The machine is pretty nice. The keyboard is fairly large, considering, and the feel is acceptable. The 1024x480 provides a fair amount of screen space, if oddly shaped. With a few utilities added, it takes the place of a low-end digital camera, a portable music CD player (MP3s), and makes a nice portable development box.
The base box is a pretty penny right now (~$2300) though that will probably drop over time. I was looking at a Libretto, but decided to go for broke (sic.) All of the built-in hardware (except for the camera -- still looking at that) appears to be supported just fine under Linux.
I think I prefer the 1024x480 screen resolution over 800x600. I can fit two Xterms comfortably side by side in 1024x480, which is harder to do in 800x600.
The technology is certainly interesting to watch. The PCG-C1X strikes me as being almost a concept laptop that snuck out into production. Give it five years, and you could have a laptop with built-in DVD, 5 hours of useful battery life, a better built-in camera, and wireless connectivity. Phone, video-condferencing, music, movies, digital photography, word processing, software development, etc. all in a hand held box. The social/cultural changes from that could be interesting.
I have one of these in a box somewhere in storage. I picked one up a few years ago, four or five, actually. The picture they have on the site appears unchanged since then. A few comments on the Twiddler, at least the one I had:
The shape of it is a bit awkward. By making it useable by either hand, it doesn't quite fit in either. Depending on the size and shape of your hand, it may be very uncomfortable.
The buttons took a very noticeable amount of force to press. This made the awkward shape of it worse, as if it did not fit well within your hand it was hard to hold it steady enough when pressing the buttons. If they have reduced the required force some, it will have been an improvement.
Someone should work out a better chording scheme for it. The default one is not that optimized. Yes, you can spend hours trying to work out a new one that you like, but I'd rather have a standard one that makes sense.
Overall, I thought it very neat, and would like to see it further developed, but it does not look like they have made any improvements in the hardware over the years. A better shape, softer touch buttons, and a built in spot for a battery (as opposed to siphoning power off the keyboard port) would make it potentially very nice.
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The machine is pretty nice. The keyboard is fairly large, considering, and the feel is acceptable. The 1024x480 provides a fair amount of screen space, if oddly shaped. With a few utilities added, it takes the place of a low-end digital camera, a portable music CD player (MP3s), and makes a nice portable development box.
The base box is a pretty penny right now (~$2300) though that will probably drop over time. I was looking at a Libretto, but decided to go for broke (sic.) All of the built-in hardware (except for the camera -- still looking at that) appears to be supported just fine under Linux.
I think I prefer the 1024x480 screen resolution over 800x600. I can fit two Xterms comfortably side by side in 1024x480, which is harder to do in 800x600.
The technology is certainly interesting to watch. The PCG-C1X strikes me as being almost a concept laptop that snuck out into production. Give it five years, and you could have a laptop with built-in DVD, 5 hours of useful battery life, a better built-in camera, and wireless connectivity. Phone, video-condferencing, music, movies, digital photography, word processing, software development, etc. all in a hand held box. The social/cultural changes from that could be interesting.
Overall, I thought it very neat, and would like to see it further developed, but it does not look like they have made any improvements in the hardware over the years. A better shape, softer touch buttons, and a built in spot for a battery (as opposed to siphoning power off the keyboard port) would make it potentially very nice.