Harry McCracken, PC World, Wednesday, February 18, 2004 10:00
http://www.pcworld.com/article/114833/first_look_at_the_flipstart.html
This ultra-ultraportable PC puts Windows XP in your pocket.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA — The notebook I tote weighs about 3 pounds, which I thought made it a featherweight worth bragging about. Then I tried Vulcan’s FlipStart (http://www.flipstartpc.com), announced here at the Demo 2004 conference, and suddenly my trusty Fujitsu looks a tad elephantine.
Vulcan, a company owned by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, doesn’t plan to ship the FlipStart until the end of this year.
And it isn’t saying anything about pricing except that the base unit will cost about as much as a midrange notebook. But the brief time I spent with a pre-production unit at the show was enough to leave me coveting one.
FlipStart isn’t the first super-tiny Windows XP computer: Models by OQO and from Antelope also cram PC functionality into cases that might be mistaken for a chunky PDA. The FlipStart, however, comes closer than anything else I’ve seen to feeling like a truly Lilliputian notebook.
Rod Fleck, Vulcan’s director of engineering for mini-PC, predicts the gadget will appeal to super-mobile workers who might otherwise tote a handheld device such as a PocketPC. But the FlipStart is “much more than a PDA,” Fleck says, and will also compete with an array of dedicated portable video players due out in 2004.
At 5.8 inches by 4 inches by 1 inch, the device fits in a pocket–at least one unencumbered by a wallet, keys, and other doodads–and with its weight of just 1 pound, you might forget you pocketed it. Squeezing a PC into a case that small requires equal parts ingenuity and compromise.
Taking Stock
First the good news: Some of the FlipStart’s specs are startlingly good given its size–better, in some cases, than those of my much bulkier Fujitsu. For instance, it runs a 1-GHz Transmeta Crusoe processor and has 256 MB of RAM, a 30GB hard drive, and built-in 802.11G wireless networking.
The screen resolution is 1024 by 600. On first blush, that seemed impossibly high given that it measures only 5.4 inches diagonally; I thought text would be too microscopic to read. But the display on the pre-production model is crisp, colorful, and legible. You wouldn’t want to run Photoshop on it, but I could see myself doing e-mail, word processing, or Web browsing without ruining my eyeballs.
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Then there’s the keyboard–and here’s where compromise plays a role as important as ingenuity. It’s a QWERTY model, but it feels more like an oversized version of the microscopic one on a BlackBerry handheld than a shrunken notebook keyboard.
The keys on the preproduction model were small, flat, and rubbery; I had to tap out text one character at a time. To some degree, that’s intentional–Vulcan believes users won’t want to touch-type, but use the device on the go, often cradling it and typing with their thumbs, BlackBerry-style.
“We think use will be 70 percent thumbing, 30 percent typing on something like a table” Fleck says. He adds that production models will have a better keyboard feel than the early model.
On the plus side of input, the FlipStart boasts not one but two pointing devices: A tiny touchpad sitting next to a tiny pointing stick. It also has a thumbwheel for actions such as scrolling through long documents.
Add-Ons and Options
Naturally, a tiny computer can hold only a tiny battery. And even though the FlipStart contains the power-efficient Crusoe, Vulcan estimates it will eke out only two hours of typical use on a charge. But the company plans to offer several workarounds to extend the machine’s battery life.
One option mimics one available on larger notebooks: You’ll be able to buy two models of external battery that add bulk and weight but offer either two or three hours of additional life. Fleck notes that even with an external power pack, the FlipStart is still smaller than his IBM ThinkPad’s battery alone.
Vulcan also plans to sell an optional external monochrome display called the LID (Low-Powered Interactive Display) that lets you view e-mail, MP3 playlists, and other information without turning on the battery-draining color screen.
“The minute you see an e-mail you want to reply to, you can open up the case and get to it quickly,” Fleck says. The LID wasn’t on display in working form at Demo, so it’s hard to gauge its usefulness.
Vulcan plans to offer other external modules for the FlipStart, including a mini port replicator and a larger docking station with a CD-RW/DVD drive. It’s also talking about a second-generation version of the device that uses Transmeta’s upcoming Efficieon CPU.
Give this type of tiny computer some time, and it could become a mainstream device that many businesspeople and consumers tote instead of a standard notebook, Fleck says. It makes sense to me–I hate lugging a heavy laptop, but I find PDAs a bit underpowered. I’ll be curious to see what the rest of the world thinks when the FlipStart finally hits the market.