There need to be some changes in the realm of mobile gaming. And quick. It is a simple question. eBooks are debuting these days with 3G connectivity embedded in devices that retail for $299. Less in some cases. Worldwide cellular access (I would settle for North American capability) and data service, or at least the hardware to support it, are considered by some company's to be a commodity, apparently.

So I am failing to understand why the same perspective is not held by Sony and Nintendo. Except for battery power, I can think if no reason why the PSP and Nintendo DSi do not have on-board 3G chips. If device compactness was a concern, I would gladly trade size for always on-always connected capability. If power is a concern, I would sacrifice battery power, even if it meant only being able to support gaming on my portable device for two hours. I never game for longer than that while in transit anyway.

The PSP and DSi both represent amputated electronic devices for me. While they are good at gaming, they are relatively poor at anything else they claim they can do. Hence, they would never supplant my smartphone, or my MP3 player. So I don't need the battery for anything other than gaming. But the allure of gaming for me is strongest when I am online playing with others. Embedding a 3G capability, even if I still had to subscribe for service, would make the PSP Go and DSi viable investments.

And on that topic, carriers need to evolve their services as well. A lot of people are not getting on the 3G bandwagon because they can not do everything they need to on it. 3G data plans need to migrate to a per account or per customer pricing structure, instead of per device. If I want to use both my smartphone and my mythical 3g-capable PSP on the Sprint network, I should not be charged double for that if I have a Family Plan with shared data.

I am not sure who is the barrier here. Sony and Nintendo for not being forward thinking enough? The wireless carriers for not putting a service pricing model in place that would encourage this type of business model for the gaming industry? Or we, the consumers, for creating the impression that we would not supply a demand for slightly larger devices with 3G chips, or for shared data plans if it allowed us to use our portable consoles on the 3G network?

I think a great deal about the impact of such a capability. My XBox 360 is probably my most socially engaging electronic device that I own, next to my smartphones. My PS3, while its social impact has lagged the 360's, is becoming more and more a hub for communicating with friends. My PSP is not a social device at all. If it were connected to the web whenever I was on the go, whenever I wanted it to be, I would likely use it to reach out to people more. More importantly, Sony would support that capability by rolling out more means to enact that social engagement.

In a day where portable devices form the core of our digital social networks, I struggle to understand why the gaming industry has not moved in this direction. It seems a viable match. I can only hope someone acts upon it soon. Or I do not see myself joining the next generation of portable console owners.
- Vr/Zeux..>>

Revenue in the computing market is down. It is no secret. Recent reports further emphasize the fact, pointing to the rise of Netbooks sales (courtesy of [H]ardOCP) as a contributing factor. Netbooks are cheap. The fact that they are selling like hotcakes is making manufacturers drop prices across the computing strata in order to not have all of thier sales cannibalized by netbooks. There is a good possibility that this ship will eventually right itself with an increasing number of unit sales as those in lower income strata cross the digital divide and exit the ranks of the Luddites. I hope this is the case for several reasons, not all of which are philanthropic.

I have done my share to bring people across the digital divide in the last ten years. As I have upgraded to the next big thing, I have given over superseded technology to family mambers and friends. Sometimes at discounted prices. Sometimes even for free. I have donated PCs to schools and churches. It is one of my hopes that we will soon reach a day when no one has to live across the digital divide. In a picture that is concurrent with Roddenberry visions, I see a time when everyone has access to the same level of at least minimum computing resources.

In the time leading up to the current fiscal environment, I had already begun moving my own budgetary lines for technology with each generational refresh. Up until 2004, I paid north of two grand for my primary gaming laptops. Since then, however, I have basically refused to pay more than $1300. The price of technology and the capabilities of lower-priced units have simply crept to a point where nothing more is necessary. The Alienware's and Voodoo's just do not do so much more these days than lower priced models that the $2000+ price tags can be justified. The same has also become true of virtually every component that is involved in making up my computing ecosystem. Video cards, hard drives, monitors, smartphones...everything has crept downwards in price to the point where maintaining a hobby in computing no longer takes thousands of dollars a year.

