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[personal profile] tylik
So as many of you know, I've had a TouchBook for a bit now. This is one of the pre-release units. Pretty much final hardware, pretty beta software. Still, I'm immensely entertained.

Hardware:

Generally, for what I'm working for (I've been wanting a slate style tablet about the size of a paperback to hardback book with a detachable keyboard for at least six years now) this is a sweet, sweet piece of hardware. I'm going to start be addressing some of the common concerns.

You might have heard they're top-heavy. Well, really, this is going to be hard to avoid if you're sticking the main board and a battery in the screen unit so that it can be a standalone tablet. By the time I got mine, they'd added counterweights to the keyboard unit, which helps the tendency to be tippy. Works for me, might still be a little tippy for some users. (And others complain about added weight.)

There are also a number of complaints about the hardware feeling cheap and/or flimsy. (As opposed to actual problems with the hardware, which do seem to show up in some units, though not mine - it sounds like they're getting the process ironed out.) I think a lot of this is that this it put together differently than a lot of devices, and people having the wrong set of expectations. The back panel detaches easily to give you access to the internal usb ports (there are both internal and external usb, and BTW, I am adoring the internal no dangling dongle usb ports). This also displays the main board, and kind of screams "please mod me!" a feature I for one greatly appreciate.

Anyhow, this back panel, which is the focus of some griping, is a nice solid study piece of plastic - more substantial than that of many laptops (though this might not be obvious if you haven't taken laptops apart). It does move slightly when you touch it, which I think bothers some people. I see it as a consequence of the ease of access - and wouldn't mind going all the way to having a tupperware style pack panel, that would be waterproof as well, but I suspect I'm in the minority there.

The keyboard is in theory 95% the size of a standard keyboard. Now, my lenovo tablet has a slightly smaller than standard keyboard, and this is noticeably smaller than that. But the size isn't a problem for touch typing, for me. The layout is a little tricky - mostly in that they've shrunk both the space bar and the right shift key in order to fit things in. I'm forever hitting up arrow when I want to hit shift, though that's getting better as I adapt. But reasonable tradeoffs, I think.

There are some complaints about the sensitivity of the track pad. Personally, I'd rather have had a clit mouse (but I only like ibm/lenovo clit mice) but it's hasn't been a major problem. I've had more issues with the touch screen, though I see this of more of a software issue (and might even see if I can do some signal filtering myself if I can find the time).

While the software doesn't really support using it as just a standalone slate at this time, I've been doing a lot of reading on it in this mode, and it is wonderful. This is a curl up in bed with a cup of hot chocolate and read trash fiction device. And surprisingly, for such a small device, full size journal articles, while small, are readable at one page per screen. (Decent resolution on the screen, and y'all know how picky I am about screen resolution.) I'm going to have to rework the screen rotation to better suit my needs - I actually spend a fair bit of time reading upside-down, and while that's probably a minority activity I want to be able to rotate the screen easily and "always upright" isn't the right rule for me.

The battery life is pretty impressive. Now, saying that, you need to understand that power management just doesn't work at the moment. It doesn't stay in standby. It doesn't reduce consumption (much, anyway) during light use. And the thing still goes for about twelve hours. Charging is currently slow as snot, though - you pretty much have to charge it overnight. (One of these days I'm going to pick up or put together a well regulated 5V charger with more current, as this should work just fine.) Anyhow, as I said, the battery life is good even without power management, which is supposed to be much better in the next release.

The software is not that stable. For me it's quirky but usable, but I can imagine other people finding it pretty frustrating. Little things... for instance, it will often put itself on standby. Once you realize that this is why the screen will sometimes randomly turn off in the middle of things, it's easy enough to hit the standby button and bring it back, but, as I said, quirky. The touchscreen responsiveness needs work - right now it's too jittery for effective drawing or notetaking, and even navigating the UI sometimes is a little clunky. Workable, but clunky. (Again, having gotten mine fairly early in part by saying I'm perfectly happy to deal with an unfinished product, I'm fine with this.) Firefox crashes - not that often, but it happens. There isn't a fully working battery monitor yet.

There are a number of things I'd like to see in the next version. Some kind of navigation control on the slate (I'd rather not have to interact with the screen for turning pages). A stylus holder, as I'm going to use a stylus with it a fair bit.

Hm. That's all that comes to mind for the moment. Questions?
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