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Portables Hardware

Updated OQO Model 01+ with USB 2.0 and More RAM 197

xanthines-R-yummy writes "OQO has announced the availability of the OQO Model 01+. The new model has more RAM and USB 2.0, which were probably the main deficiencies in Model 01." They now start just short of $2k but they still look very yummy.
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Updated OQO Model 01+ with USB 2.0 and More RAM

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  • Santa? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Wayne247 ( 183933 )
    Please, i need one :)
  • Besides... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by demondawn ( 840015 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:23AM (#13659047) Journal
    being a blatant slashvertisment (I mean, there's not even an article about it, it's just a link to OQO's website), this doesn't really seem all that impressive. Especially in the $2000 range, when for that price I can have a decent desktop PC (with better specs than this thing) AND a decent PDA. Do people in "healthcare and public safety" really need this sort of computing power at their fingertips all the time? And if so, shouldn't there be a better way to give it to them then that horrific looking mini-keyboard? Of course, I'm biased, I suppose.
    • Re:Besides... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MoralHazard ( 447833 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:34AM (#13659153)
      Especially in the $2000 range, when for that price I can have a decent desktop PC (with better specs than this thing) AND a decent PDA.

      Well, duh! If you buy a desktop and a conventional PDA for $2000, YOU obviously don't need one of these things!

      This seems more like a laptop--portable and fairly full-featured, without making any concessions on the interface or operating system. Sure, it's expensive, but it's brand new and doesn't have any competitors, yet, that I know of. So of course it's going to be pricey. Remember when PDAs first came out? We were paying $300+ for something with 8MB RAM and a black-and-white LCD.

      And for the record, there IS a reason to buy one of these things: carrying a goddamned laptop around gets old, really quick! Unless you shell out for an ultraportable, you're lugging around several extra pounds of gear whenever you need to take it somewhere. But if you only take your PDA, you're sacrificing a lot of functionality, ESPECIALLY the full keyboard. On airplanes, too, using a full-size laptop in coach can be a real bitch.

      Now, granted, I wouldn't buy one of these things with WinXP installed on it, but as soon as someone has it booting Linux... look out, bank balance!
      • Re:Besides... (Score:3, Informative)

        by demondawn ( 840015 )
        Except this thing doesn't have a full keyboard either; in fact, the keyboard on this thing looks comprable to that on the higher-end PDAs. Which means if you DO want a full keyboard, you'll have to lug that around. For this price, if you really want to shell out $2000 for something superportable, there's the Sony U-line, which is about the same speed, just as portable, and has a real keyboard (if not full-sized, at least a lot more useable than the one on the OQO 01 (did they make that name just so it'd be
        • Not a full keyboard?? Are we looking at the same picture, here?

          http://www.oqo.com/

          Sure looks like a full keyboard to me... wait, checking for all the letters... Yep, pretty goddamn close to what's on my laptop right now.

          And besides, even if you DO need to use an external keyboard (let's say you want to do some coding on the airplane), you can get small, comfortable USB keyboards that fold up smaller than a paperback book. More stuff, true, but still a hell of a lot smaller and lighter than a laptop.
          • Not a full keyboard?? Are we looking at the same picture, here?
             
            Apparently not since the OQO website spec sheet specifically states:

            Thumb keyboard with mouse buttons and TrackStik

            So yes, one needs at least one of those roll up keyboards to do any serious amount of typing.
      • Re:Besides... (Score:4, Informative)

        by WigginX ( 104107 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:47AM (#13659270)
        OQO has been working on linux support [oqo.com].
        • Re:Besides... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by aonaran ( 15651 )
          If linux is your thing try one of
          these [icube.us]

          Not quite as high in specs, but it's less than half the price.
          I have a c860 with a 1 gb SD card and I've not had much desire for a laptop since getting it.
          My main portable use is just e-mail, web and wireless network auditing, so the little c860 with pdaXrom [pdaxrom.org] works fine for me.
        • by dud83 ( 815304 )
          HTML pages over FTP, the pain! Such raw abuse of standards and protocols.....
      • Remember when PDAs first came out? We were paying $300+ for something with 8MB RAM and a black-and-white LCD.