A good thing, too. While I want everyone else to benefit from lower prices, the person I am most concerned about benefiting from them is me. In the ensuing years, it is likely I will not be able to keep up with the financial burden of always being an early adopter. So I need those prices to continue decreasing while entry level product capabilities continue to increase. These days I check woot.com every day. Same for the sales page of Newegg.com; hunting and searching for every major deal that pops onto the scene.

I am not bothered by the lower revenues in the computing industry. Eventually, like every other economic dynamic in a free market economy, it will balance itself out. I hope that the result of the balancing will be a market that allows me to continue gaming, creating, writing, and leading a digital life****for pennies. I reckon everyone else is up for that, too.
- Vr/Zeux..>>

It is no secret that eBooks are big these days. The Amazon kindle apparently sparked a digital revolution while everyone was distracted by things like the iPod Touch and the EeePC. Being a staunch user of TabletPCs for over 5 years, I am familiar with the concept of digital books, since it was through the TabletPC that I was introduced to this form of media.

When I owned my first TabletPC, a Compaq TC1000, I shifted my subscriptions to technology magazines to a service called Zinio. Unfortunately, that service now only hosts one of the tech mags that I read from time to time. And the digital issue is sometimes more expensive than the paper copy. So I have given that up, but it was a neat introduction to the concept of consuming print content electronically.

And it was also a stark contrast to the version of that concept that has risen to popularity today. Most people these days are using eBooks to either actually read books, vice magazines, or are using them to absorb other periodical content, such as newspapers. While I have tended to be an early adopter, and am on board with the concept of eBooks themselves, I have yet to get onboard with an eBook reader itself.

I tend to read more web content these days, and after that would still come technology magazines. I know; call me an illiterate. I have been mixing eBooks into my repertoire, however, although this has been via downloading eBooks to my Fujitsu U820 UMPC. Specifically, these days I am into the True Blood novels in electronic format. Again, I have no problems with the media format itself. I just have yet to grasp the rationalization of the hardware.

If I were to invest in an eBook reader, it would need to be capable of doing more than rendering print in digital ink. Even with the increasing number of features that are being stuffed into the wire-thin devices, most of them can still not render in color. I would need to be able to consume multiple forms of reading content on the device, including web content and digital magazines, both of which, for my use, would require color rendering. The only one on the market that I know of is the Fujitsu Flepia, and it costs a cool grand. More devices are coming, and several have marketing campaigns saying that they will be the first to market with a color screen. We'll see. Point is, they are not here yet.

Some of the impending Tablets that are going to be hitting the market (an iTablet maybe? Although I am more interested in the concept of Microsoft's Courier). In order to hit the sweet spot for the type of eReader use I would want, they would need to have 7" to 10" screeens, so that a magazine page could be rendered similar to its print layout equivalent. Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part. I guess my deal is that if I am going to switch to an eBook Reader, then I never want to have to buy anything in print...ever...again.

Finally, the concept of paying the current price for an eBook Reader, which in many cases will net you a halfway decent MID that can be used for more than just reading, does not pass the smell test for me. My U820 was much more expensive (I bought it just before some of the less expensive devices were available in quantity), but it also allows me to do a heck of a lot more on the go than an eBook Reader does. When you cast your gaze around the marketplace today, and consider that the $490 price tag on an Amazon Kindle DX gets you within almost $100 of a Viliv X70, it just does not make sense to me to pay for a Kindle.

I love this product category, though, for the potential it represents. What I hope is that more general purpose devices debut that can handle the eBook Reader function, while providing for some concurrent limited productivity while on the go, and in the same form factor that eBook Readers currently have. We may be several years from the tangible realization of this concept. Until "it" gets here, I am content to pay a little extra for UMPCs or MIDs that can do whatever everyone else's eBook Reader can, and then some.

- Vr/Zeuxidamas

MaximumPC - From the World of Something Useful: I typically never use anything other than 3dMark to benchmark my PC's and their graphics cards. I guess I have never really even asked the question, "Is this all that there is? Is there nothing more?" MaximumPC answers that question with a quick round of 5 tools to use to see if your GPU is up to snuff.

