Thursday, June 15, 2006

Q1 Fun

The Samsung Q1 continues to be a lot of fun and it's time for an update post. How have I used my Q1?



  • Dad had router problems and couldn't see my post in tribute to my Grandmother, so I pulled out the Q1 in a restaurant, connected via Bluetooth on my phone and he got to read it right there in the restaurant. He also checked his mail while he was online.
  • A whirlwind day this week was perfect for the Q1. Working breakfast at Disney, 401k meeting at the office and a board meeting lunch with a local TV station where I'm a board member. The Q1 let me take notes throughout, respond to emails on the run and come back into the office fully caught up. I charged the battery in the car and it almost made it to the end of a long board meeting.
  • Juice dropped some new podcasts onto my Q1 today and I got to listen to an unexpected podcast in the car on my way home. (Old fashioned cassette adapter)

The Q1 continues to turn heads everytime I use it and most people seem more impressed with the technology than put off by the price. As promised, here are some photos:

Here's the Q1 with my Inspiron 700m (12 inch, 4.1 lb laptop), my Smartphone and a ruggedized Pocket PC in the background for perspective.


Here is my normal setup at work with the Q1 plugged into my 19 inch monitor and keyboard.


Random thoughts:

  • I'm considering following Kevin Tofel's lead and upgrading the RAM. 1 gig would really help compensate for the Celeron processor
  • Windows Media 11 beta restarts whatever was playing when you go into standby. It warns you, but it's annoying. iTunes recovers from stanby mode gracefully. I hope this is a beta issue.
  • IE7 beta won't let me lock the Windows Live toolbar next to the classic menu. I have to move it every time. I hope this is a beta issue.
  • I've ordered the Samsung Q1 portable keyboard. It's backordered from Best Buy.
  • I'm also waiting for the USB to PCMCIA for EVDO adapter. Anyone need an extra acronym? I seem to have plenty in that last sentence.
  • Outlook works beautifully, even over a slow connection, when using HTTP to connect to Exchange. If you're not doing this, lookup "connect to my exchange box using HTTP" in your favorite search engine.
  • I got the Linksys Compact Flash WiFi adapter working. I don't know why I would need it, I just wanted to see if I could. I haven't gotten my old Ambicom CF Card modem working yet.
  • I find I use landscape mode a lot more than I thought, even for note taking and Tablet Enhancements for Outlook is a must have.
  • MS will need to do more to support touch screens. Too often, things are just too small to use your finger.

1 comment:

John Christian said...

Hi, I have read a lot about the Samsung Q1 and it looks just like the device I have been searching for. However, I am going to use this as a photobackup tool also while I am out shooting, and some review said that the CF port was really slow.

Are you able to try out the transfer speed on the CF port? I mean copy some big files (or many) from a CF card onto the Q1 and time it. I'd like to know which card you use also.

If you also have an USB card reader it would be cool if you could try that too and see if its faster.

Thank you, John