Monday, August 20, 2007

How I use the Everun

It's now three weeks after I got hold of the Everun. Slowly I'm beginning to get used to the UMPC concept. As a PDA user I really had to work out a way of combining the two. In my previous blog I talked about the pro's and con's of the pda and the umpc. I use the pda/phone less, and the Everun more, but -at this moment- not so intensive as I probably could. So, what am I doing with this new piece of technology?
- internet tablet in the house: everywhere in my appartment I can enjoy my WiFi connection, but I actually use the Everun the most sitting on the couche, while one eye is pointed at the TV, the other is focussed on the FireFox browser on the Everun.
- on the move: reading an ebook. This works great! I use the Mobireader, and combined with the large screen it is very very usefull.
- on the move: listening to music. Multitasking is not a problem for the Everun, though when you are running something that consumes processing power, like Skype, the system will go slow. But browsing/ebook reading and listening to music is a good combination. The GOM player does it's job.
- on the move: watching movies. Haven't done that a lot, but it can be done. Again, the GOM player handles wmv, divx, xvid and DVD files without any problem, so you can leave the dedicated 'personal media players' like the Archos at home. I do have an Archos GMini 500 with 80gig and use it to backup all my media files and software.
- on the move: typing some small documents, working with data in Excel. Writing an email every now and then. The keyboard is great for little typing, like URL's, password, an email or something like that. I have also tried some on-screen keyboards, like IlliumSoft's Inscribe (which is free). These on-screen kb's do not make me happy, but they get the job done. The one thing I don't like about the Inscibe kb is the lack of visible response when pressing a key. Was that so hard to do? Anyway, it's great being able to open a Word document and read it the way it was intended, without being slimmed down by Pocket Word.

That's about it, and I know, there are more ways to use the Everun, like gaming etc, but so far I can entertain myself during the daily commute, which, sometimes, should be longer because you can do only that much in 30 mins.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Where the smartphone ends...

...and the UMPC takes over.
For years now I'm a PDA/PocketPC(with phone) user. Have had two Palms pda's, a Casio PPC, an Acer n10, a HP Jornada HandheldPC, a HP rx3715, a Palm Treo 650 (still using), a T-Mobile Vario (still using) and now my main device is the HP hw6915; with keyboard and nice working GPS. And I'm always connected...so no complaints. I am a one-piece man, I like devices that do it all: phone, PIM, gps, email and internet, entertainment (games, music and multimedia).
At least, I was.
But now I have an Everun UMPC (yes, I'd call it an umpc) and things have changed. I use my smartphone less and less for browsing or reading or entertainment. (And for the record: I use my laptop also less; with the Everun I browse the internet and read my email on the couch).
The Everun has taken over much of the pda's work, at least when I'm commuting. In the train it's hard to do some work, but reading an ebook and listening to music is great. Something I could do on my pda, but with the small screen it's not such a pleasure. Combined with a BT phone or using a wifi hotspot I can have the full internet experience. A PDA can't do that.
Still, there is not so much between how I use my pda and how I use the Everun. Both have there (dis)advantages:

PDA:
+ small, light
+ gprs/gsm connection, always on-line
+ instant-on, stable, no hard-disk
+ BT, wifi, multimedia, internet, email
+ battery last for at least a day
- small screen
- not a full internet experience (browser is limited)
- OS is slimmed down, you need special programs for the Windows Mobile platform
- Wifi doesn't work with all hotspots, like the once with wpa2-psk protection
- not much storage memory, max. 2 gig/4 gig.