Metacritic Game Reviews - Need for Speed Shift: Despite the naysayers, I remain a staunch supporter of the Need for Speed series. I love being a complete gear-head as much as the next guy (or gal), but sometimes I just want to drive without all of the setup and editing; but I still do not want an arcadey driving experience. The NFS franchise has struck this balance correctly for me more often than it has missed the mark. Check out the media's current reception of the latest NFS series installment.

Mobile Magazine - Return of the Razr: In terms of the digital age, the Motorola Razr line could be considered venerable. Until the iPhone came along, no other phone had made so large a mark on the world of cellular consumerism. If you consider the original Razr a direct decedent of the Startac series, then the Razr's roots go back even further. I used a Startac. And I adopted a Razr, as well. A tribute to the Razr's rightful place as the everyman's phone is the fact that I decided to give mine up the day I boarded a transport shuttle between terminals at Dulles and as soon as the door's closed, everyone on the shuttle whipped out a Razr. The product line is back, albeit re-born and edged out to make it competitive in today's marketplace. I have moved out of this customer zone as a consumer, but I reckon it will fit some people's needs just fine.

I have been struggling at work, on account of several factors. I think, partially, it is because of the fact that I was on a Tablet, and then not, and then back on a Tablet. As I have struggled to get my groove back in the workspace, I have also been assessing how I am working in my IT environment and trying to find inefficiencies there.

My transition back to a TabletPC at work has been somewhat hampered by my innate curiosity with tech and my need to sometimes poke around in an app rather than just get my work done. OK, I admit my closet geekdom, but that is not the sum of the problem, I don't think. One of the reasons I insist on being on a Tablet is because I believe that I stay more organized. I should not be more organized and losing efficiency, but that is what seems to be happening.

So Friday, the day that I work from home, I tried to take a round-turn on my organizational approach. One of my issues is multi-tasking and the fact that when I come into the office, I start up the Tablet and then proceed to open every single inking app that I use. Add to that iTunes, MS Outlook, and then the parade of MS Office docs that I open and work in throughout the day, and I've come to assess that my firehose is set to wide-angle fog when I need to be putting down a high-pressure stream.

So I took my work week, divided it into 10 sections of time (AM/PM each work day), and designated a primary app environment to work in. I have slots to work email (which is predominantly reviewing work by my employees, putting out guidance to my various teams, getting responses back to my customers, etc.), work my MS Outlook tasklists, work and log things into my Project Journals (in Windows Journal), work long-term design tasks and organize items in my Project Notebooks (in MS OneNote), and shuffle quicknotes out to employees, team members, or the aforementioned apps from my scratch notes (things I write down in either a OneNote Sidenote, or more frequently, in Sticky Notes).

So I guess what I am saying is that, for instance, Friday AM is focused on time to work items in my Project Journal, and that is all I will work in. Friday PM is a slot to get things moved out of Sticky Notes (where I write phone messages or verbal briefs from people who stroll into my office) and into a proper app or out in a task email, and so forth. This will be instead of having 4 inking apps open as well as Outlook all of the time and dumping stuff into those apps all over the place. For each "app slot", I have a companion app to link to in the event that I need to do something that the current app can not accommodate.

So I am wondering who else has come across this problem and how have others dealt with it. I know that there are people who do everything in MS OneNote, or do everything in Outlook (without the ink), but I am not sure, and have not believed to this point, that any one of these apps meets all of my organizational and time management needs. I am comfortable working in all of them, but have needed a better way to focus and time manage my allocation of focus in each. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
- Vr/Zeuxx..>>

Convergence. I have only succumbed to this global trend on an occasions or two. I finally capitulated to not carrying both a phone and a PDA, and just went with a smartphone(s). But in general, I prefer a dedicated device that does its specific function well. I do not worry about carrying too many devices. No one said that I had to carry them all of the time. This has remained true for me in the gaming arena. While there are multiple game systems on the market and arguably a lot of consumers are satisfied with one, I retain more. The 360 and PS3 have advanced to a point where they can pull off a lot of things that a PC can do, but there are still some gaming genres that are best played on a PC. And in no way am I going to compromise even more and shoe-horn myself into an iPhone and attempt to call it a gaming platform.

