Brian Jarvis, UMPC Geek

I was talking to one of our mobility marketing managers at work the other day about wanting a small form factor laptop and told him that I was considering buying a Netbook. He suggested that I check out one of our Classmate PC’s from the lab to give the small form factor a test drive. “awesome” was my response and I ran off to the lab before he changed his mind. :^)

I’ve been playing with it today a bit and have some first impressions to share. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but wanted to break down what I have experienced into four buckets: Things I love, things I like, things I’m not crazy about, and things I don’t like.

Things I love

• The portability of the device is phenomenal due to its light weight and compact dimensions
• This may be a sub-point, but this was the first notebook I have ever been able to use in the cramped space an airline seat provides (or doesn’t)
• The screen is wonderfully bright even at its lowest levels

Things I like

• The fact that I can touch type on it
• The keyboard has great travel and makes very little noise
• The performance of the Celeron processor in the Classmate is surprisingly capable
• Battery life is pretty good
• Web cam quality is at least as good as my Thinkpad
• The trackpad is large and very responsive
• The included microphone port is a nice touch
• Speaker quality is pretty darn good (not as good as the Q1, but better than a lot of small notebooks I have used)

Things I’m not crazy about

• The screen resolution is natively 800×480 and that is not high enough (my same gripe with my Samsung Q1)
• The handle is convenient, but a bit goofy

Things I don’t like

• The quotation mark key is in the wrong location
• Smaller shift and backspace keys are tough to get used to
• There is no option for an extended battery

Next steps for me will be to get my children’s impressions (since I am obviously not the primary audience for this particular device), and then to write up a more comprehensive review after a few days with the device. If there is something specific you would like to know about the Classmate, let me know in the next few days before I have to return it.

I have created a photo set for the Classmate on Flickr you can check out here.