I couldn’t stop wondering how well my Samsung Q1 would drive my new 23 inch monitor at work. So this afternoon, I hooked it up and took it for a test drive.
For business applications, it worked very smoothly and could easily be used for daily use. My guess is that the graphics engine on a 915GM chipset could easily be overwhelmed with this many pixels to drive. I didn’t try killing it, but suspect that you probably could with a couple of videos playing on a display this large.
If Samsung made a docking station for the Q1, I would use my UMPC even more than I do now (perhaps as my primary computer). It’s just a bit too much work to connect the VGA cable, USB keyboard and mouse, etc every time I get to my desk. The computer is very capable and I would love to do it, but I would need some sort of docking solution for it to be practical. So today’s experiment really falls into the W?BIC! category.
The Q1 is just never going to sell no matter how great it’s internals are. You are right no keyboard that is touch type no sale, also too large and thus requires a “man purse” and that equals a big no sale.
Samsung has created the best UMPC, the SPH P9200 but as far as I can tell it is not and likely never be sold outside of Korea. I believe they assume since it is WIMAX and US is not WIMAX we would not buy it. The do not realize how far ahead they are in getting the UMPC form factor to attract mainstream users as I would buy one now if I could but would not use any of the current UMPC’s if you gave it to me for free. I am not into the toy or geek factor; for me it must replace my laptop and if it can not then why buy one?