The iPhone (and iPod Touch) are great devices for the things they do. They represent a technological revolution vice the evolution that most of the rest of the electronics marketplace plods through. But it is the goofy control scheme that keeps either of these devices from being viewed by me as reasonable gaming platforms.

I think that the primary reason the the iPhone has taken off as a gaming platform is that it is being employed as an idle time tool. While people are standing around at bus stops, waiting on friends to show up for dinner or a movie, or standing in line for something, it makes sense to whip out this device and get in a few minutes of Lode Runner.

From this application, I can see the iPhone's attractiveness for its gaming utility. And when I was a primary iPhone user, I had a few games installed just for that purpose. But when it came time for my scheduled game time, there was no way in the world that, sitting at home, with other game systems available, I would ever reach for the iPhone to play a game instead of my 360, PS3, a PC, or even the PSP.

All of these systems are dedicated gaming consoles, designed for that purpose from the ground up, and they fulfill this function better than the iPhone.

Between my time spent with the Nintendo Wii and (painfully) living with the PS3's Six-Axis controller for its first months on the market, I have also come to realize that "innovative" control schemes are not my personal cup of tea. Over the last year, in my workday life, I have noticed many customers insisting on hard-wired controls as well as a software interface. In those instances I have questioned the need for this redundancy. The software UI should be enough. I now realize that it is in some part analogous to the view of motion-based controls over hard-buttons on a controller.

How many times have you been playing Madden NFL and stared at the screen, mouth agape, firmly believing that you had hit a button to avoid whatever was actually unfolding on-screen. You have wondered if the game was cheating, or if there was a problem with your controller. In more recent years you have wondered if there was a problem with the wireless signal getting from your controller to the console. Now magnify that 50 times as you are left wondering if you did some goofy motion with the exact kinesthetics required to result in a turn of a car, a stiff-arm in football, or to swing from one building to another. No thanks. Legacy control schemes can get frustrating enough; I do not need to invite the added inaccuracy of my arm or tilting movements into the equation. I quickly tired of the Wii. My first action whenever booting up a new game on the PS3 was to disable whatever 6-axis controls were implemented. And I almost never played anything on my iPhone that was based on me tilting the phone in any direction.

Without hardware buttons as a native control scheme, the iPhone is just not something I am interested in as a gaming platform. Apple's efforts this week to position the iPod Touch as a gaming device, especially at its price points, do not pique my interest. Particularly when considered against the PSP and Nintendo DSi.

For everyone trying to offer me digital peanut butter in my binary chocolate, no thanks. PDA and Cell Phone convergence is enough for me. I am not interested in a GPS-MP3-PMP-eBook Reader-cell phone-PDA-portable console. Especially since the implementation in each of these devices is already compromised in some facet that reduces its utility to a core group of users. Converging devices makes system designers choose even more compromises than already occur as a matter inherent to designing mobile computing appliances. The iPod Touch I am sure appeals to a consumer base. It just does not appeal to me, and the inclusion of or upgrade to its gaming prowess is just something that I am not buying. Literally.
- Vr/Zeuxx..>>

Over on Casual Adult Gamers, our fearless leader just picked up his first PS3...the new PS3 Slim. And immediately had some problems with it out of the box. Because I just experienced the PSN sign-in issue with a local friend of mine, the PS3's DNS problem was fresh in my mind. Here's a copy of my post, which also includes some commentary on the differences between XBox Live and the PSN. Cheers.

Yes, life in PS3-land is not the same as it is on XBL, but it is not as horrific now as it was in the PS3 launch window. One thing I finally noticed (yes...I am dense) is that when you are on the PSN Store, scrolling is not buffered like it is on XBL, so you scroll through lists the same as you would in a MS Word Doc, unlike on the 360 where in the Marketplace a lot of times you scroll...and wait...and scroll...and wait...

