In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase……… ‘goodnight, sleep tight.’
Great article/commentary/editorial by Wired’s Brian X. Chen.
Some highlights:
it’s getting harder and harder for the company to make sure all of its products "just work," as its marketing slogan goes.
and
The list of customers Apple needs to keep happy is ever-growing: iPhone users, iTunes shoppers, iPod owners, MobileMe subscribers and Mac users. And the items all add up to one question: Has Apple bitten off more than it can chew?
I own a Fujitsu u810 UMPC and I love it. It’s a 5.6" touch screen tablet that weighs under 1.6 pounds. The u810 is not perfect…far from it. The keyboard is probably one of the worst layouts ever seen in any laptop. There are so many double mapped keys that it requires you to re-learn typing.
So when I first heard about the u2010 I began to wonder if Fujitsu had learned anything from the U810. They did!!! But they also made a few new mistakes that are just mind blowing.
The guys over at Tinh te forum have some great pics of the u2010.
First let’s look at the specs on the u2010:
CPU: Intel Atom 1.6Ghz or 1.8Ghz (great improvement over the A110 @800mhz)
Screen: 5"6 (1024×768) The old 1024×600 screen was way too narrow for such a small screen.
HDD: 80Gb (This is better but why not the Hitachi 160GB since its only $160 retail?)
RAM: 1Gb (This is good if you can add another 1GB – BAD if, like the u810, it only has a single soldered ram slot)
OS: Vista Business (I hope you get the XP Tablet PC downgrade/upgrade option)
Wireless: 3G, GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth (3G and GPS?!??!)
Weight: 680gram (24oz or almost identical to the u810)
Price EST: $1300 (OK….this is not good but I never take early MSRP’s too seriously)
The u810 and the upcoming u2010 (I never know if the u is capitalized or not) are not for everyone. The keyboard is very tight and speed typing is very difficult. But if you want a small form UMPC that almost fits in your pocket then this little machine is it.
BUT!!! Why, oh why does Fujitsu continue to re-map the keyboard with certain keys in places where it is impossible to find during speed typing.
Case in point… check out where they put the brackets key, the quote/apostrophe, and the colon/semi-colon key. At least the plus/minus keys are in a somewhat familiar spot. The TAB key was returned to its familiar spot (instead of the old FN+SPACE re-map of the u810). The arrow keys were also returned to single keys instead of FN+ re-maps.
The u810 is a great little machine and I am sure that a lot of people will love the u2010… but I can already hear the complaints about the keyboard mapping.
Probably. Probably not. There are million of blogs out there so why is this one different? First, its got a catchy domain name and secondly, its my blog and I find it cathartic to vent my everyday life online. This is not my first blog but it should be the most fun since it has no limits to what I can blog.
Why? Cause there is no central theme that I have to follow. I can get on my soapbox and rant about anything, everything, or nothing. And believe you me, I will.