HP Giveaway Linkage - Jake Ludington

My post for an additional entry :).

Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway

HP Giveaway Linkage - Gearlive

My bonus entry in hopes of winning the HP giveaway, come on Gearlive :)

Gearlive

Playing Catchup

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't been able to post lately. Been crazy busy with school and life. I have a bunch of tech stuff to fill you in on as soon as I get the chance as well as post my Samsung Omnia Review. It's almost done, just need to find time to finish it. Hope to post soon.

OQO 02 Review

After owning the OQO now for some time now I feel like I could write up a nice thorough review of specific aspects of the OQO as well as some thoughts. I am not going to go into detail about everything on the device as you can find many reviews for that around the web seeing as this device has been around for awhile. I am going to cover what usually isn’t covered as in depth (ex: media). I have my YouTube videos linked on the bottom of the page.

Screen:

The screen on the OQO is crisp and everything looks great except from certain viewing angles, specifically when looking at the screen head on (check out my video for a detailed look of it). When doing so the screen seems much darker. Most vertical and horizontal viewing angles are good. With a great screen like that why not watch videos on it? This is a device that you will probably carry with you almost everywhere you go.

Nice crisp display

Video:

Video playback is great on the OQO, as long as you use GOM player and set it to high priority. Playing a simple AVI file encoded at a total video bit rate of 146 kbps in Media Player Classic results in stuttering while the same clip in GOM Player will play fine. If you wish to play HD content on the OQO it is possible as long as you have no other processes running to drain CPU cycles. Check out my YouTube video to see HD playback in action. Another great thing about the size of the OQO is that it can be used as an eBook reader.

eBook and Reading:

I personally don’t read eBooks on my OQO but I am sure that there are people out there that do like to read and will probably be able to find a more optimized eBook reader for the OQO than I found. The one I show on video works fine but can be a bit small for some people. There really isn’t a whole lot to reading on the OQO. You got a book, and you read it. One thing I do read a lot of is my Google Reader feeds and I like that I am able to take my feeds offline with Google Gears and read them conveniently at my leisure. Being that the OQO fits nicely in my hands I rotate the screen, close the lid, and scroll through my feeds with the touch scrollers. Definitely gives me a nice reading experience. Oh and one good thing I found to use was a program called ScrollMaster from Kenrick of Teaching, Technology, and Learning blog. Here is a link to the ScrollMaster App: http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/techteach/?q=node/53.

How I do my reading

Must have App:

With this program I was able to map my horizontal touch scroller to perform a left click and flip pages for me which is very convenient so that you don’t have to leave the screen up and hitting the left click to flip a page. The other great feature of this program is the ability to turn the touch scrollers off when you bring a Wacom pen to the screen and turn them back on when you remove it. This prevents any vectoring that may occur while you ink and brush your hand across the touch scrollers. This is something that OQO should have default on the device but I can’t complain because at least someone decided to make it and make it available for free (thanks again Kenrick J).

Gaming:

I have read on many forums that users are interested in trying to game on this device and it is possible, but not the greatest experience. Older games such as StarCraft work well and the device has no problems playing it but newer games such as Warhammer Dawn of War may struggle.

Certain games such as StarCraft are not formatted for widescreen play and this may pose a small problem to some. First off you will have black borders resulting on either side of the game viewing area (it does not fill up the whole screen) and second is for people who thought of playing real time strategy (RTS) games with the pen. As a result of the game formatting for a standard screen and the digitizer widescreen, it conflicts and results in off points.

The gameplay though of StarCraft on the OQO is smooth with minimal lag. Everything works fine and playing with the nub is alright but not exactly comfortable (that goes for every game I test). I didn’t try playing a full game with over 500 units on at once but I am fairly certain then it will result in some lag. The other RTS game; Warhammer 40k Dawn of War is a fairly recent game and requires a lot more power. This game I played a little more in depth with and I can safely say that this is not an optimal game for the OQO. It runs at a playable frame rate with a minimal amount of units on screen but as soon as the fighting picks up the OQO struggles.

Another type of game I like to play is first person shooters. I really enjoy playing Counter Strike Source but on the OQO that is impossible so I attempted to play the original Counter Strike on it and it played just fine. I initially tried to play with just the nub and I had shooting mapped to the enter key but boy was that hard to play. My reaction obviously can’t be fast enough with the nub and moving with the WASD keys were tough because of the way they are aligned. If you are using the OQO as a desktop replacement though and have an external mouse and keyboard then gaming is fine, this just won’t be something you will be able to do lying around the house.

The other FPS game I tried was Halo: Combat Evolved. Just like Warhammer this game had trouble running on the OQO and there were many dropped frames. If you started to get into a firefight of any kind the OQO would definitely bog down. I didn’t bother trying anything after the first level. Check out my video to see how it plays.

Benchmarks and Times:

Here are the scores for some CrystalMark tests I ran as well as some timed tests. Seeing as the OQO has no HD light I just stopped timing when I no longer saw any load icon and it was usable without lag. For the sleep tests I had firefox open with multiple tabs as well as side notes (from onenote). Same thing goes for when I did hibernation. For the shutdown test I closed all open applications first. Don't forget to give or take a second for human error.

