Working at Home

I’m using my SH6 in my home office today. It’s sharing keyboard, mouse, and monitor with my Dell Dimension PC. It’s still working out  extremely well for me. I’m actually really surprised at just how seamless the transition has been from my 1.5 GhZ Electrovaya SC-3000 Tablet PC to the 600 MhZ Kohjinsha SH6. In just about any work activity I perform the SH6 seems to be just about as fast as the Electrovaya ever was. Only rarely do I encounter moments when it seems slower. I don’t really understand it, but I’m loving it!

The Kohjinsha SH6 as Tablet

This morning I “forced myself” to use the SH6 only as a Tablet. I used it that way throughout my morning routine of checking email, reading Web sites, and reading RSS feeds. Here is a brief summary of my impressions:

• The SH6 is very light, well balanced, and easy to hold when in Tablet mode. The battery even becomes a nice handle on the bottom of the unit.
• There’s a big difference in the handwriting experience with a passive screen (like the SH6 has) and an active screen (like my Electrovaya SC-3000 Tablet has) but Vista’s improved handwriting recognition seems to more than make up for those limitations. Handwriting recognition was excellent.
• Passive screens do have some real advantages – it’s wonderful to be able to “click” on the screen using your finger; I didn’t have to use a stylus at all.
• The included stylus is a joke – it looks like it belongs with some kind of very inexpensive PDA. It’s a good thing it’s really not needed! I used my Papermate PhD multi-pen as my stylus for handwriting.
• All of the buttons located around the SH6’s screen make using it in Tablet mode a real breeze. I used my finger, mouse pointer, left and right mouse buttons, scrolling buttons (really page up and page down), D-pad (for single-line up and down) and just flew through Web pages and RSS feeds. It was such a pleasure to use it this way that this is going to be the normal mode I will now use for my morning routine.
• The SH6 never got warm where my hands were while holding it, it was just a little warm by the fan outlet vent.
• The new Vista mouse-like Touch Pointer really sucks. I turned it off shortly after going through the training session on how to use it. It seems like a good idea badly implemented.

What I Like and What I Don’t

The picture shows my Kohjinsha SH6 at work – connected to a full-sized keyboard, mouse, and monitor. You should also be able to see my Treo 700p connected to the SH6 for syncing/charging.

So what do I like and not like about the SH6 after 4 days of ownership, including a day and a half at work?

Dislikes:

• Bluetooth and WiFi shut off when the unit goes to sleep requiring a manual restart when waking up the unit. This is actually a pretty minor gripe since I’ve already gotten into the habit of hitting FN-F1 and FN-F4 to turn them back on whenever I wake up the SH6, but it’s a gripe nevertheless.

• The mouse pointer by the screen is pretty stiff to use, although it may loosen up over time.

• The Japanese keyboard has punctuation characters in non-standard positions, although again I’m learning to adapt to it.

• It always reverts back to a 1600 X 1200 resolution when first hooking it up to an external monitor. That’s a little small for my tired old eyes and I end up having to manually reset it to a lower resolution for ease of viewing.

That’s it!

Likes:

• The screen: it’s gorgeous, brilliant, and very visible in any light conditions up to full sunlight.

• The size: it’s so small and light it’s a pleasure to carry and pack for travel.

• Performance: I’m still amazed at how well this device runs Vista Home Premium including Aero Glass and all the applications I need. Believe it or not, with some of the software I run it’s actually faster than my Electrovaya Tablet PC! Taking average performance of all the software I use, I’d say it’s only a little slower overall than my Tablet. See my video on this topic to witness its performance with your own eyes!

• Keyboard: Wonderful feel and just barely large enough for me to touch-type on it at virtually full speed.

• All the buttons: It has a plethora of buttons for ease of use. On the keyboard there’s a nice touch-pad (with left-click on tap) and left and right mouse buttons. Around the screen, and very handy when using it in slate mode, are a D-pad, mouse pointer, launcher button, shutter for Webcam, rotation button, enter button, brightness control, scrolling buttons, and left and right mouse buttons.

• The Webcam: it works right away with Skype video calls without any configuration needed.

• SD and CF slots: I use the CF slot with my Neuros Video Recorder 2 to quickly get TV shows and movies onto my SH6 for viewing while traveling, and the SD card for transferring still pictures and videos from my Sanyo VPC-CG65 6MP MPEG-4 Digital Camcorder (which is what I’ve been using to create all of the videos for this blog).

• Did I mention the performance?  

Kohjinsha SH6 as Video Player

done

My Biggest Fear…

done

The biggest fear I had about my Kohjinsha SH6 was that its performance was going to be completely inadequate to replace my Electrovaya Scribbler Tablet PC as my work computer. I would have purchased a UMPC that was simply not up to that job and would have wasted my money. That fear has proved to be completely unfounded!

As the video clearly shows the SH6 is completely capable of running multiple Microsoft Office applications at the same time at a very reasonable performance level. This is exactly what I do in my normal work day. Most of the my workday Office applications are started up in the morning, stay in memory all day long,  and are then used as required.

In the video I give credit to the SH6’s 2GB of memory for this, but I also think that the unit’s graphic processor should be given lots of credit as well. It’s obviously able to offload a huge amount of processing from the CPU.

In any case it looks like my money has been well spent. I’ve got a unit that works well in my work environment  (hooked up to full keyboard, mouse, and monitor), at the hotel (with only the addition of a small travel mouse), or on the plane (watching movies and/or TV shows while hooked up to Bose noise-cancelling headphones). My Tablet is going to just stay home from now on!

It’s Here!!!

Fedex just delivered my new Kohjinsha SH6 and right now it’s getting its battery charged. I’ll be taking the SH6 with my on my business trip to Indy on Monday and I’ll have lots more to report about it as the week goes on. I’ve even planning on creating a video highlighting the SH6’s actual performance when running Office applications. Stay tuned for more news!

No Joy in Da House

Well Fedex failed to deliver my SH6 today, claiming weather delayed many of their flights. Now they are saying I may get it tomorrow or maybe MONDAY! Since I’m leaving for Indianapolis early Monday morning, a Monday delivery would mean that I won’t get my hands on it until next Friday. Whoa is me!

SH6 In Da House Tomorrow?

I just got the following email:

Hi Michael,

The image is ready and your unit will ship out today. You should receive a tracking number later today via email. If you have any other questions please let me know.

The delay in shipping my SH6 was related to getting the English-language Vista image set up correctly for the unit and that has now been solved. So it looks like I’ll be hard at work tomorrow loading software and files onto the SH6 and performing any needed Vista performance tweaks. It’s going to be a very full day tomorrow!

Using VNC Server on the Nokia N800

Here’s a brief, concise posting on using the X11VNC server on an N800 and the function key shortcuts that become available. Actually these same shortcuts work with a Bluetooth keyboard, too.

Great N800 Review

 

Jee K. Lee has created what has to be the most complete and detailed N800 review ever. It’s in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.