A buddy of mine and I have been playing regular Rainbow Six Vegas 2 nights on Mondays, and he just switched from his wireless to a wired connection. One thing we discovered is that it seems that the PS3, when set to auto-configure its network settings on a hard-wired connection, can not figure out how to properly set the DNS. It might be worthwhile (although I know there is a 90% chance you already checked) to go into your network settings, look at your DNS when you are on a wire, and make sure it is set for the IP address of your router. I set my Primary DNS to 192.168.254.254 (my Wired router) and then just set my Secondary DNS to 0.0.0.0. If the router is down, it's not like I am getting on anyway, so there appears to be no need for a 2ndary DNS setting when behind a router on the PS3.

I know that some devices/appliances look for the DNS settings to match the DNS settings on the router, vice being set to the router IP address itself, but in this case, this is what has worked for me. Let me know if this helps. Peace out. - Vr/Zeuxidamas.

All over the interwebs, fights are breaking out over the current pricing model on the XBox Live marketplace for the new avatar add-ons. Some XBox Live patrons are incensed that Microsoft would set such a gougingly high price for things like Star Wars apparel and props. My own view is that MS is a business. They can set whatever prices they deem appropriate. We consumers are a pretty powerful lot, too. We can push those prices down by just not buying the stuff. But at the end of the day, each individual consumer does what serves his own best interests in the free marketplace. So trying to organize collective market resistance is a questionable strategy. My forum post on the topic after the break.

Yeah, I've read the article and some of the comments, and I am going to take the side of the business. And it's not that I support Microsoft for every policy choice they make, but with a degree in Finance, I am a dyed-in-the-wool, never surrender supporter of the free market economy.

The advent of online outlets for voicing your opinion is great. I take advantage of it almost every day. But organizing a campaign to create an outcry against a pricing model just does not ring true to me. The way to influence the market when it comes to the basics of economic supply and demand is the same as it has always been: buy it or don't.

If you want a feature or a map-pack or more players in the lobby, etc, those seem to be more worthy issues to voice your concern over. Trying to manipulate the market while standing on the sidelines not participating in it seems dubious.

And there is no such thing as "unfair pricing" in an open marketplace unless there is collusion between multiple vendors to rig prices. And if its a monopoly, then almost none of the typical economic theorems apply. Consumers who see the avatar stuff as a "Want" have options. They can buy a PS3 and purchase cheaper avatar stuff on PS Home. They can not buy avatar stuff. They can be happy outfitting their avatar with the free stuff, of which there is already so much that I can hardy see the need for the avatar offerings in the marketplace anyway. I can personally think of many more issues of critical import to the XBL Service, community, and ecosystem that I would like to see championed by consumer advocacy.

The really big option is: XBLivers can wait, because anything that is $5 now will almost certainly get cheaper in a few months (don't almost all of the map packs eventually become free?) or will get bundled with something, or who knows. There always seems to be some discount deal that comes out for such a large percentage of this stuff.

The market bears the prices that are supported by consumer demand, plain and simple. If we want prices to come down, we need to not buy it. And trying to organize effort to not buy it is, at least for me, not a good use of my leisure time. If there is something that is too expensive for me to pay for, I just admit that I can't have it and move on. Just because it is a feature of our chosen console ecosystem, it does not mean that we should all have it. We are stake-holders in XBL, but at the end of the day we should not expect to be privy to every nook and cranny that it consists of. I would love to have music videos on my 360. But I think that they are too expensive for the limited offerings that are available. So I do not organize a Twitter or Blog boycott against music videos on XBL. I wait for the prices to come down, or I resolve to do without that product.

Microsoft will see poor sales of these items and lower the prices, or they'll see good sales and the prices will stay (or go up), or they will see poor sales and will not be able to offer them at a price that the market will bear without making worthwhile profit over the supply costs. They will not make any of these choices (directly) because of the number of Twitter posts that are made disagreeing with the pricing structure.

Sorry for the rant. I'll get off my soapbox now and hope that you guys still like me. I'm out.
- Vr/Zeuxidamas..>>

This week marks the first that I have actually been working on the U820 as my system of choice. This last month I have just been using it as a companion computing device. In the course of applying it to my current set of tasks, there are some additional notes beyond what I wrote yesterday for the initial one month impression.

