Oddly enough, I was just contacted to evaluate this puppy. By my daughter. If it doesn't cut the mustard she can take it back.
Sort of a coincidence in that it is contending for a somewhat similar space to the CR-48. (see last post )
Her boyfriend got it for her to use in her college classes. I have to admit it's kind of cute, it weighs about the same as an iPad. Clearly it was attractive in that it was very lightweight, very inexpensive (about $99), and looked like it might have minimum functionality, which I took to be accessing the web, editing documents, and hopefully, printing them out. Her finger tips are thinner than mine so the keyboard would work for her. (I my finger tips are about 1 1/2X the width of the virtual keyboard on an iPod Touch or iPhone, so little keys don't work for me very well.)
So I evaluated it by getting it set up to access our wireless, connecting to the internet, doing Google searches, playing a couple of flash videos, attempting to run two applications at the same time (like open a document while running a web browser) cutting and pasting text. Also checking for stability, and upgradability. "Dad, the Internet Explorer on this looks awful old." Hmm.
OK it was fairly painful to set up the home wireless connection. When I did get connected, and it locked up for any reason, and I had to reboot, often the wireless connection would fail, I'd press connect, and it would say connected but IE wouldn't get the message, so I'd have to reboot again. Since it locked up three or four or so times in the hour or two I spent with it (about the total for the last two weeks of pretty heavy use of the CR-48--which isn't even a released product) losing your internet connection was always a possibility.
I could edit a document and save it off in an older Office .doc format using the CE version of Wordpad. I did not try to test if I could directly connect a USB printer. You should close your browser; running two applications at the same time almost invariably pulls up a you are almost out of memory what now? dialog. I am not sure what value the task bar has if you don't have enough memory to run two applications at the same time.
By the way the documentation suggests that you not even attempt to use a printer, and instead e-mail your documents to another computer.
As an alternative, I thought it might be really cool to use Google Docs instead, Unfortunately, Google Docs nearly locked up, and informed me that my browser was inadequate to the task.
However, WinCE is not really designed to update, so you are stuck with a cell phone style version of IE 6.0. (Interestingly going to the Windows Update site locks up the little critter.) So there is no way to use Google docs. (A Chrome OS laptop, with Google web print and Google docs would probably actually meet her requirements).
I was able to run one out of two flash animations. I'd also have to admit that the CE user interface looks like it was designed by somebody who designs North Korean worker apartments, compared to a Mac, and iPad, or even Windows 7.
Well, I told her she could decide, so I gave her a report card for it and she could check for herself.
Weight A
Boot speed A
Stability F
Multitasking F
Write Document B-
Wireless D
Web C-
Upgradable/Up to Date F
She's going to return it.
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