eee PC, the Foleo of WM

[markgamber]

I've been using a Samsung Q1 (the original) for several months in conjunction with a pda and PdaNet and yeah, slingplayer on it with EVDO is great. Kind of helps offset the lousy performance of the slingplayer mobile app on these phones. The eee looks nice but not nice enough to get me to plunk down that kind of cash for something that doesn't offer much over the Q1. Especially since I have a relatively large hard drive, 2gb of ram, keyboard, case and about 10 hours worth of batteries for the Q1. I was sold on the umpc the first time I took one to Europe. The batteries last the entire way over, it's really nice to be able to watch live TV during a 90 minute runway delay, it fits perfectly on the seat tray in the cattle car section, it has a couple USB ports, bluetooth and a CF slot, it has a CAT-5 connector...a big deal since a lot of places in Europe don't have wifi...it has a socket for an external monitor and it actually runs dev tools acceptably. I had Vista on it for a while and it did "ok", but it didn't take long before I was back to XP. Pound for pound and mile for mile, I'd have to say the UMPC was probably the best computer I've ever purchased. I was looking at that new WiBrain or whatever it's called with the split keyboard on the front of the unit, but I don't think I could handle a 4 1/2 inch screen for very long.