        Actually, I do remember when PDAs first came out. I even bought a second-generation Palm Pilot Personal (back when they were still "U.S. Robotics"). US$200, and it only had (has, actually -- I still use it) 512K of RAM. The original Palm Pilots only had 128K IIRC. Don't know where you got an 8MB model, maybe you were a little late to the party?
        • If we're going to get into one of these kids today arguments, I'd like to point out that I was using a Psion Series 3 back in 1993ish. These were released five years before Palm was even founded and were the third revision of PDA that Psion made (although significantly superior to the Organiser 2). It came with a 4.77MHz NEC V30H (8086 pin-compatible), 256KB of RAM, and a monochrome screen (no grey shades or backlight). It had a graphical multi-tasking OS, a set of basic apps including a compiler, and I
      • Now your paying $2000, or 6.67 times that for a device with 8MB of video ram and a teeny color lcd! What progress we make!
      • Or OSX. That would be sweet.

        -Nano.
    • being a blatant slashvertisment (I mean, there's not even an article about it, it's just a link to OQO's website), this doesn't really seem all that impressive.

      I think you mean, "It doesn't seem all that practical"? Certainly it's impressive and neat to have a full-blown computer in a tiny package, right? It's just not practical, but cutting-edge devices often aren't.

      So, sure, for most people and in most circumstances, it will be more effective and cost efficient to buy a desktop+PDA combo. For now. G

    • They have to market it to specialized industries first because they're the only ones that can justify the expense. In the log run the price will come down and business execs will want these just so the can have the convenience of a laptop without the weight/size. It's semi-uable on a plane, and you just put it in a dock at work or home.
    • Slashdot stories about iPods link directly to Apple's website. Yet nobody thinks those are slashvertisements.

      What's the difference between a cool link and a slashvertisement?

      It's whether or not people think it's actually cool (eg. the same thing that makes it show up on Digg, and BoingBoing, and Engadget, etc etc). And this device is cool. CmdrTaco says he wants one. I would want one (if I earned $150k+). Apparently you didn't really RTFA, because it is quite cool (engadget has covered it hundreds [google.com]

      • Slashdot stories about iPods link directly to Apple's website. Yet nobody thinks those are slashvertisements. ... What's the difference between a cool link and a slashvertisement?

        Exactly.

        They linked directly to the website because the press release is there. If they waited until a review is found then linked to that everyone would be harping about how they saw it at xyz site two days ago and links to the press release would get karma whores +5 informative (it probably will anyway).

        Personally, I thin

    • Re:Besides... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hesiod ( 111176 )
      > Do people in "healthcare and public safety" really need this sort of computing power at their fingertips all the time?

      I work in a hospital and yes, they need that power. Clinical Info Software can require a heck of a processor for some things. Also, the 100% availability is a very attractive prospect for bedside documentation, such as being able to point out EXACTLY when medication was given, and having an immediate notification to stop if you are about to administer the wrong drug.

      Of course, at $19
    • Re:Besides... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jjshoe ( 410772 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @12:22PM (#13659652) Homepage
      does healthcare needs this? quick answer, yes.

      you're out in the field several buildings from your desk, how do you look up the remedy ticket to make sure you're in the right room when your shop has gone paperless? right now you're stuck finding a desktop or opening up a clunky laptop. you can't use a palm sized device because the screen size/resolution can't handle displaying something like a remedy ticket. there are a zillion and one more situations like this.
      • Does healthcare need this? Quick answer, no.

        Your illustration has nothing to do with healthcare -- that's just the place where you happened to see the situation. It could happen in any largish work environment.

        Furthermore, this is not a problem that requires a full-blown palmtop computer. Viewing a Remedy ticket requires very little in the ways of computing grunt. It does require a larger screen resolution than you're going to find on most handhelds.

