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Handtop Roundup
captainJam writes "As the OQO is due out soon (interview with OQO CEO), it's important to have a look at all of the options. Most are Linux happy, one isn't. Most have a touch screen, one doesn't. The article has comparisons between all the devices and their size, power, connectivity, interface, resolution and a look at strengths / weaknesses."
Turns out a banana somehow ended up in their review of handtops.
I'm serious, what does? They dont have the same power, but really they are pretty much the same.
These just scream please invent me a new interface to me. Maybe we could start learning these babies: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/009201 &tid=137&tid=159&tid=1&tid=218
Hasn't this comparison already been on handtops.com for a while now? I've used the Sony Vaio U-50 a bit, and it's really a nice little package. Sexy little touches like LEDs on the buttons that fade off, the general look and feel of the whole unit, and the 802.11g is very nice as well. I'd buy one for my own personal use if I could afford it. They would be awesome for travelling. They say they're not Linux-freindly, which I don't think is that big of a deal anyway for something like this. If it wasn't for the occasional unpredictable reboot, they'd be perfect!
OQO has been due out soon for a long time now - it sure looks nice, but things are catching up - I hope it really does land.
But it was nowhere in the article. Anyone know if there are decent USB *portable* keyboards around?
The OQO is really cool.
The Vaio U-50 comes with just such a keybaord...
Unfortunately, it's got a Japanese layout (mostly the same as U.S. for Letters & Numbers, but punctuation characters are in way dufferent places).
Why would anyone want a handtop as opposed to a Treo, Palm or 12 inch screen plus fullsize keys laptop? Maybe if these things could play gameboy cartridges...?
Who has a handtop? And what do you use it for? Curious...
-Electrawn
Apparently (according to the blurb), it's "important to have a look at all of the options" -- really? why? Unless, of course, you only mean important to OQO's bottom line?
Urm... why have they got a picture of Bono on the website?
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
the real issue is human I/O, that means screeen size and a usable tool for data input (reasonably sized keyboard and or pen + reasonably effective handwriting recognition) in a format small and light enough to be really portable.
these lack in every aspect
palmtop and tablets are much more close to the ideal
... well, you're right mate, except the fact that there is one small problem that prevents people with experience from buying it:
It's a Sony!
...causes cancer. All of those devices run XP. QED. The best palmtop is a model of Zaurus.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
God. Sexy. Dynamic.
Well the bad guy on season 3 of 24 had an OQO and he used it to escape from Jack Bauer by using it to show him floor plans and escape routes.
So if you're an evil megalomaniac on the run the OQO is surely the palmtop for you!
The flipstart is very close to a traditional laptop. I may be wrong but its use seems most natural when you put it down on a surface and start typing away. Just like a laptop but a lot smaller. With the advantage that in public transport laptops often don't fit.
The OQO is the only other one with a keyboard but it would seem uncomfortable to use for a lot of typing. If you lay it flat down for easy keyboard access the screen will be at an odd angle. Hold it in your hand and you will have to use the old hunt and peck approach to typing. Although it may be small enough to hold in both hands and type with the thumbs I think it will not equal the Flipstart in typing speeds.
The sony has a lot of controls but no keyboard. Clearly aimed at GUI apps therefore. Touchscreen are not a typist dream. It does however have plenty of controls so controlling media or a game or browsing shouldn't be a problem.
The last one is clearly aimed at special markets likely to run their own software. Not really well suited to a desktop enviroment.
The OQO beats the others on size. Important but the flipstart is very close and has the protected screen and is closest to a laptop. The LID thing seems nice as well.
I think it all depends on how much typing you want to do on the move. Lots then it is the flipstart. None then you can go for the sony. OQO sits neatly in the middle and the antelope is just to big.
The flipstart wins again on screensize compared with total size.
What I find odd is that battery life isn't previewed at all. Traditional laptop life times are very very bad. Especially since these devices seem such natural mobile media players.
Oh well, nice toys but we are soon going to see more and more cheap media players. It will be intrestting if they are going to add "extras" just like the iPod has an adress book. iRiver seems to planning some game support for its upcoming media players.
