Reflashing Ubisurfer?

Oh...I just tried it and get the same results...no go. Too many differences probably between the HPC2000 platform and CE6.

But Wordpad works great. It is essentially PocketWord with extras. I just installed it, and didn't have to do any regedits or anything. Just ran it right out of the folder.

http://hpcmonex.net/izemize/wordpad42workingoffice.zip

And there are quite a few notepad type alternatives however if all you want is something simple to enter text with. And they do work on CE6.

Yeah. That's a little annoying. Well, I've noticed a lot of programs for my Jornada 728 work on the Ubisurfer, which I thought was rather impressive. How well does HPC2000 support WiFi? I jest, but if it supported WiFi and SD cards I'd *very* seriously consider finding a way of running HPC2000 on the Ubisurfer, seeing as the software's compatible and it's pretty much what I want, and the CE6 on my Ubisurfer is drek >

HPC2000 is built on CE3 and is limited to WEP security protocol. No WPA. Also the Internet Explorer is a much older version and much more limited than the IE6 that comes on CE.NET 4.2 and newer versions of CE.

The Ubisurfer is a limited machine. As far as a CE Netbook goes, it is not especially fast. Most WM8650 machines are much faster. The larger 9" screen is pleasing to the eye, but a higher resolution such as 800x600 would have been much nicer, especially when it comes to web surfing. There is no wired ethernet port. No built in microphone. Most importantly, there doesn't seem to be an available means to reflash the firmware. I know there is, but Datawind is keeping it closely guarded...a mistake on their parts in my opinion.

The keyboard is the same as a 7" netbook, so it is not much fun to type on. The 3600mAh battery is a plus as it will probably double the normal usable time 7" netbook before needing recharge. The case is appealing, and simple in design, but well made. The biggest deal was the price. That was pretty hard to beat.

I'll play with mine for a while and probably resell it on eBay and probably make all my money back or even make a profit. CEGeek will just hang up a new shelf on the wall since he must be running out of room for his collection. He'll keep his I'm sure. He keeps everything.

I'm not trying to keep everything, Rich - just one or two of each device as a collection. I have large multiples of many of my devices, as can be seen on my profile. The extras I do hope to sell at some point.

The UbiSurfer doesn't impress in usability (though it can still do plenty), and the internal storage is a bit of a disappointment (only 1 GB). But it's a good-looking device, and like Rich said, the price was hard to beat. (And, BTW, unlike the WonderMedia netbooks, it does show up properly on the PC using MyMobiler over WiFi. Nice cuz you can transfer files to and from the device over WiFi that way. )

So there's nothing I can really do with the thing, I take it?

Mark...I wouldn't say that....I think we might just have to wait a while until someone releases a firmware flash for it. Maybe a year or two...maybe never.

CEGeek, you got me thinking. You said you can't rotate the screen. But MyMobiler does that. Rotates it 90 degrees on both the desktop and on the handheld simultaneously. So I got to thinking, it must be a software thing...

Anyways, attached is PocketKai's free screen rotator. It works...that is it will rotate all 4 directions. The problem is it doesn't change the mouse/touchpad coordinates to work with the new rotation, so it is like trying to write a letter using a mirror...anyways, file is attached.



Attachments
----------------
rotator-net.XScale 2003 (4K) v4.20.CAB (36KB - 5 downloads)

That's it though... from what I've been able to see, it's nor firmware or flash, it's ROM like the old ones. Which I'm kind of hacked off about, 'cause that means I can't get change the Start menu to normal, or anything like that.

No, it isn't. I uses a flashable ROM chip and NAND flash, just like the Tinybook T706, which also uses a Samsung processor. I have the pocketmory folders present on mine and looking at the registry, I can see which are hidden, which are user accessible, and which are not.

You can read about the Samsung processors here: http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/get-attachment.asp?attachmentid=3452

No, Rich, I said the UbiSurfer does support display rotation. It's the WonderMedia devices that don't. (And I already have Kai's ScreenRotate - it's nice cuz you can go directly to whichever orientation you want. But you can't hide the control from the display while working, and another of Kai's programs, WeekPlanner, has each of the four orientations as a standalone executable, so I linked each one of those to a Win+<other key> combo.)

I've never checked out the rotation capabilities of the desktop client for MyMobiler, but that might at least partially explain why I can't get the display to show up from any of my WonderMedia devices. Most, but not all, of the others I've tried with MyMobiler support display rotation by software on-device outside of MyMobiler as well.

To clarify what I said earlier, it's not that the UbiSurfer doesn't do as much as the other CE 6 netbooks, but I was hoping for more, and the only extra thing it seems to do is support display rotation as I said above. I'd assume that someone with enough skills could construct a ROM for the Samsung processor that might work on the UbiSurfer and/or TinyBook T706. (The later-version Augen eGo could also be a CE 5 candidate since the Pollux MagicEyes is a version of the Samsung processor.) But I'm not that someone.

I'm wondering if I can make my 3G card work in the GPRS card slot inside the device. If so I might consider signing up for a separate data plan to support my MiFi unit and use that SIM card in the UbiSurfer as well.

Getting 3G to work in Ubisurfer would be very very very cool...

isnt the tinybook arm 11

You're right Thcrw739. It has a S3C6410 mobile processor which is a 32-bit ARM11 RISC microprocessor. What I should have said it that it the flash/rom port on the T706 supports NAND memory for storage in a similar fashion as the Ubisurfer.

I've still got to say I'm really impressed that the majority of my J728 software work son the Ubisurfer... that's why I'm intrigued as to whether HPC2000 would work on it

Okay, mine quirked out big time today. When I booted it up, it wouldn't load the default wallpaper, and the "My Computer" icon had a hex sequence in place of the icon name. When I tried to open the wallpaper image file in the built-in image viewer, I got an illegal operation message and the device froze up. When I rebooted, everything had been wiped away (including the driver for the GPRS modem - and an "Unidentified USB Device" dialog popped up as long as the modem was plugged into the slot; I determined this after opening up the device, removing the card, and rebooting). Everything I had put into the flash ROM was gone, as were all the SoftMaker Office files and other pre-installed programs. But, weirdly, it did show a different seaside image for the desktop wallpaper. (I'm wondering if this is a "safe mode" ROM image like the one first flashed on the WM8505.) It was kinda like a hard reset on our earlier CE devices. I have a second one on the way, and I'm going to try making backups of the second device and experiment with them on this one. Maybe I'll find a workaround that can help Mark replace the proprietary interface he's been stuck with.

Cool experience....