5 Days with The OQO

A co-worker of mine who recently acquired the OQO was kind enough to lend it to me.  I've carried it around for the past 5 days and here are my thoughts on this little device.  You can see me showing it off in the video clip below with my post continuing after that.

The OQO is a wonder in engineering devices that are small.  It is amazing how they've packed so much into this little device.  Despite that, there are some problems I find with the device but overall I was surprised by how much I enjoyed using it and found it an effective way to augment my computing use.  Let's look at the pros and cons that I found over my 5 day trial.

Pros

• Was awesome to take along a small PDA-like device that had the computing power of Windows.  Running Windows XP Professional there is nothing you can't do, from surfing the web to checking email, to working on Word documents. 
• Size is small enough that it isn't cumbersome to bring along most places.  The one issue with my Tablet PC was that you couldn't bring it along everywhere without lugging a laptop bag.  This device was small enough to carry around or slip inside a coat pocket.  I also used a belt-attaching case for it that worked well, though it was a tad big and looked odd.
• QWERTY keyboard was awesome.  Easy to get use to.  Nice that you could slide the screen up to get access to the keyboad
• You can rotate the screen.  By viewing the screen in portrait mode it was great to read articles from the web and PDF documents
• Great that it is now running the tablet OS from Microsoft.  That means you can keep the screen slid down over the QWERTY keyboard and use the pen to navigate; especially nice for surfing the web
• Innovative cable used for docking purposes.  They've got so many things integrated into this cable like USB port, fireware, power, output to your monitor. audio out. 
• Good battery life.  The CPU cycles up and down depending on what you are doing.  If you are reading a PDF document, the CPU cycles down as less processing power is needed and consumes less power. Watch a video and the CPU cycles up (to a maximum of 1Ghz) and you get less battery life.  They also let you set how hot the machine runs.  By setting it to cool, the little fans run more, keep the unit cool, make it noisier and give you less battery life.  Have it run hotter and the unit is quieter and gives you longer battery life.

Cons

• Wi-Fi receiver wasn't that strong.  In my home I am able to go anywhere in the house with my Macbook and still get good signal from my Wi-Fi router.  The OQO lost signal as soon as I went to the second floor.
• Screen is a bit dim.  I would have liked the ability to make the screen brighter.  It was virtually unusable outside in direct sunlight.
• The QWERTY keyboard was good but should have been backlit.  This is the kind of device will get used in low light setting (like an airplane) and the lack of a backlit keyboard made it hard to use. 
• Processor and hard drive space are lacking.  The 30GB of hard drive space can be filled up very easily if you aren't careful.  If you have mp3, videos and a large email inbox you will find yourself cramped for space quickly.  Some things seemed to take a tad too long like opening an application or brining up a right click menu.
• Microphone was lacking in sensitivity when I tried to use it for Skype call and I couldn't plug in a headset.

Given the various pros and cons, it's clear that my time with OQO was a mixed experience.  Overall I'd say that it was a positive one though.  This is definitely not a desktop or laptop replacement due to it's limited hard disk space and CPU processing power.  I look forward to seeing more from OQO in the future.

Comments

[Alan]

I like this review because I think it is a good real world review. Other reviewers seem to think that this is a desktop replacement and review it making these comparisons.

Is the screen really unusable outside?