The physical case is substantial and feels very solid. It doesn't feel like a toy.

The display is beautiful. It's 1024*600 which is big enough to be comfortable. But it means that vertical size is at a premium, which means that everyone's tendency to put their command bars at the top or bottom are problematic.

The Windows default location for the task bar is the bottom. I've moved it to the side. I also need to get IE to stop larding up its display with lots of extra bars at the top.

Generally, any time I get a new Windows machine I have to spend several hours setting things up and getting rid of cruft. There's a lot of that I need to do with Saten, but it won't be too tough to figure out because I'll just do all the same things I did for Alcyone, and I logged all of them here.

Things to do: Install Proximotron.

Install Zoom Player.

Install MPC-32.

Space is at a premium so I won't be installing Firefox.

Create a Quick Launch bar.

See if I can make Saten talk to Deneb (the WHS). (I can connect to Alcyone but not to Deneb. I think I know why, though. Please note that I am not yet asking for any suggestions or advice.)

It's an inherent problem with the form factor, but it's way too easy to make inputs you don't mean to. For instance, when the task bar was on the bottom, and I was doing input, my tasks kept vanishing. I finally realized that it was because I was wresting my right hand on the lower-right corner of the display, and there's a hotspot there that means "show windows screen" (i.e. minimize all tasks). That was another good reason for moving the taskbar to the left side.

Likewise, there are buttons on the outside of the bezel and when you pick up the item, it's easy to press those by mistake. First time I did that I got a bit freaked, but it was only the volume controls so it didn't matter.

The screen itself is particularly prone to that. I wanted to see how the camera app worked, so I opened it. There's a small camera on the front (for teleconferencing) and a better one on the back, for taking pictures. I tried using it to take pictures of the back yard, which required the camera to be held upright. To hold the camera with one hand so you can press the "take it" button with the other, naturally you want to hold the front and back of the machine -- but the front pressure point gets detected by the touch screen and it interprets it as an input. In this case it was outside of the frame of the camera app, which meant that it was treated as an input to Windows.

Press-and-hold means the same thing as "right mouse click", so it brought up a context menu. Another brief freakout.

To avoid that you have to balance the computer in your hand, but that drastically increases the chance of dropping it. I don't think I'll be using that camera much.

As to the touch screen, it is indeed possible to use your fingers, but in practice you have to use the special pen they provided. It's like the pen for my tablet: it has a button on the side, and it has a pressure-sensitive point, and it takes a battery. And there's no where to store it in the Slate's bezel.

The "folio", the carrying case, has a place for it, so it's not all bad.

More later.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 12:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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