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!