        If the users of a ticket system (like Remedy) ar

        • So a health care indrustry should spend millions of dollars in new software, training, and hardware to switch to a package that will let employee's use a $1k unit to gain access instead of a $2k unit? do you also bitch about the cost of your health care? i bet you do.

          i don't care what pda or system you buy. if you need to see anything more then one or two lines a pda's display isn't going to cut it. the oqo is not cut out for doing large sums of heavy computation. i suggest you buy one and try it out before
  • by Tha_Big_Guy23 ( 603419 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:23AM (#13659048)
    According to TFA, it's 4.9x3.4x.9 inches, which as far as I can tell doesn't leave a whole lot of room for batteries. Considering that it's running a 1Ghz processor, and a fairly sizeable full color display for a portable, that has to be draining on the battery. I mean, it looks exceptionally cool, but I don't think I'd want one if I had to recharge it every hour.
  • by Roofus ( 15591 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:23AM (#13659050) Homepage
    Now, what the hell is an OQO? The writeup was a litle* lacking

    * little = completely missing any and all relevant information. didn't want to waste time doing a real writeup, eh?
  • Nice but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BattleRat ( 536161 )
    I don't know about you guys, but I am curious to know if its been hacked to run Linux (pick your distro)...
  • Video (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mysqlrocks ( 783488 )
    It is the only computer you need.

    I was wondering how this works if you need more than the 800x480 resolution built-in monitor. However, I checked the specs and you can get video out of up to 1280x1024 VGA. It would be nice if it had DVI out.
  • by oever ( 233119 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:25AM (#13659070) Homepage
    For quite a bit less you can get a real laptop like the Dell Latitude X1 [stud.ntnu.no]. This one is also very small and light but has a real keyboard. This machine is _smaller_ than A4, weighs only 1.1 kg and runs linux very well.

    • by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:52AM (#13659328) Homepage Journal
      "For quite a bit less you can get a real laptop like the Dell Latitude X1. This one is also very small and light but has a real keyboard."

      If you're looking at the OQO, it's not because today's laptops are sufficient. You can actually hold that thing in your hands instead of balancing it precariously on your lap.

      I'm not an OQO fanboy or anything, but the main reason I have a TabletPC right now is that I can't stand using a laptop unfolded on my lap. With a TabletPC, you can actually use it while standing up and walking around. (This is great if you're taking inventory, for example...) This thing is not only more portable than a TPC, but it's obviously more typist friendly.

      Lots of you may be shaking your head due to sticker shock or whatever, but this thing would be a god send to a lot of business professionals that need mobility. Heck, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the company I last worked for bought two of these.

      • Last night I was precariously standing on a chair with an iBook hooked to a Cisco switch, balancing the iBook with one hand and typing with the other. Don't even ask what I did when I needed a cross-over cable that wasn't in my pocket..

        An OQO would have been incredibly handy, but $1700 for a serial console is steep, especially if you have to factor in the cost of adminning Windows on it. Maybe when they support linux wholeheartedly so I'm not stuck with any half-supported hardware.
  • Pretty cool (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EggyToast ( 858951 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:25AM (#13659075) Homepage
    Now that it has more RAM and storage space, it really is a pretty sweet pocket computer. I especially like that it has both USB and Firewire, as a nod that it can function quite well as a portable device and a full computer in its own right. Very attractive for anyone looking for an ultra-portable laptop that's not totally gimped.

    Of course, the downside is that it's kind of pricey. But, given what else is out there, it seems to sit nicely among its peers -- it costs more, but it seems to offer a lot more as well.

    I have a small portable video device, an Archos 420, and while I got it pretty much just for the portable video and photo abilities, I do know it would be nice to hop on the internet for various reasons without having to stow my laptop -- after all, that's why I got the small portable video thing in the first place.

    Something like this that not only can play video, but also surf the web and do pretty much anything a decent computer can do is great for portability. But kudos to the company for an ultra-small, high-functionality computer that doesn't skimp.

