Q1 Ultra Hands On Impressions

I was able to actually hold a Q1 Ultra with my own hands while I was at the Samsung display store at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. I only played with it a few minutes but here are my initial impressions.

• Love the form factor. A bit lighter and smaller than the Q1P. There was a Q1 right next to the Ultra so it was nice to compare side by side. The length is the same as it appears the thickness is too. However, the width seems to be about a half inch less which gives it an even nicer feel. Overall, the new look of the Ultra makes the Q1 look dated, at least in my opinion.
  
• There was only one stand on this device. My Q1P has the smaller stand that props it up about 20 degrees. Hopefully on production units the Ultra will have both.
• The keyboard is tiny and I doubt I would use it at all.
• The cursor location was not very easy to move about with the integrated 'mouse'.
• The video camera resolution was horrible and the photos with the higher resolution camera were not good either. But not sure what settings were used, so perhaps both could be tweaked.
• Bringing up programs seemed slow, but perhaps this display unit was not optimized. Just to note, it was running Vista not XP.

So overall, I loved the look and feel of the device and the availability of built in cameras, but I will wait for more user reviews on performance of the new processors before upgrading from the Q1P to the Ultra. To get a feel for how the Q1 Ultra will perform, Steve at UMPCPortal ran a simulation using two Q1s with one setup to simulate how the Ultra will perform. Check it out.