Vista - XP Tablet

Mark	14226	14230
ALU	2666	2633
FPU	2306	2350
MEM	1660	1475
HDD	2669	2592
GDI	2626	2659
D2D	2084	2041
OGL	415	480

Sleep	13s	17s
Return from Sleep	15s	14s
Hibernate	40s	39s
Wake	52s	44s
Boot	3m 32s	2m 6s
Shut down	17s	17s

Desktop Replacement:

If you wanted to use this device as a desktop replacement it is possible. It would be much better if I had the real docking station instead of just a stand but I made due with my budget in mind. When I initially recieved the OQO I used that to replace my laptop for all my tasks except gaming. Everything worked great except that my bluetooth keyboard would keep disconnecting and it still does that to this day. I have updated to the latest drivers and I have tried trouble shooting but it would disconnect every so often. Other than that specific issue I have no problems using this as a desktop replacement.

How I use my OQO as a desktop replacement

Input Methods:

The thumb board on the OQO is flawless (or as close as you can get). It has great distance between the keys, excellent backlight, and nice tactile feedback when clicking. This is how a thumb board is done if anyone wants to do it. If you wish to ink on this device then it is great for it. The use of a Wacom digitizer instead of a touch screen is a better choice I think seeing as Windows is not optimized for touch.

All the different input options

Battery Life:

The battery life on this baby is really good if you have both double and single capacity battery. The OQO I am using is a year old and I still get just over 4 hours on the double and 2 hours on the singles. I underclock my proccesor when I am on battery and it helps to extend the battery life a bit longer.

Just a comparison of the 2 battery sizes.

Conclusion:

I love the OQO but I don’t at the same time. This is definitely a sexy device and it has a great range of accessories to make full use of the OQO’s capabilities. The power is enough for me to do any tasks that I want and it is pocketable (to an extent) so you may bring it with you anywhere you want. It has great battery life and an excellent thumb board to type on. The digitizer allows inking without any vectoring instead of having a touch screen and my biggest plus from me, it is pocketable.

I just don’t like the OQO for the fact that the reliability on one of these devices aren’t that great. I have had to RMA the OQO once already because of the touch scrollers and within 2 weeks of recieving it, after a month long wait, the middle of the screen no longer recognized the Wacom pen. As I am not in Canada I have to pay to ship it down to the States and pay someone else to ship it back to me. It is hard to pay continuously pay money for something that will probably break in the near future. If people are interested in buying an OQO though you can get them pretty cheap on forums such as OQOTalk and on eBay and generally they come with all sorts of goodies.

Samsung Omnia First Impressions

Hey all, sorry it has taken so long to get some quick first impressions up but I have been busy. So on to the device.

The Omnia is my first Windows Mobile device so I will try making sure I understand as much of it as I can before I publish a review but so far on the Omnia I am not impressed.

Samsung has tried hard to put a "skin" over top of the GUI to make it more touch friendly and it has. It has succeeded in making only a couple menus finger friendly while the majority of them are still small and hard to hit.

The addition of haptic feedback (vibrating when you touch the screen) is a plus to an extent. Sometimes it vibrates but doesn't always register the touch. It may take a couple tries.

Video playback is nice with the default DIVX support but not all my files worked. I will try many different things before I publish a review.

Texting is nice with the horizontal QWERTY keyboard but there are times when it is frustrating because once again there is vibration to alert you that you hit a key. So I then assume it registered the key press and move on to the next letter when it in fact didn't. The result is lots of deleting.

So there are my initial impressions, I hope to have a review up after I have used it for a little while longer. If anyone has questions or things that you want me to try, leave a comment.

UMPC Attration

In response to an article I read over at Pocketables about the love for mobile gadgets but really no need for it I feel compelled to type a reply. I believe fall into this category. I don’t truly have a need for these mobile devices but I love it. I love being able to be portable if I want to be and it started as a kid.

When I was little my family always had to go to Chinese Banquets or always going out to peoples houses as my Dad was on the Chinese Association Committee. As a result of this we were out a lot and there was never anything to do out there. I was too young to play with the big kids as well so just mostly sitting there listening to old people talk for hours on end was hardly on my to-do list.

Then along came the GameBoy Colour. I love video games and now being able to take them on the road was awesome. I spent many hours playing Pokemon as a kid. Maybe too many but that’s beside the point. This has allowed me to do what I want wherever I want.

When the PSP and DS came out, I bought them right away and still to this day the only games I ever seem to beat are the ones on handhelds as I never feel like sitting down and playing something on a console anymore.

Thus comes the age of portable computers. I am more into PCs than anything and with the OQO I can become mobile if I choose to. I can play a game, surf the internet, or watch a movie. I don’t have to be tied down somewhere to do something I like and I think that is the reason I love these expensive gadgets.

Link

Samsung Omnia Unboxing

Guess what the Fedex man brought me ;)? The phone (Samsung Omnia if you haven't read the title by now) actually got here really quick. Two days in fact when it came from China. That is record timing. I was also extra lucky in the fact that he came to my house twice today. I missed him the first time since I was at work but he came back later, which is great for me. So thus I have done an unboxing video for anyone that is interested and I will be posting my first impressions in a few days. Enjoy.