  • by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:28AM (#13659103) Homepage
    A colleague of mine purchased an OQO to test in our work environment, and though it worked well overall, the MAJOR shortcoming was its VERY limited WiFi range. We could not hit access points with the OQO that we could easily hit with several PalmOS and PocketPC PDAs. This was a real deal killer, because of its limited range.

    Also, while its all-in-one cable was nice for travel purposes (minimizing what you have to carry) it was cumbersome on the desktop. We would have rather seen a nice docking station/cradle instead of the kludgy "friction-hold" stand/all-on-one cable combination.

    It is certainly a stunning and elegant device, but it still needs some improvements here and there.
  • by oGMo ( 379 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:31AM (#13659124)

    No, seriously. I've commented to them and asked a number of times whether it supports Linux; and until it does, I will stick with my Zaurus [dynamism.com]. (Actually I only have a C860, no 4GB microdrive or whatever, but I don't come close to needing more than the gigs of SD I have.)

    Linux is not just a gee whiz thing in the palm. Having all your full-blown apps in your palm [pdaxrom.org] is far, far more useful than any stripped-down PDA apps could be. Firefox? Check. Thunderbird? Check. GIMP? Check. Nethack? Doom? ScummVM? Vim? Emacs? GCC? Perl? Python? Ruby? Checkcheckcheckcheck...

    • Yes, standard x86 machines run Linux.
      • I'm more interested in whether all the hardware has drivers. This is the big problem with anything portable: laptops are, for the most part, "standard x86 machines", and most of them boot linux... but a lot of them have unsupported peripherals. The Zaurus, on the other hand, has fully-supported everything.
    • I don't think it matters which brand or flavor of OS you're running, or what "crucial" apps you may think you need on this. The fact is that with such a tiny keyboard you aren't going to be doing much command line hackery anyways. This is much more a "use it with the pen" affair than writing perl scripts with your thumbs.
      • by oGMo ( 379 )
        Eh, the Zaurus has a fairly small "thumb" keyboard and I've done plenty of hacking, irc, etc. on it. The size of the keyboard doesn't really matter as much as the quality. No, it's not something you're going to be spending a lot of time on, but when you're in a cramped airplane seat and your 17" laptop won't even open (or sitting on the bus, or standing in line, or whatever), it's nice to have something to whip out a few lines of code on (or run ethereal on, or nmap, or nethack, or firefox, or whatever).
  • by SilicaiMan ( 856076 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:42AM (#13659221)
    ... what would the average slashdotter need such a machine for?
    (This is a serious question. I'm curious to know)

    Now, don't misunderstand me. Those machines look amazing, and I would love to get my hands on one. But, apart from the initial 5-minute infatuation, I think I would simply place it in a drawer, where I would eventually forget that it ever existed. But, maybe that's just me.

    • Personally, I guess I could only see it as a very, easy mobile laptop. Right now my laptop is pretty light, but I'm still wary of taking it everywhere. This would accomplish things too annoying to do on PDAs. I really only see this being a killer app if wireless were available everywhere. Then it'd be useful for browsing on the web while taking public transportation.
    • I would love to have it for the train ride in to school every morning. A laptop is impractical. I don't have a palm, which would work well also. Then again if I'm not spending a couple hundred on a palm I won't be going to get one of these anyway.
  • Memory was the primary thing stopping me from getting one of these. It seems like 512MB of RAM is the magic number for good performance in modern operating systems.

    Now I just hope I can buy one.
  • I'm not going to click on a advertisement, so could someone give me the cliff notes version?
  • OQO missed the curve (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:43AM (#13659237)
    I seem to remember OQO showing prototypes of (back then) incredibily small PCs four or five years ago. It seems that their products have taken too long to materialize, and in the mean time the rest of the industry has really started to catch up with them. In the end, I believe their target market is too small; most folks will be happy purchasing a Dell that's 25% larger but less than 50% of the price -- and all the time, the trend of miniaturization across the entire segment marches onward. OQO will become a small footnote in the history of laptops -- a great idea, but too long on the drawing board and not to market soon enough.
    • " In the end, I believe their target market is too small; most folks will be happy purchasing a Dell that's 25% larger but less than 50% of the price"

