery is pretty light on life - 2 hours is what people are saying and that seems consistent with what I've seen. More would be great, and it looks like there are optional longer life solutions. Personally I'm not using the Q1 for long bursts of involved activity, it's more of an on-the-go thing. Travelling the shorter life may be an issue.

Performance/Speed - boot time is exactly as the reviews said, a little over a minute standard and around 20 seconds for AVSnow. I would love a faster boot time but honestly it isn't much longer than my high-end desktop or any of the laptops I've owned. I haven't tweaked unnecessary items yet (though I did choose to skip the login to quicken things up) but I think I can improve it a bit. General performance for everything I've thrown at it has been completely acceptable, this ranges from multimedia viewing to gaming to browsing (see above posts). I haven't felt processor limited yet. Again, I say the same thing: a better processor and more RAM, etc would be wonderful, but not at the cost of anything else. As an engineer I'm constantly facing tradeoffs in my designs, and I can see that Samsung probably did a lot of it as well.

Disk drive - first off let me say this thing runs incredibly quiet. I had to put my ear right up to the unit to hear any whirring. I think my iPod is actually louder. Disk speed seems pretty darn fast so that's nice. The size at 40GB is definitely on the small side, but at the risk of sounding repetitive, it's acceptable if I would have had to give up something else. In this day and age of USB hard drives, online storage and streaming content, I don't think having all the drive space on the unit is really necessary anymore. I have a very small plug in drive that adds another 40GB (no power cord needed) and you can now purchase USB flash sticks with 8GB! Expandability has never been better.

Compact Flash - Simple argument here. You can get an adapter from CF to other common formats like SD. But you cannot go the reverse. So I'd say this is a tossup. CF users win, SD users can whine or spend $10-20 for an adapter.

Heat - my unit does tend to heat up at times near the vents, it's not horrible but certainly noticeable during this heatwave period. Not sure what more to say on this. I'd say it could use improvement but it's not surprising given all they've got going on inside in such a small (and light package) with what seems to be no fans or significant heat sinking.

Price point - definitely a stickler. Of course I would love a lower price offering, who wouldn't? However, all things considered, the entry price is not as bad as some have insisted, given this is a fairly new piece of tech that can function in so many different ways, and in a pretty unique form factor. I got it off Ebay for less than $1000 so I'm guessing the price point will drop fairly soon. Some comparisons n the mean time: A good 7" screen portable media player runs around $500-600 but can't do any of the computer-esque functions and may have limitations on formats it can play. A good tablet PDA is also around $500-600 (probably more) but has a smaller screen and is less powerful/versatile in terms of software compatibility. A good GPS car unit is in the same range as well, I saw the higher end ones at $700-800 (I can turn my Q1 into a GPS unit for another $100). A simialrly powered notebook is probably in the $600 range these days as well - but in a significantly larger form factor and without tablet/touch screen functionality.

So if you are willing to accessorize (GPS, keyboard, mouse, disk space, DVD, etc) the overall functionality increases dramatically. Some might argue this drives the price up even more, but again I'd say you have to compare apples and apples. And right now there aren't many other apples to compare this to.

Quickie Gaming Update

I installed the demo of Avernum (www.spiderwebsoftware) last night and it looks like it should work fine. I fiddled around briefly and everything seems good, the mouse interface seems OK.

What's taken a lot more work, though, is what I believe will be the "killer app" game for myself. It took a lot of teeth gnashing, file downloads and internet searches, but I finally got the old classic Magic The Gathering game to work (for those not familiar it's based on the classic card game but also adds an RPG element as well). I just ran a couple of quick duels and it was a ton of fun. Some of the buttons are kind of small but the performance and gameplay lends itself so well to the tablet interface it really didn't bother me. Graphics look decent, and the game uses the entire screen to good effect. You couldn't get this effectively on a PDA and the touch screen makes you feel more "in the game". A bigger tablet might be even better but all in all I'm finally satisfied I found "the game" that completes the system for me.