Everun:
+ large screen
+ full OS, can run a lot of apps you also have on your laptop or pc
+ large storage room (30 gig or more)
+ set up wifi is easy
+ full internet experience (IE or FireFox, incl. YouTube vids)
- large and clumsy (need a girly bag to carry it)
- hard-disk is always risky on a mobile device
- no cellular capacity (at least on this model)
- not instant-on, you have to wait 5-10 seconds until Windows has started
- battery last only 3 to 4 hours with Wifi on

So, I ask myself, has the Everun an edge? It's large, has no cellphone build in, not instant-on. Why not stick with the pda?
I think the advantage of the Everun lies in its OS, which enables it to be used as a 'normal' computer, with all the productive apps (Office XP, FireFox) as well as all the multimedia capacities. You can do fun and productivity better, much better than a pda. I think that's the power of the Everun, and a lot of other UMPC's.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Everun as eBook reader

As Steve from UMPCportal.com earlier reported, reading ebooks on the Everun works very good. I installed the Mobireader (for Windows), bought an ebook and started reading. The font is large enough to read for long periods without eye strain, and when keeping the device in portrait mode you can read while holding the device in just one hand. Start the GOM player for some nice background music and you can finally enjoy the journey to work.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Everun BT DUN

Yes it works!

After I got wifi working, which was very easy, I thought it was about time to try BT. I setup a pairing with a BT phone, a HP hw6915 smartphone. Then I made a dial-up connection. That's it, it worked. Yes of course it's slow since it's a GPRS connection, but it works. It's useable for email downloading and some light internet browsing.
So, when there's no wifi hotspot around you stil have a way to connect to the internet and enjoy the full internet experience!

Update 13-8-2007: I tried to connect when I was in the train to work, but no-go. I struggled for at least 20 minutes to get it working. The bad thing is that once your phone is connected you can put it away in a pocket, but during the pair and DUN-enabling you have to confirm a few things, which is quite annoying. Anyway, I'll try again.

Blast from the past

Everun besides Jornada

I thought it would be nice to compare the Everun with my old HP Jornada HandheldPC. Although the Everun is smaller, it has more power under the hood. But the Jornada was not a bad device at all. It came with a lot of software, like (stripped down versions of) Word, Excel, PPT and you could even manage some small Access databases. The screen has a resolution of 640 x 240, the OS is HandheldPC 2000.
Microsoft abandoned the HandheldPC platform in favor of the touchscreen-only PocketPC, and that evolved into Windows Mobile 6 today. But these days, more and more PPC's are seeing the light of day, having a qwerty keyboard. And the HTC Advantage 7500/7501 is getting close to an umpc with it's large screen (640 x 480) and keyboard. It looks like high-end PocketPC's are growing into low-end umpc's. Still, I think a device running software intended for small devices, like Windows Mobile or Symbian, is not a umpc.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Everun first impressions

Since I'm a PDA user for many years, I'll be looking at the Everun from that perspective.

Hardware
The device feels sturdy, but a little heavy. The buttons on the device are small but usable. The qwerty keyboard is very handy, and so is the autototate function. The back of the device contains the battery. It's not easy to remove the battery, I had to use a piece of plastic. And you must remove the battery in order to remove a piece of plastic that's on the contactpoints. Also, putting the battery back needs al lot of pressure.
This Everun version is the Lite one, which has the Geode LX800 500Mhz processor, 512Mb ram, 30Gig HD, Wifi, BT and the 4,8 inch screen. One odd thing though, when I startup the device, it says "Geode GX-MMX 600Mhz". I think this is some software thingy, because Windows say its running 498Mhz with 384Mb of ram.
Talking about Windows, it runs Windows XP Home Edition with SP2. At this stage, XP is very snappy.

Keyboard
It's small, but I use a Treo and a HP hw6915 keyboard, so I can say it's working good. Even my big fingers can press the right button. The keyboard works in all screen rotations, but is best suited when you hold the device in portrait mode. You're definitely not going to write novels on this keyboard, but for emails, URL's, passwords and IM it's very handy. No need to use the stylish. Ofcourse there's a learning curve, and the spacebar is a spacebutton, which is not handy.

Keys
There are a lot of keys besides the keyboard. An 8-way rocker to navigate through menu's (but lacks a click option to confirm a selection), 12 function keys, 2 groups of Shift-Fn-Alt-Control, left and right mouseclick buttons, up and down scroll buttons, screen size button and some more. You really have to read the manual to understand the options and use of all the buttons.

