SteveNYC, a member of the forums here, received his Always Innovating Touchbook yesterday. He’s put some words and pics up via Twitter already but we’ve been in touch and he’s been kind enough to share some of his initial thoughts about the device. Steve owns a range of mobile devices so he knows what he’s looking for in a product. [All photos from SteveNYC]

To cut straight to the chase, Steve isn’t that happy with the device and has sent us a list of things he’s not happy about.

• The device is top-heavy as it is, not including the magnets.   With the keyboard attached, you would not dare touch the screen without something behind the screen to support it.
• The tablet is attached to the keyboard by two simple plastic slide locks, nothing more.  Very flimsy. Not spring loaded.
• The top cover of the tablet portion, which houses all of the equipment, is held by a single plastic slide lock, also not spring loaded.  It makes the tablet locks seem well made in comparison.
• The entire device flexes and creaks, especially the top of the case.  There are numerous small gaps and openings throughout the device.
• The keyboard is very small.  All the necessary keys are there, but it feels smaller than my Dell Mini 9 keyboard and THAT’S a small keyboard.  Keep in mind the Mini 9 is a smaller device with a smaller screen.
• The keyboard connector for the Tablet has two metal connectors but only one is used.  The other looks to be a dummy.  It fits into an open space in the tablet.  It has no purpose whatsoever.  It looks like they wanted it solely for symmetry. Update: This is a feature that allows the screen to be inserted either way round.
• The Touchpad is very, very difficult to move. I found myself using the edge of my nail sometimes or making grand sweeps with my finger.  That’s minor and will likely be resolved via software tweaking.  But the two buttons are small and recessed.
• Touch screen responsiveness was poor.  This is not surprising given the early build of the software.  But it’s still poor.  It  feels very grainy.  It’s a soft touch digitizer for certain.  There was “bleeding” when I tried to write with the included stylus.  I expected that but it’s still disappointing.
• Screen brightness was low.  I could find no way to increase or decrease brightness.  This will likely be resolvable with some software tweaks, but for now, it’s simply dim.
• The whole device has the feel of a mock-up.

I’ve also asked about the browsing speed and he says that it’s slow via the Firefox browser. Apparently the Fennec browser isn’t working for him.

In summary he says:

My issues with the device are not related to the software.  It’s beta software and AlwaysInnovating has been upfront about that from the start.  Considering it’s an ARM processor and not an Intel (lower performance, better battery life) I’m not too surprised.  This is the other side of the power/battery compromise that we’ve seen in a Netbook arena that has been all about the Intel Atom processor to date.  The software WILL improve.  The issue here is simply put… build quality, or lack thereof.

All in all, we’re not getting good vibes from Steve. He’s not the only one with a Touchbook out there though. ‘Adric’ has posted his first impressions.

Overall the hardware is pretty cool. The tablet itself has some weight to it and is not balanced by the weight of the keyboard, so it can tip.The software is labeled as beta and seem to be improving quickly. The community has started up today and looks promising.

There’s the top-heavy problem again and more indication that the software is far from ready. This sounds like Maemo from 3 years ago! The Touchbook is clearly not ready for consumers yet. For $399 you can’t expect miracles, especially from a new, small company but with so much competition out there consumers aren’t going to be rushing into the Touchbook if it’s only in a ‘hack-ready’ state. We’ll monitor the situation and bring you more reports over the next few weeks. We’ll also add articles to the Touchbook information page as we find them.

Thanks to SteveNYC for the feedback so far. You can find all of Steves photos in the gallery.

Several days ago I put up a post asking which device was most anticipated by readers of our site. 648 of your responded and I’m here to share the results. Take a look at the graph below:

For readers who didn’t have a chance to participate in the poll from the previous post, here is the list of devices which readers could have chosen from (click the link to be taken to the product’s Portal page).

