Fully-functional Miniature Notebook Planned 225
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.
To type fast (Score:5, Interesting)
People who want to learn to type on it quickly will find it takes less than a month to be proficient. And if the human-factors engineering is good, then they may find that they can type faster on it than with a normal keyboard.
HID (Score:5, Interesting)
Just stick on a USB twiddler. Chording keyboards can be much faster than full keyboards. And perhaps someday you'll never need to use a normal keyboard again - just use your personally-customized portable keyboard and point at the computer you want to type to.
Too small (Score:3, Interesting)
My hands are too big to operate one of those.
The perfect size for laptops is something like the Dell x200. Very lightweight, but with a keyboard where you actually can hit individual keys.
I think the smaller is better craze is only good to a certain point, this is in my opinion, beyond.
Linux??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just a thought...
Cheers,
_GP_
Been there,done that (Score:2, Interesting)
As Usual, Taking Credit Where None is Due (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it isn't. IBM and other manufacturers have had palmtop computers for a long time.
PDAs vs Laptops... (Score:4, Interesting)
Finally! A useful travel machine (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to mention that it makes checking Moviefone.com a lot slicker than the current PDA browsers are.
It's not going to be for everyone, but for those who need it, doggone, it's the cat's meow!
And it'll impress the babes
Stev
I'd hit it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried Palm OS - great PIM, great battery life, small form factor, large software library... But extremely limited in processing power and networking options.
Pocket PC - Poor battery life, poor software library, but excellent wifi and cellular data connectivity options.
Linux on iPaq (Familiar, Opie, GPE) - Cool to have a shell prompt, but EXTREMELY limited in storage space. Otherwise, Opie and GPE are maturing nicely, and I can get a good deal of work done when I have the right programs installed
Unfortunately, the best solution I've found so far is an iPaq running Pocket PC with wifi connectivity, running JSLandscape at 640 x 480, running terminal services to my WinXP desktop. Yeah it's slow and sucks battery life like a pig, but at least I can run real applications...
This Vulcan Handheld PC would let me run my VPN and full mail program (Lotus Notes - sux but that's what my company uses) along with the entire library of X86 windows/linux software.
Great, but what speed x86? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:HID (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Already done before. (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that struck me was how ugly the Vulcan minipc is. Compared with Sony's U1, U3 [dynamism.com], the upcoming U10 [dynamism.com], or Samsung's Nexio [zaigen.co.kr] or Sharp's keyboard Zaurus [dynamism.com], the minipc just screams "I got this with my HotWheels!"
I wouldn't want to be seen with that cheap-looking thing.
Zaurus, better and cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
206 MHz CPU, 64MB of RAM, 16 MB flash
(you can even create swap to increase RAM)
Linux
320x240 full color GUI
SSH client and server
VNC client and server
SMB client and server
Apache
MySQL
Perl
serial terminal
Word/Excel compatibility
Full functionality web browser
IMAP/SSL email
wireless, bluetooth or ethernet
up to 1+ GB of directly accessible storage
keyboard
handwriting recognition
Oggs/MP3s/_MPEGS_
and it's about 1.5x the size (mostly increased length) of a Palm.
Why do I need WinXP, or x86 compatibility? Am I going to develop for Win32 on this thing?
It's all about what you need, and what tool will get you there.
Size and Voice (Score:2, Interesting)
You *can* touch-type on a keyboard this small! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I do notice one huge difference between this miniPC and the Jornada720 (or a Psion)- the keyboard of the latter was meant for touch typing, while the miniPC's keyboard doesn't look like it was. Look at a photo of it [vulcan.com], and it looks to have little rubber chicklet keys rather than a regular low-travel spring keyboard mechanism. A keyboard built like a real one, just 25% smaller than full size, is why people can type so fast on a Psion or a Jornada 720.
The only reason I don't use it still is the screen isn't reflective like you find on most color PDAs now, making it useless during the summer, when I do these computing tasks outside on the porch or in the woods up against a tree.
Why can't one company make a device that does what so many of these different new small computers are aiming for? All of them seem to have some imperfection-
1. The Sharp Zaurus C700: The keyboard mechanism and size is way too small for doing any real typing on. It is a thumboard, although one slightly bigger than on the SL-5500. I guess a PXA255 XScale CPU instead of the PXA250 would be nice too.
2. The OQO may never come out, but would be damn close to the perfect thing if a good, yet small (75% of 'full size', size of most Psion and Jornada 720 keyboard) attachable keyboard is available.
3. This miniPC has the bad kind of keyboard and cannot be configured into a tablet mode like the C700. There doesn't appear to be a touch screen, so it does seem that the Vulcan folks really weren't thinking, and didn't consider a tablet mode. Any computer aiming to take the place of both a notebook and a PDA really should accomodate the wide variety of situations that are hindered by a keyboard that isn't needed hanging around by allowing the user to hide it and operate the computer with a touchscreen.
4. Almost all TabletPCs are too damn big.