Optical mousepointer
One great thing on the Everun is the optical mousepointer. You can move your thumb over it and this controls the mouse movement on the screen. When you press the Fn (function) key and move over the optical mousepointer, you get a scroll function. Very, very handy when browsing. The pointer is clickable, so you can move the mouse and click it with one finger.

Screen
The screen is very clear, but feels a little rough. It's touch-sensitive, so you can control the device using the stylus (or finger). I have no idea how scratch-proof it is, so always be carefull.
The default size of the screen is 800x480 pixels, but you can change between 800x600, 1024x576, 1024x612, 1024x768 and 640x480. The higher the resolution, the smaller everything gets. I really had to get used to the small text and icons on this device, compared to a PocketPC. The benefit is that when browsing you get al lot more info on the screen than using a pda. So far (1 week use) I have only used the default screenresolution.
Changing between resolution takes a second or so, no large delays there.

Autorotate
The great thing of the Everun is the autorotate function. It works like this. Say you hold the device in landschape mode. You must type a password, so you rotate the device in portrait mode, to input some text. The device recognizes the change, and the screen is also changed into portrait mode. No need to press any button. And yes, you can turn this function off if you don't like it. The rotation is snappy, it takes about a 2 seconds for Windows to change.

Batterylife
Everun states that you can get 6 to 7 hours of batterylife, but with WiFi on the battery drains much faster. 3 or 4 hours at most. But compare that to other UMPC's...some of them have just 2 hours working time. Batterylife is one great benefit of the Everun, and one of the reasons to buy this device instead of, e.g. an Adapt MX1200 with Vista.

Software
The Everun has Windows XP with SP2. The GOM player was preinstalled, which is very nice. Since this is a computer, you can install a lot of Windows software. But remember, you've got limited processor power and memory. So far I installed:
- Windows Office XP 2003 (Word, Excel, PPT, Access, Outlook)
- FireFox 2
- Kaspersky Anti Virus (yes that works and does not seem to slow down the device)
- MapInfo Professional (geographical information software, much lighter than ArcView)
- Total Commander
- PaintShopPro 5 (old but still very usable)
- Skype. As reported earlier by Steve/Chippy, it works but the processor runs at 100% all the time. So I uninstalled it.

The GOM player is very usefull. It plays MP3 files, but also Divx, XVid and WMV files, and VOB (DVD) files to. Although I had to install some extra codecs for the latter. Surprisingly, a 500Mb wmv file ran choppy in Windows Media Player, but ran smootly in the GOM player.

Not so good
There is no SD card slot, so you must use a cardreader using the only USB port. The second miniUSB is only to connect the Everun to an external PC. I'd rather have seen a second USB port. The battery is hard to replace, and there are a lot of openings in which dust can enter the device. The screen is always vunerable, so protect it. The device is not really pocketable, and has a harddrive, so carry the device in a bag.
Holding the device in one hand gets uncomfortable after a while, because it's feels heavy (compared to a pda, it's lite when you compare it to a laptop). And the device gets hot after using it for a few hours.

Use
Why did I buy this device? I was looking around for a simple, small and lite notebook to use during trips and holidays. Then I came across the UMPC platform, which is still in it's childhood. The geek in me was excited. These devices seem to be positioned between a pda and a laptop. After looking around on the internet, and watching about every umpc movie on YouTube, I finally had to decide between the Adapt MX1200 and the Everun. Although the mx1200 looked really nice, with an SD slot and camera, it also ran Vista and had a batterylife of about 2,5 hours. The Everun lacks SD, but runs for 4 or 5 hours, and uses Windows XP, which has proven to be a stable platform. The screen is large enough for some serious work or movie watching. The device itself is small enough to be carried around (but not in a pocket though).

Want to know more about the Everun, or UMPC's. Look at http://www.umpcportal.com/modules/news/

Thanx for reading!

Raon Digital Everun In Da House!

The Everun...

Saterday, august 4 2007, it was delivered! The Everun umpc. I'll keep you informed about this little device. Here are the first unboxing pictures.