Crunchpad | Asus Eee T91 | Archos 9 | Always Innovating Touchbook

As I watched the results roll in, the Eee T91 stayed the leader for nearly the entire duration of polling. The CrunchPad came in second, followed by the Archos 9 and then the Always Innovating Touchbook. There was a good amount of ‘other’ responses. in fact enough to tie the CrunchPad for second place (I’ll add more devices to the poll next time!). What I found interesting was that some people filled in the ‘other’ dialogue with existing devices, and some filled it in with devices that they would like to have, but might not be products at this point. Here is a short list of ‘other’ entries for existing products:

• Viliv X70 [Portal page]
• Viliv S7 [Portal page]
• Asus Eee T101H [Portal page]
• Kohjinsha SK3 [Portal page]
• Asus Eee Keyboard PC
• Open Pandora
• ION/Tegra based netbook

And a short list of ‘other’ entries featuring devices that don’t yet exist:

• Apple tablet
• Archos 5” Android device
• LG UMPC (this person must be old school!)
• Next Nokia Internet Tablet (several people called this the N900)
• Viliv S5 with keyboard

Interesting suggestions everyone. Thanks for participating in this poll. Its good to know people are looking forward to these devices. We have quite a few nice products lined up that we’ll be reviewing for our readers. Chippy has the Viliv S7 coming eventually, and we’ll also hopefully have our hands on the Asus Eee T91, and the Always Innovating Touchbook in the near future.

Update: Poll now closed, to see results head over to this post.

Just a quick poll to see which devices people are waiting for. There are seveal very nice devices that are still on their way to the market. See the following links below to review the devices before making your choice (also feel free to fill your own answer into the ‘other’ area). Please only vote once.

Crunchpad | Asus Eee T91 | Archos 9 | Always Innovating Touchbook

As we await news of the supposed imminent release of the Always Innovating Touchbook [Portal page], I wanted to bring attention to a demo of the forthcoming Touchbook from a product launch conference called Demo. The demonstration itself is actually a few months old, and maybe it was just me, but it seems like this video demonstration of the hardware didn’t get much notice. Below we can watch the Touchbook being demonstrated by the founder of Always Innovating, Grégoire Gentil.

It is interesting to note that although this seems to be somewhat early hardware, it has the same red top that is purportedly going to accompany the first batch of units that are due to be released this month.

The Always Innovating Touchbook, which made a decent amount of buzz several months ago, should be seeing its first batch of devices released next month, in July. The device is quite unique as the screen can be removed from the keyboard and run as a standalone Slate tablet.

Always Innovating just released some new info stating that the first batch would be out in July, however the software isn’t yet finalized:

We are very excited to have nearly finalized the Touch Book hardware. As you know, we are at the cutting edge of innovation with a new processor, a new architecture, a new design and new applications. The Touch Book Operating System will continue to be a work-in-progress over the next few months. As beta software (and not beta à la Google News), you should not expect a flawless experience by July. But don’t worry, we will be here to provide support, and we intend to push frequent updates so as to continue improving the user experience. With your feedback, we will be able to test, refine, and prepare for a final software release later this year.

It is an interesting situation that they have essentially finished the hardware before the software and will now be pushing units out to get feedback from early-adopters. We should be receiving a Touchbook from the July batch, so stay tuned for coverage. Full device specs below:

• Texas Instruments OMAP3530 with Micron 256MB (RAM) + 256MB (NAND) Memory
• 8.9” 1024×600 A+ screen
• Main storage: 8GB SD card — we decided to change from Micro SD to standard SD, so that you can easily upgrade it
• Internal USB wifi 802.11 b/g/n powered by a Ralink 3070 chipset
• Internal USB bluetooth class 2.1
• FCC, CE, UL-certified, 5V, 3.5A power adapter
• 8.9 inch pressure sensitive touch screen
• US Qwerty 24cm-large keyboard — around 95% of the size of a standard keyboard
• Cirque Touchpad
• Two Owolff high-quality internal stereo speakers
• 3D accelerometer
• Two internal batteries 6000 and 12000mAh — it can be replaced with a screw driver
• 7 USB ports: three external, four internal, three of them may be reserved for wifi, bluetooth and keyboard
• Bi-color silver/black case — see photos — with a beautiful dark-red back cover (we decided to go only for red for the first batch as it really jumps out, you won’t regret it).
• Secured attachment system of tablet into keyboard
• Independent magnet system for the tablet — we don’t want your Touch Book to un-magnetize all your credit cards while carrying it in your bag!