      I'm not as optimistic. There's a rather strong niche they could chase after. Those executives with a little too much spending power who are sick of lugging their laptop around the country. You have to understand that it's not just physical size, form factor makes a big difference in the use of these machines. It is very difficult, for example, to use a lap
      • As someone in technical presales who spends a lot of time travelling with sales execs, I would have agreed with you two years ago -- except now they use Blackberries. I very rarely, if ever, see a sales exec with a fired-up laptop onsite at a prospect -- they leave the mundane stuff like presentations and product demos to us presales folks.
  • by Supp0rtLinux ( 594509 ) <Supp0rtLinux@yahoo.com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:44AM (#13659242)
    I demo'd one of their 01 models a few months back and signed a nice NDA that prevented me from discussing this newer Model 01. What's missed in the announcement is that the older, original 01's also got a free wifi antenna upgrade and from 802.11b to 802.11b/g. This change was emailed out about 2 or 3 months ago when OQO Ebay'd a charity OQO, but this means that the 01+ now has the extra RAM & disk storage, plus USB 2.0, but *also* an upgraded radio. Many, many people had complained about poor, directional issues with the original 802.11b radio/antenna.

    Engadget also covered this and mentioned the Model 02 that they hope to see soon. My NDA bars me from discussing this, but since Engadget spilled the beans, let's just say that I was told there'd be an "upgraded Model 01" before the end of the year and a newer Model 02 out before the end of quarter 2 next year. The Model 02 should have some significant updates including *possibly* having a different CPU instead of the Transmeta among other things. Considering the Model 01+ actually happened, I can only hope the Model 02 will be forthcoming as well.

    I for one didn't get the Model 01 simply because I steer clear of the first generation of new devices like this. The unit I demo'd confirmed why I didn't buy one. The upgraded 01+ looks appealing, but I'll probably hold out for the Model 02 sometime next year. But once I get it, I'll be a happy man... I'll have a Treo 650 (Palm-based, not a Winblows version) in one pocket and my OQO in the other. :)

    http://blog.mobileoptimized.com/ [mobileoptimized.com]
    http://mobileoptimized.com/ [mobileoptimized.com]
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Your facts are way wrong. OQO never gave an option of 802.11G both the 01 and the 01+ only have 802.11b.

      As for you and your NDA. I'm sure this was for a 01 and not the 01+ the 01+ testers was a very short list.
      • Perhaps I mis-read the older emails from OQO. Perhaps they only upgraded the radio/antenna. I thought they said it went from 802.11b to 802.11b/g, though. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Perhaps the b/g was in the future. My NDA wasn't for testing anything new. It was signed before they presented me with their product roadmap as we were looking for a corporate purchase. I was told about the updated Model 01 and that there would be another device to follow a few months later. The unit I demo'd was an original Model
    • Um, I kinda get the novelty of your site being all squeezed together for mobile viewing and all, but could you at least have a second stylesheet so that those of us with full screen browsers can actually read it? I hit the page and in three seconds was turned off from ever trying to get any real information from it.
      • Wouldn't be the first time I did something that turned someone off. :)

        The site wasn't built to look good in a full browser. Its not xhtml or anything else. In fact, it doesn't use any CSS at all. It was built to render quickly and well on mobile devices, not desktops. Perhaps I'll update it in the future, however I'll need to learn a lot more about web programming before I do and for now I have plenty of other stuff to do. Your opinions are duly noted.
  • For that price... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kozar_The_Malignant ( 738483 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @11:48AM (#13659293)
    I can get a Sony Vaio TX with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a 60 gig drive, and a real keyboard that weighs 2.75 pounds. No, it won't fit in my pocket, but it will fit in anything I carry around. It also has the two holy grails of /. It will run Linux, and it is liquid cooled. :-)

