Friday, September 07, 2007

Keyboards and UMPCs

Steve Paine blogged today that the the top 5 UMPCs in the UMPCPortal are laptops, ie all have keyboards. I can't say I'm surprised. In fact I truly miss not having a keyboard for my Q1 like I had with the Acer C110. The Q1 is great and I enjoy the UMPC usage scenarios that Steve lists. However, I would give up some lightness to have an attached keyboard that would be available on a moments notice. The main reason is that I am very proficient with a keyboard, much more so than with ink. I am getting much better with inking but no where near as proficient as with a keyboard. On top of that, I am on the train for almost 3 hours a day now and I find its almost impossible to ink due to the vibration of the train.

Personally, I give the manufacturers lots of credit for building what are essentially smaller form factor convertible tablet UMPCs. In my opinion it gives the user the best of both worlds, a UMPC and a laptop and the advantages that come with both.

With that said, I am going to start up the search again for a new device and blog about that search here. So stay tuned!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good point about the vibrations and its one reason why an HTC Shift at 800x480 might not be so bad. You can actually hit the mark with your stylus/finger.

Looking forward to your quest for a new UMPC. I love it when people get into the pro's and cons of different devices.

Steve.