I am using a 2GB SD card as an add-on to the system's memory, which is my first application of Microsoft's ReadyBoost feature, available in Windows Vista. I have not taken any actual benchmarks, but the performance appeaars to be snappier. In fact so much so that I could not imagine anyone trying to use the device without it. I plan on (eventually) running PC Mark with and without ReadyBoost enabled and see if there is a major diff.

I also like the Compact Flash Reader, and have put it to some use. The Fuji is the only PC I have right now with an embedded Compact Flash-card reader, since most laptops now come with SD card readers. Carrying the Fujitsu when I am armed with my Sony Alpha a350 dSLR means not having to carry a separate card reader to see the photos. The card reader is also good for storing files (up to 32GB worth on my largest flash card) that I want always available, but do not want to take up space on the U820's hard drive.

Battery life on the Fuji is excellent. I have seen as much as 7.5 to 8 hours when in Power Savings mode without any peripherals attached. The only laptop I have that can get anywhere near it in terms of battery life is the Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T.

I really wonder how this device would perform under Windows XP or Windows 7. When I set it up, though, I did not want to lose the "from the ground up" inking and Tablet features built into Vista. I was also pressed for time, so I did not want to strip the UMPC of its pre-configured Vista install in order to load Windows 7. I think that I am due a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it releases. If so, I plan on doing that rollover over the Holiday break.

I've got a lot more thoughts, but I will save those for a later day. Thanks for reading and see ya manana.
- Vr/Z..>>

It has been just under a month since I took delivery of my Fujitsu U820 UMPC from Newegg. This is not a device for everyone. Perhaps it is not even a device for anyone, except the handful of those of us who choose to use it. I would never try and sell anyone on this device for meeting their everyday computing needs. It is unquestionably a niche product, and a very expensive one at that. But I do want to take a post and answer some questions that I have had from a few friends, such as "Why?", and now that I have "How?"

First it might be worth it to cover why I was in the market for another UMPC after having gotten rid of my Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium earlier this year. The Sammy had been my second UMPC, preceded by the original Q1b. I really liked both of my Q1's, and put them to a good amount of use. But several design issues prevented any of my uses for them from being optimal.

The Q1b was predominantly too slow. The Q1 Ultra Premium, while peppier, was too thick, and had bad ergos. While it was not very heavy, it just did not fit in the hand naturally, nor did it pack well in a bag with another laptop. My other issue with the Q1 Ultra was that, despite its decent performance while in run, it seemed to take forever to come up out of standby. And its low profile form-factor meant that it was not well-suited to being left on and accessed routinely, since no matter where I had it set up I had to hunch over to see it.

As is the usual, I had a set of requirements when I went in search of the new device. I was looking for something that I could leave on all the time and could walk around the house with comfortably in my hand. I envisioned walking around the house taking notes, maintaining my checkbook or grocery list, or system administrator notes for various projects, or article ideas. I needed something that could help me keep my thoughts organized and was instantly accessible. I foresaw doing a good bit of web-browsing and eBook reading on the device. Below is an excerpt from my Evernote notebook as I organized my thoughts on what it was I needed:

• display larger than a smartphone's

• can be left on all the time, or instant on, low power requirements

• expect to use predominantly at home

• if in use on travel, expect to use in short durations (ie maybe not carry power supply? USB power available?)

• must have pen-interface, but active digitizer no longer required. Do not anticipate using this to draft lengthy notes, for that will use TabletPC, now that it will be more readily available

• must be flat, thin (thinner than previous Samsung Q1's...need to look up old height spec of Q1 and Q1 Ultra), easily manageable while held in the hand

• will use at work to potentially take quick side-notes at my desk (how to sync or xfr to tabletPC?), but would not use, say, for taking notes in ****/p>

• keyboard not required, but would be nice

• can not be as large as a netbook (so 7" screen max?)

• hard drive would be nice to be large enough to hold entire itunes music (but I can only have five machines...combine with purchase of DRM freeing current collection, and go to only DRM-free downloads - ie iTunes Plus?)

• if HD too expensive, can go with less, or an SSD, or can it use CF card from the LE1600 and I'll just put subsets of the iTunes archive on there. Or do I stream from the NAS?