    No, I don't own one, and I don't work for Sony.
  • by scovetta ( 632629 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @12:01PM (#13659434) Homepage
    I hear the Model 01++ will feature that neat 6.8 Ghz optical-quantum technology. They probably won't be able to fit a terabyte of ram, but I'm hoping for at least 512 GB.
  • quit complaining. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TenLow ( 812875 )
    you're all complaining about this, that, and the other, but you're missing the most important part: It's cool and you cant afford one. Thats why you are blasting it. Nobody needs a computer. Nobody needs a PDA. Nobody needs a fullsize anything. You need food, water, and shelter. Anything else is a luxury, and this is just one of the many things on the list of james bond like gadgets that you want, but wont admit because you've spent your money on the food, water, and shelter.
  • It seems there is no decent middle-of-the-road. You either have something like the OQO, or you have some piece of junk that desperately tries to be a mac mini and utterly fails because it tries to include legacy cruft(I haven't used the serial/parallel/joystick port in 5 years... why do they insist on including them? Would it kill your business to tell the remaining .5% of dot-matrix printer owners to piss off!?)

    Are there any PC makers that are a good system with the form factor of the Mac Mini? I'd love
  • Mini Laptop (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sundroid ( 777083 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @12:15PM (#13659590) Homepage
    The basic idea behind OQO is to fill the gap between laptop and PDA. MS came out with tablet pc, but the jury is still out on that one. I personally would like to see something like a "Mini Laptop" that has the following essential features:

    #1 Rectangular landscape screen about 4" x 8" in size, with a keyboard about the same size so the Mini Laptop can be snapped shut into a compact case no bigger than a 6" x 9" 300-page hardcover book.
    #2 Runs full Windows, or Apple, or Linux operation system.
    #3 Priced under $1,000.

    Then perhaps I'll consider buying one.
  • I have to say I like palmtop/ultra small notebooks. I have ever since the old IBM 486 systems. However, what realy does this system offer over the Sony VGN-U750P?
  • If you are like me, the first thing you did is to check and see if Linux runs on it...

    Linux Devices Review [linuxdevices.com]
    Tuxmobil [tuxmobil.org] list of successful installs
    and
    Handtops [handtops.com] guide to installing Debian

    Note:
    It is also possible to make it a dual boot (of course!), just in case you actually wanted XP.
  • You can almost tell that ex-Apple folks designed it. Granted, they've addressed the most glaring design flaws (by increasing RAM and adding USB 2.0), but the deal-killer is still the battery life. Unless they can come up with better battery performance (I think it needs 5-6 hours) at a lower pricepoint, OQO isn't going too much farther, I suspect.

    And yeah, a Linux/OpenOffice version of this would be pretty slick. It'd cut their licensing costs, too.
  • And I've not even had my Model 01 for a month. Granted, they didn't up the 802.11 chip to support 802.11g, and they haven't had a magical increase in battery life. They also didn't change the digitizer, which I find to be too unweildy to use, ever.
  • I've looked at this and basically esclaimed it's almost everything I want. In fact, if they added two features I would drop the $2,000 for it.

    1) Offer a version with a 100gig drive

    2) Offer it with a CDMA phone module for Verizon incorporated in it so that I can use it to browse on Verizon's broadband cell service.

    And you have a deal...as I would feel at that point that I have true mobility and adequate storage.
  • Very similar specs to the Compaq TC1100 [hp.com]. Similar price as well, once you add the keyboard [hp.com], which can snap on and make it stand more like a regular laptop.

    I like the idea of a removeable keyboard for a tablet. It just adds weight that you don't use very often.

    Incidentally, the discontinued Compaq TC1000 used a Transmeta Crusoe processor as well. Wonder why they switched..

  • We just ordered a couple of these for work to test out.

    We are stuck in a bad position with PDA's (PPC and Zaurus).

    The problem is we have a mobile workforce that needs a handheld form factor, with fairly complex (in house built) applications. Tablets are too big. The device has to have the option of "being holstered" to allow for the workforce to do more tradional gets your hands dirty type of work between data collection sessions

    The PPC memory base is about 64 meg split between storage and memory. Fair

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