Brian Jarvis, UMPC Geek

We’re not big TV fans in our house, but we have been glued to television watching the Olympics since they started.  Last night I broke out the Q1 to get some other work done while sitting on the couch.  I was able to balance our checkbook, do some online banking, read some gadget reviews during commercials, and check the Olympic stats/back stories.  Sure, I could have done all of this on a standard laptop, but not as comfortably as with the Q1.  As a matter of fact, I had turned on my Lenovo T61, but then shut it down because I didn’t want it on my lap and passing it back and forth to my wife was a pain.

I’ve never been crazy about the term “companion device” when people talk about UMPC’s, but last night the Q1 truly felt like my companion (as much as computer hardware can anyway).

I was very distracted when I left the house this morning and managed to get to my office without my laptop (although I had my laptop bag over my shoulder).  Even though it’s less than 10 miles home, I didn’t feel like driving back home just to pick up my laptop, so I decided to just work from my Samsung Q1 today instead.  I am connected to a full size keyboard and mouse and the 23″ Viewsonic monitor I absolutely love. 

It is working out very well and other than an archived email I needed off my other laptop, I’ve been fine today without my IBM T61.  The Celeron processor in the computer is going to keep it from being commissioned by Pixar to render their next movie, but it’s fine for office applications.  There is a very large part of me that would love to make my Q1 my primary work PC.  The convenience is phenomenal.

I spent the weekend (not-so-successfully) fighting the flu, and found some relief in distracting myself with reading. I downloaded the latest in a series I’m reading from Fictionwise in Microsoft Reader format and had the book on both my UMPC and my Pocket PC.

I have read dozens of books on different PDA’s and enjoy the format a good deal. This time, I read about 80% of the book on my UMPC because the I was able to consume more text on each screen and found that it was just easier on my eyes. I have included screen shots of the same text from my UMPC and the Pocket PC for comparison.

You should probably check out the full UMPC image here to get a real feel for what the text actually looks like on the device (since I had to scale it down to a reasonable width for the post).

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.

It looks like my geek mentor Josh is enjoying discovering new stuff off of FM radio, but for the most part, I’ve given up listening to the radio.  On my commute (about 20 minutes each way), I prefer to listen to podcasts or my own music collection.  Maybe it’s the control freak in me, but I just don’t like being stuck listening to the DJ commentary or flipping through all the presets multiple times in search for something I want to listen to.

There is so much awesome content hidden in podcasts that I feel like I have an endless supply of material that interests me.  Today I’m looking forward to the next episode of MobileTechRoundup on my way home!  After that, I need to catch up on Tips From The Top Floor (digital photography) and Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy Podcast (one day I hope to be able to explain things as simply as he can to the techno-phobes). 

I’ve recently rediscovered the joy of watching video podcasts on my UMPC.  I’ve learned a ton about photo editing from Meet The Gimp and the Photo Walkthrough video podcasts.

I LOVE having access to all this information!

Here’s a little undocumented tip for you Samsung Q1 owners out there: if you hold down the menu button while rocking the volume switch, it adjusts the screen brightness. It’s a quick, easy way to adjust the backlight without using the menu (which I have found to be slower and a bit buggy).

I have loved my Q1 from day 1. I was very pleased when Frank Garcia of Ultra Mobile PC Tips posted a link to the HID drivers for the touch screen. After my last rebuild, I’m having a bit of an issue with the drivers that is easier to show than explain. I’ll let the video do the talking.

If there is anyone else out there having this problem, I would like to know - particularly if they have a workaround.

I’ve been attending a technical trade show for the last 3 days in Orlando, Florida. Earlier today I had the chance to get my hands on a Q1 Ultra for a few minutes. I didn’t have long, but my first impressions included the following:

As much as I would love to have a Samsung Q1 organize with keyboard, I just can’t bring myself to pay more than a hundred dollars for the combination. Since I’m cheapskate, I have struggled to find myself a good alternative case to keep my Q1 protected until very recently. At the last conference I went to, they gave away a simple zipped portfolio that works very well. Here is a picture of the portfolio:

And then with my Q1 inside (you can see how well it fits):

Now I keep my Q1 protected, it’s out of sight, and it gets quite the surprise factor when I unzip my portfolio to take notes. I imagine that you would be able to pick up something like this at Staples, Office Depot, etc. pretty cheaply.