• no more than $500 • must be available now; no pre-orders

With those requirements on the table, I gave strong consideration to a MID. The problem with MIDs then was that most of them were unable to satisfy the last requirement. Many were only available via pre-order a month ago. And even then, most run on the Atom Z520 processor, which runs roughly 300MHz slower than most netbook Atom CPUs. I was willing to accept less than full laptop performance, but I was worried about dipping lower than the standard Atom 1.6GHz processor.

In the end-game, I down-selected to the Fujitsu, various incarnations of the Kohshinja S-series , and the iterations of Tablet Netbooks that are coming out (most notably by Asus and Gigabyte). The Kohshinja variant that was cheaper than the Fuji ran on a slower processor, so, again, performance was a concern. The Asus Tablet Netbook, the Asus T91, got poor reviews. Additionally, I was concerned about buying a netbook with a screen that large and trying to work on it without an active digitizer. This had been one of the shortcomings of the Samsung Q1. It's largish (for an UMPC) 7" screen made inking difficult since you could not rest your palm on the screen. And the device was not comfortable while wielding it one-handed while trying to ink on it. I eventually developed a similar concern for the Gigabyte M912X, despite the fact that that device has had a more welcome reception by the Technorati.

That left the Fujitsu U820. The one requirement I was not able to shoehorn into was price. But you do what you have to do. And considering that basically every other requirement on the list was met, missing one is not so bad a ratio.

So, as I sit here in Panera with the Fuji, it is time to turn to how I actually use the device. First of all, this is the one laptop that I predominantly leave open and running all of the time. It is the PC that I reach for whenever I need quick access. At home it spends most of its time on the kitchen bar counter in its dock. It fields all of those IMDB queries that have to be answered when people are camped out on my comforter watching movies or TV episodes on DVD. I also use it to maintain my Grocery List and Checkbook, for which Microsoft OneNote is my App of choice.

It is also the walk around the house web browser and eBook reader. So it goes anywhere I would normally take a paperback book in my place. For these purposes, I use the device in Tablet mode, in either portrait or landscape. It has taken me a few weeks, but I finally figured out how to put it in 1024 X 768 resolution and keep it at that resolution as I dock it, undock it, and rotate the screen in and out of Tablet mode. This is my preferred resolution to work in on the device. 1280 X 800 makes things too small on the 5.6" screen, and taking it out of widescreen aspect ratio (which occurs at 1024 X 600) causes too many items to be skewed from my standard desktop setup.

Those are the most frequent and routine uses. Other roles the Fuji plays:

• Acts as a small video screening device. It is the smallest device I use to frequently watch movie trailers. But I also use it to watch encoded video in various formats, including streaming from NetFlix

• I have not made a test-run yet, but I intend to use it as one of the "microphones" and recording devices in my Podcast setup, and then to edit and assemble the Podcast

• I use it as a platform for managing my Flickr account, and uploading TwitPic photos. I use it for making very small edits and palette changes to photos. It has a wonderful screen and good color representation

• It is a small blogging workstation, although perhaps not as much as people might think given its portability. I (normally) keep posts on it to short lengths, although this initial report will be an exception

• Of major significance, it is now where I maintain my master log of network maintenance. I used to think of maintenance from a per workstation perspective. Since I often have the Fuji next to me for note taking, even when I am working on another PC, it made sense to use it almost like a maintenance clipboard with my PC Maintenance Checksheet

• Still have to optest it, but I have loaded Nero 7 on it and will be attempting some video ripping and encoding

• Finally, it has been designated as the new Windows Software Test Bed. I figure if screw this up and need to reload the OS, it is the one Windows workstation I can most afford to be without.

OK, that's it, true believers. Back on a UMPC now, I know (as I did during the months that I was without the Q1) these are niche products that I see a use for. Of course, you could do all of the things that I do on much larger workstations. But you could not do them in all of the places that I can with the Fuji, and you could not do so without lugging around some extra weight. Yes, I am not a typical user, and I tend to always be doing something on a computer. I am just vouching for the fact that, if extreme portability is an interest of yours, a UMPC, and specifically the U820, can fulfill certain functionality as needed in an ultra-portable form factor. Hope this helps in answering all those questions that people have been firing my way. Peace out!!!

- Vr/Z