OQO coming out. Half-life 2 gone gold. The Sims finally getting a new engine. Doom 3 out. Longhorn stripped down and getting a closer release date.
Soon we will have only DNF left over as vaporware.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sad that autopr0n.com is down.
I like this. Horny hung hanks and such. The one named xxxGWBxxx is especially hot.
The poll on the page is funny too. They polled people how much they'd be willing to pay, and they started the scale at $1000!
Just get a zaurus and forget these yuppie microsofties who like to pay $400 alone for their winxp pro.
Seems like the handtops might be in kind of a clumsy market nitch. For just a little more you can get a full blown laptop with more power and storage. For a lot less you can get a very functional PDA that does most of what you'd want a handtop to do with a longer battery life that's much easier to carry around. I could see uses for these, I'm just not sure it's a big market.
No, my iPAQ isn't Linux friendly. Had there been a Linux option for my iPAQ I'd certainly have opted for it. Hopefully HP will offer a Linux-based PDA to go with their Linux laptops. That would be a killer combination.
It was pretty funny last night. Having dinner at a Thai restaurant and decided just for grins to kick on the Wi-Fi link. To my surprise it found a network right away, an open wireless router at the mortgage company next door. Great thai food and high speed internet. Nice bonus.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It's funny because I look at tablets the exact same way you look at these devices: not even close to fitting my needs. I can see that tablets are where we may go in 5-10 years but right now the software just isn't there.
I just want a PC I can use like a PC but that's really, really tiny (PDA sized). The FlipStart is really tempting...
They seem to have forgotten one of the longest running and best units in this class. The Psion.
(still posting as AC, I will never remember my username)
While the article covers the U50/U70 model, it doesn't talk about the slightly older (and kinda hard to get, but still obtainable) Sony U101. I've had one for a while and really love it -- I'm typing this message on it right now. The above linked site is my detailed page on running Linux on the system (which I haven't updated in a while, but will soon, promise). Anyway, unlike the U50, it's shaped more like a mini laptop -- but it's still smaller than some of the systems on handtops.com.
I really think the FlipTop is going down the right path. I'd love to get something about the same size as a PDA (maybe a bit larger) but that can run a real OS and all my apps. I don't want to sync my email/contacts/appointments. I want to run Outlook on one computer and that's it.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
While technically not a handtop, I'm definitely looking forward to a flybook. Definitely the most connected portable device out there. Perfect for setting up personal area networks.
http://www.handtops.com/show/news/21
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
OQO's keyboard size is an issue, but the real pity with the keyboard is that they squandered the space they did have available. The layout is extremely wasteful of horizontal space.
The unused space to the left of the keyboard is huge. They also passed on putting the mouse device among the keys as on an IBM Thinkpad, instead putting it in its own dedicated large, wasteful swath of horizontal territory.
They could have put non-alphabetical keys to the left of the querty down in an additional row, but they did not. On the left side the shift key alone is as wide as two other keys!
And having a numeric keypad taking up space on the right seems like extremely stuck thinking. Who uses those any more? If you need a calculator, you can use a touch screen calculator. Need to dial the phone? Same thing. Or there is the solution Treo used. If you're really such a numbers person that you need a dedicated numberpad, use a peripheral. OQO makes the majority of us who want to buy the device suffer for the few of us who are accountants.
So many missed opportunities to make this keyboard actually touch typeable... In the end it is simply a thumb keyboard. But other than that surprising flaw, the device looks very cool! Hopefully we will see clones that have decent keyboard layouts.
Back when I was a consultant traveling around the place. Lugging that big ol' laptop around the city, in crowded subways, on airplanes, up stairs, etc. was a big annoyance.
With one of these handtops I'd be able to carry it in one hand like a book or even in my jacket pocket. And when on airplane I could easily stuff it into a backpack with my other stuff instead of carrying a separate Targus bag.
I'm not doing the consulting thing any more, but if I ever do it again I'd definitely look into getting a handtop.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
When via finally produces the nano-itx boards, and the new, even tinier boards they are hinting at, it should be possible to roll your own "handtop".
