I worked late last night and rewarded myself with a huge lie-in this morning. I dreamt that someone was ringing the doorbell…..HOLY COW its the EVERUN! You never saw anyone get out of bed so quickly in all your life! I just about managed to make myself a cup of tea and get some clothes on before I turned the video cam on for a quick unboxing to see what the differences were between the retail and production sample devices. I’m pleased to say that Raon have refined the final build quite nicely, apart from the XP installation on the device I got. It wouldn’t activate and all I had was a Korean language install disc! It turns out that Raon sent me the wrong software build and that’s being sorted out now so I should be ready to do the SSD tests later tomorrow. I made a video of the unboxing which isn’t the most exciting video I’ve ever done but if you’re considering the Everun its worth watching.
More info about the Everun including specs, images and review links can be found in the product portal.
Click ‘Read more’ if you’re not already reading the full article…
What I did to get at least some SSD testing completed was to swap the hard drive out of the old Everun and put it into the new one. It looks like the SSD read and write speeds are similar to the HDD although the random read speed is quite a bit higher. This would help a lot with hibernation but for that fact that the BIOS takes 17 seconds to finish its tests on power-on. They need to implement the Fast-Boot option you find in a lot of BIOS’ (that skip the memory test.) I still need to test heat and very importantly, power drain advantages. I’m reckoning on saving about 0.3-0.5 watts which should add about 20 minutes to normal usage.
What I’ve noticed so far on the retail version:
- Stylus silo works better. You can get the pen out with no problem now.
- Battery latch improved slightly but still not that easy. Shouldn’t be a major issue for most people.
- Stylus ‘stand’ improved although I would not use it in, say, a train or anywhere else with vibration.
- Shift key relocation: Very good
- HDD CABLE IS PRE-INSTALLED and I put the 30GB drive from my ‘old’ Everun in with no problem.
- The BIOS does not have a ‘skip memory check’ option and takes 17 seconds before it even gets into Windows boot. That needs to be optimised.
- There is still no WLAN-off switch which I find surprising as the LAN (on the dock I assume) and WAN can be disabled.
- There is an improved raised area around the power switch which is good to prevent accidental on and off.
- Noise level is obviously improved although I think my fan needs to bed-in a little. I can hear it (just) where I couldn’t hear the one on the old device. Overall noise levels are negligible anyway so there’s no real worry there.
- You actually notice the 40g drop in weight to 440gm.
- After Windows install there is 3.39GB free on the SSD. Enough for the install of a good set of app’s but I’m not sure if the hibernate file is included. That could use 400MB leaving 3GB free.
- Retail packaging included the case, ac adaptor (16V output) , manual , Korean recovery CD (in error) , lanyard and spare stylus.
- WiFi is working properly. Not as strong as it could be (or perhaps should be) but its covering my concrete walled house OK.
- Bluetooth is now running at 1mbps. The stack is BlueSoleil 1.6.2 Beta1. It supports A2DP which will be nice for streaming music into a BT headphones or A2DP-capable car head unit.
- The optical mouse has a strange behavior in portrait mode. Its not as responsive as on the old Everun and it has something to do with my thumb! If I turn my thumb through 90 degrees it works but not as I would normally do it. More investigation needed!
Finally, I put up a little gallery that highlights the minor differences on the retail device here. Tomorrow I’ll try and get the OS running on the SSD. Raon have been pretty helpful and have offered to send over the correct image so I should get that tomorrow but now, its late again and I think I will give myself the pleasure of a lie-in tomorrow morning. I hope the postman wakes me up again!
Update: I’ve got the SSD running now and have put some comments up in the forum. In summary, there are improvements but not much improvement in terms of speed.