I bolded ‘pressure sensitive’ in the touchscreen spec above as I’m not 100% sure what they are trying to imply. One could say that all resistive touchscreens are ‘pressure sensitive’ because they sense a certain pressure on the screen and translate that to input. However, the specific denotation of ‘pressure sensitivity’ in these specs almost seems to imply that it will have several layers of pressure sensitivity, like that of a graphics tablet. While I think it is unlikely that is the case, it would be quite interesting to have several levels of pressure sensitivity in a small Slate unit.

The new info also lists the software that will be shipping with the early units as well as software that is on its way:

• Linux 2.6.29 with all the required drivers
• Xfce 4.4 desktop environment
• A unique 3D interface for starting applications with your finger
• Firefox 3.0 and Fennec beta 2
• Youtube and daily motion support
• A video and music player
• Abiword and Gnumeric
• A chat manager, Pidgin
• Mypaint 5.1
• An ebook reader, Fbreader
• A printer manager, Cups
• All usual accessories (zip, picture viewer, dictionary…)
• Support for most standard USB accessories
• Java support

Good to see that Fennec is going to be on the device. If you’ll recall, Fennec is a mobile version of Mozilla’s Firefox which focuses on touch input. See our short video demo of it here.

There is also some upcoming software improvements which they hope to bring to the 1.0 release. Those include the following:

• Skype compatible application
• OpenOffice 3.1
• A full Adobe Flash solution
• Recognition of the Touch Book by iTunes to synchronize your music and video
• A Google-maps-based application with GPS support (GPS USB not included)
• Some 3D accelerometer-based iPhone games

The ‘iPhone’ games mention is a bit iffy. I’m doubting that they are talking about having actual iPhone games on the phone, but instead probably some accelerometer based games, and maybe some based on existing iPhone games.

I suppose we’ll find out the answer to our questions in July when we get our hands on one.

I had an update from TI’s ‘Mobile Mover’ Seshu Madhavapeddy on Thursday evening and came away with a very strong impression that Ti want to conquer the whole ‘Ring of FIE’ with their OMAP 3 platform. PMPs were mentioned (Archos.) Smartphones were mentioned (Samsung Omnia HD, Palm Pre) and so were tablets and netbooks.  Seshu also outlined how ARM-based netbooks would differ from the netbooks we know today buy talking about targeted markets and highlighting the Always Innovating TouchBook. He asked me if I’d heard of it. Bells rang in my head and as I scrambled to Google search and saw the first image, I remembered that I really should have brought this to the top of my to-do list sooner. It was announced at the same time as I was in Texas for SXSW and I never got round to checking it out in detail. I’m glad Seshu highlighted it because it looks and sounds great. We’ve put a UMPCPortal order in for one because, like the SmartDevices Q7, there’s going to be a lot of questions about it.

You’ll remember the device from the photos.

More photo’s in the gallery.

The specs are interesting too. It’s based on an OMAP 3 platform which is the same as is being used in the Open Pandora project and the next Nokia Tablet  along with the aforementioned Pre and Omnia. It will run a Linux distribution (The Ångström Distribution) with a Fennec browser and the hardware includes a two-part chassis. The screen contains the components and can operate standalone. The keyboard is a simple add-on which means you can carry the two together as a netbook and then separate them for ebook reading and browsing. The keyboard also contains an extended battery. You can buy the tablet for $299 or the complete unit for $399 putting it right in the netbook space.

It’s an interesting concept with a smooth design that fits well in the UMPC segment and we look forward to receiving our order and getting down to testing it out. No release data is available yet but according to their website, Always Innovating are ‘targeting to ship the first units early this summer.’ According to an email from the founder, Grégoire Gentil, Always Innovating should be releasing more information in June.

We’re tracking information in the portal under a new Touchbook product page.