Touch Book impressions.

[meizirkki]

So i ordered a Touch Book, and now it's here. So far I'm impressed with the hardware. I have read around forums, that people get their Touch Books with battery rolling around the case, misplugged touchscreen cables and all. It almost sounded like they are making "monday-units" more than just once a week. However, my Touch Book had none of those problems.

The screen is bright, LED backlit, and the AI logo in the back-cover is glowing white like the Apple-logo on a Macbook. The Touch Book feels quite durable, except the back cover, which is made of thin plastic.

The hinge and the mounting system for the keyboard, both feel also quite durable, and it's _really_ hard to open the Touch Book one-handed.

What could be better are the touchpad buttons. (Did i click it or not?) and the headphone/microphone jacks. (Some headphones work, some don't, but i hear this is going to be fixed in later HW revisions.) The keyboard could also be better, but my 15-year old fingers are small enough to type with it.

Batterylife is supposed to be unbeliavable. I haven't had a change to test it though, i have had this baby for only 16 hours now When i took it out of the box, i used it for good 4 hours before getting home to solder a charger for it. After charging over night, i have used it for 3 hours already. Of course, the device is supposed to hold much longer. We'll see when someone kicks out a kernel with CPU governor driver. Now it's just running 600MHz using as much power as it's possible for such a processor.

The operating system is beta, and some things like touchscreen accuracy and the "Touchscreen-interface" need a lot of improvements.

My overall experience is positive. After using facebook and other heavy pages on the n810, this device feels fast and even though the processor is only clocked at 600MHz, it doesn't feel any slower than an 1.6GHz Atom netbook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhvltQXHZ5w

[johnkzin]

Does the UI do screen rotation cleanly?

Whenever I try that on Ubuntu, with a touchscreen device, it rotates the display ... but does NOT rotate the touchscreen coordinates (so the trouchscreen, and the display, don't agree about what you're clicking on). I'm hoping AI works out the kinks in that (for their version of linux).

Have you had the problem with balance that some people have reported?

What do you mean about having to solder a charger!? Did it not come with one? (or are you saying it only came with a USA charger, and that doesn't help you?)

[meizirkki]

Originally Posted by johnkzin

Does the UI do screen rotation cleanly?

Whenever I try that on Ubuntu, with a touchscreen device, it rotates the display ... but does NOT rotate the touchscreen coordinates (so the trouchscreen, and the display, don't agree about what you're clicking on). I'm hoping AI works out the kinks in that (for their version of linux).

Have you had the problem with balance that some people have reported?

What do you mean about having to solder a charger!? Did it not come with one? (or are you saying it only came with a USA charger, and that doesn't help you?)

Rotation works well in the original OS, touchscreen and screen are both always in the same orientation.

With Balance, i think you mean the problem of screen-part being so heavy that the netbook tips backwards easily. It's demonstrated shortly in the video.

I didn't have a US => FIN adapter so i decided to use an old computer power supply. Nothing terrible has happened so far.

BTW: Stskeeps helped me installing Mer 0.16testing on the Touch Book yesterday:

Some pics here.

[VulcanRidr]

Thanks for the great review, meizirkki. You said the OS is in beta...What is it based on? Fedora? Debian? Ubuntu? What about the availability of apps? I would want some of the tablet-esque apps that I have on my N810 (FBreader, angband, xword, etc), and some other apps that are more "laptoppy".

I'm glad to hear that the system construction issues seem to have been overplayed...The button issue isn't really an issue for me, since I plan to use a wireless mouse, though the keyboard might be... Is the touchscreen side of it as useful as the N810?

I am almost convinced to get one.

[johnkzin]

I think my new netbook/tablet object of interest and desire is the Entourage eDGe (in another thread in this sub-forum).

[meizirkki]

Originally Posted by VulcanRidr

Thanks for the great review, meizirkki. You said the OS is in beta...What is it based on? Fedora? Debian? Ubuntu? What about the availability of apps? I would want some of the tablet-esque apps that I have on my N810 (FBreader, angband, xword, etc), and some other apps that are more "laptoppy".

I'm glad to hear that the system construction issues seem to have been overplayed...The button issue isn't really an issue for me, since I plan to use a wireless mouse, though the keyboard might be... Is the touchscreen side of it as useful as the N810?

I am almost convinced to get one.

OS is based on Angstom/OpenEmbeddedm i think.

Touch Screen is very inaccurate at the moment, but there's a fix. It will probably get better when AI updates the OS.

[meizirkki]

Just an experimental test, at least it works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw7KO9z0-kg