Tiny drives, more compact batteries and color touch screens are more available all the time. Cabling is an issue, though.
... ideally if it had inside one of the 5 GB micro-HDD - that would also be the ultimate iPod killer !
They come with an eraser head type mouse, which makes the keyboard pretty usable even with its small size.
I plan on having in my hot little hands a U50 in 2 or 3 months. Up until recently, I was using a Sigmarion 3 handheld PC as my primary computer when at home. It was a sweet machine, but I had to sell it to make a school loan payment. Before that, it was a Jornada 720, equipped with a 2 GB PCMCIA hard drive, also great. A lot of people assumed since I was using what most folks consider a PDA as my main computer that I was nuts- after all, don't PDAs have a tiny screen, 160x160 or 240x320? Pfft. The Sig3 has a 800x480 screen- just like the new OQO- and the J720 has a 640x240 screen. Both are great for browsing the web, email, coding and many other types of work.
If you're wanting something like this, be it a Sig3 or a Zaurus, I highly reccomend Conics.net. A big difference between one of these new "handtops" and the Sig3 or the Jornada 72x is price: the Sig3 usually costs around $500, while these new guys all cost around $2000. Especially a consideration when you're not planning on dumping the laptop or desktop at home for one of these handtops.
I've been waiting for the OQO for years now, and I'm sure glad I didn't sell the iBook to generate funds back during the first pre-order.
But the new Sony U50/U70 machines look like to be my dream machine. A nice screen. All the ports.
The only thing that would be more perfect is to have a U70-like device, but with the built-in keyboard. Not in a fixed laptop mode like the Sig3, but with the abiliy to convert- think the Zaurus C7x0 or most of the tablet PCs. That would be the perfect machine for me.
The Tablet PCs out there seem fine, except they're all huge. I want something with a 5" to 6" screen, not 10"-14". Not only can I not fit that in my pocket, it's hard to fit in my hands/arms for more than 10 minutes. Then you need to sit down, get it onto your lap, or put it on a table. I have no idea what those Tablet PCs folks are thinking having huge and heavy devices. Nothing more than laptops with touchscreens.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
... a shuttle XPC and put a nice LCD on it?
much cheaper and faster desktop replacement than a laptop.
You can see how big this is for most /.ers by the sparse comments. People who are into PDAs and iPODs think this is the shit. The rest of the world that makes up the huge majority of the market can't see what could possibly be interesting about something that costs twice as much just becuase it is half the size.
Here's the normal person's reaction.
Yeah, just like a PDA, it's a great idea. It's like fifty bucks yeah? I want one.
A thousand bucks! Yer fucking shitting me.
I like the word "handtop". Whoever coined it probably did so for business reasons, as it fits nicely with the etymology of the PC industry -- desktop, laptop, handtop!
Does anyone have information on the origin or story behind the word "handtop"? A few Google and Wiki queries turned up nothing conclusive, so I figured returning to the Slashdot article would be an excellent place to start...again.
(In 50 years, stories of these word origins might prove to be more valuable than we'd think, from a purely historical perspective.)
Strange that only the Flipstart and OQO has Bluetooth since BT + BT keyboard would be a good match for these things. (Strange since both Flipstart and OQO have built in keyboards.) And before you complain you don't have to lug a MS or Logitech Bluetooth keyboard around, there are half-keyboards like the Frogpad out with BT support.
I was considering a U50/70 but the lack of Bluetooth was the final straw. I don't mind that there isn't one built in if I can use one wirelessly. In fact I'd prefer that they save the space and not have one built in. If I need it that much there are several sub-notebooks that can do the job.
Besides that I think it's a bit funny that they are running a comparison of 4 products where 2 are not even out yet. And I won't believe any release dates from OQO until I see one in a store.
all these tiny QWERTY keyboards are ridiculous. cute maybe, but utterly ridiculous. The only way I would ever sink 2 grand into one of these would be if it had a onehanded dvorak layout.
don't these companies care about my wrists?
Jules
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
Here is a nice web site that debates the new class of portable computers "ultraportables": http://ultraportables.net/
Yes? I'll get me coat.
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