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Fully-functional Miniature Notebook Planned
florin writes "Check out this upcoming extremely cool micro-sized notebook from Microsoft-cofounder Paul Allen's company Vulcan (who were previously mentioned on Slashdot some time ago). Despite being small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, this is a fully blown x86-compatible computer capable of running Windows XP - or, presumably, a Unix of one's choice. Featuring an 800x480 pixel display, 256 MB of memory, sound, USB2, WLAN and optional Bluetooth, GPRS/CDMA or Firewire, this is far more than just another PDA, yet still small enough to carry with you at all times." Looks really cool, but I wouldn't plan on using full typing speed on it's tiny keys.
The Lifebook series by Fujitsu, and much better specs. http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildse riesbean.do?series=P1
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
If not, I've been doing it wrong for years...which is entirely possible. ;-)
You have been. "It's" vs. "its" is a common confusion, since it is the opposite of the usual use of an apostrophe.
it's = it is
"its" is used for possession
First of all you admitted that you've reported on this before. Second of all this isnt revolutionary.
I currently have a Sony PCG-U3 which is the current titlle holder for smallest laptop. It runs a 900mhz crusoe CPU, got 256mb ram a 20GB hd and 800x600 display. This tiny laptop is only sold in Japan. The keyboard makes it really difficult to touch type, because you have to watch out to make sure your fat fingers dont touch other keys by mistake.
Exactly the opposite. With most words, you can use 's to indicate possesive or contract with is. You don't use 's to indicate possesive with it, you use its.
Here, I'll let Bob explain further
http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
Full article available here.
If you sign up to be spammed, it asks
:)
"Interested in reserving a spot on the wait list to purchase a Limited Edition Mini-PC for $1,999, available late 2003:"?
I don't know if "Limited Edition" means more expensive than usual, but that gives you an idea of the order of magnitude of the price.
Bow down to your one and true Master, fellow nerds :/
The PC110 was, and until this M$ thingee comes out, is the smallest laptop ever made.
Now, they go for insane amounts of money on ebay. As a 486, she goes for more cash than the pentium Librettos do
I'm a huge palmtop fan (HPLX/Amity/Libretto/etc), and if this new thing is priced right, I'd be interested... but it'll probably suck
Yet more proof that anything anyone has ever done, IBM did first
--- Do you believe in the day?
I can state for a fact it is possible to learn to touch-type on these little keyboards, but this is greatly affected by keyboard travel and the keyshapes giving good positioning feedback.
On a regular keyboard I can break 80 words per minute pretty easily (up until about 2 a.m.), and on the Psion I was able to average about 25 w.p.m. with some considerable practice. The Psion however was designed with good keytravel, and the chopped pyramid keystyle gave comfortable tactile feedback as to how my hands were positioned.
The essential ingredient to getting the speed up was increase one's (right to left) hand tilt to about 45 degrees and learn to stike the keys a little more with the outside edges of your fingers. The extra tilt works like the arms of an old manual typwriter letting typing elements that are normally to fat for the space they have to share swing into each other's flight paths to share (in the typewriter case a single spot) a smaller space.
I would strongly caution anyone who needs typing speed against purchasing this online. Go to whatever computer store might stock such a thing and make sure that the tactile and positioning feedbacks are going to be sufficient for your needs. This will probably be at least a $1000 toy, so no-one is going to begrudge you a few 30 minute sessions standing in their store playing with it.
the ibm pc110 started it all back in the mid-90's. i have one actually. it's tiny, a pain in the ass to type on until you're used to it and terribly underpowered. i can imagine one of these things being more powerful, but even smaller? speaking from esperience, it'd make it useless to most every user (though i do admit, the server room maintenance idea was good). that's why i've been keeping my eye on similarly powerful machines of a usable size.
the sony vaio u-101 is the brand new update to the vaio u series. most notably to the speed and memory enhancements it adds a lay-flat design and a display that rotated to landscape with the push of a button which is nice for reading e-books or any long document.
and my favorite the jvc interlink mp-xp7230. also the latest in it's series. it's much larger than the vulcan and u-101 placing it at the smallest end of the sub-notebook category rather than a real mini-pc. i've used one of these and typing isn't even an issue. the pointing decive is a tried and true, blue, rubber nipple in the center of the keyboard with laptop-style mouse buttons along with a touch pad below the keyboard. no proprietary mega ports here. everything is seperate so there's no need for an expensive port replicator or converter dongle which we will all eventually loose.
both of these devices have been mentioned before and linux runs perfectly on both aside from some yet to be reproduced proprietary features you'll never miss anyway. and for those of you worried about jvc's first forray into this area, i can tell you it ran rock solid both on and off ac power for three months wile the friend i borrowed it from was away at basic training.
if the ink weren't still wet on my mortgage papers, i'd sure as hell have a jvc interlink mp-xp7230, fully expanded with an external cd-rw/dvd-rom.
You never add an apostrophe AFTER the s, as you just suggested.
Let's go over the rules for commas.
1) Contractions: When two words are run together with letters ommitted -
This question's difficult = This question is difficult.
I can't understand = I can not understand.
- In formal writing, contractions should be avoided.
2) To indicate posession:
John's book. The teacher's pen.
- If the noun is plural AND ends in an S already, we put an apostrophe AFTER the final S
"The students' books"
"The teachers' lounge"
- If the noun is plural and does NOT end in an S, we add an S after the apostrophe:
The women's washroom
- Indicating posession with names: (some variation in some schools on this)
For an english name that ends in an S, you add 'S
James's book.
- For an english name ending in S but pronounced "iz", you just add an apostrophe after the final S
Bridges' play. (because we don't prounce it "Bridgeses play, it sounds wrong.. but Jameses sounds okay)
The killer: ITS and IT'S (there is no its')
ITS (no apostrophe) indicates posession. Always. There is never an apostrophe when we want to talk about something belonging to IT. Yes, this is totally backwards.
IT'S means IT IS or IT HAS (basically a regular contraction)
ALSO: NEVER add an apostrophe when changing something to the plural, ie:
1990s, not "1990's",
My celeron 500s temperature, not "My celeron 500's temperature", and so on.
Check Dasher. According to users, it takes just half an hour or so to learn to write quite fast.
(mentioned here before)
It's all a trade-off between power, size, and cost. And it doesn't look like Vulcan has any better technology than anybody else.
IBM Research's Metapad is similar in form factor. I really like this size for the power and the screen resolution (800x480) is just right to be useful and scalable.
If you want some kind of fancy chordboard or touchpad thing, fine; one that I like is the Half Keyboard which uses the QWERT half of a keyboard and a shift key, and has one model with USB for Macs and also a wrist-mount version, but it's not usually necessary to do silly things.
What I didn't see mentioned was an Ethernet interface (though USB frobs can work) or any discussion of power (batteries? 3-pound AC power bricks? battery lifetime?) or price, but I assume that everything except price will be reasonable.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks