Psion Netbook Pro questions

I finally ordered a Psion Netbook Pro from Pulster last night. I'm really excited to get my hands on it but I have some questions about software:

While testing my friend's NBP, I noticed IE is indeed very slow. What version of Opera will work with CE.NET 4.2?

Would video run any better, if I resized it to 800x600? I'm thinking this should work as I do the same for PSP and the results are obvious.

Is there a Messenger replacement that works natively under CE.NET 4.2?

Cheers
SainT

I haven't found IE CE to be slow on my Netbook Pro - I got pretty decent rendering speed on mine using 3G while on the road a couple of weekends ago. (And I'm not the most patient person in the world - I stand in front of the microwave oven yelling "Hurry up!" )

Video is significantly inferior to the Sig 3, though. Screen refresh is slow enough to make video a bit rough in full screen.

hmmm i have sold my netbook pro some weeks ago... the IE was quite fast i think... opera works with some hacks... netfront too.

video on the netbook pro is just a more ore less no-go. if you play some videos with 320x240 in a window... it works nicely (depends on the codec)... but fullscreen... either BIG blogs or loooooow framerates.

:/
the netbook is really nice for writing and some surfing... but not really for multimedia.

what's wrong with the default winmessenger in rom?

Opera 8.65 works with RedGear, and Flash 7 works too. I didn't have any good luck with Flash video (i.e. YouTube), which was choppy. I'm not sure how to compare the speed, but compared to 900C, IE6 is quite faster on NetBook Pro. Also, you don't have to watch the menus draw when you open them...

Still waiting for teh Netbook to arrive.. hopefully this week

Can anyone confirm that this Toshiba Bluetooth card will work with the Netbook Pro?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=170277575099&Category=38331null&_trksid=p3907.m29

SainT

Edited by Half-Saint 2008-11-10 3:48 AM

don't know about the toshiba - if it uses socketcom driver then yes, out of the box.

OK, now that I played with the Netbook for a while I have some more questions:

1. MP3 playback using windows media player is best compared to listening to old vinyl records.. sound is clear but lots of background cracks and pops.
2. apparently windows media player puts quite a load on the CPU.. switching tasks will cause mp3s to stutter like on a prehistorik 486
3. Funny thing is Orinoco Gold works fine without any drivers (just plug and plaY) while the other two cards I have (all three look identical on the outside) don't work without drivers (EnteraSys RoamAbout and Avaya Gold). What's up with that?

Cmonex, the default messanger in ROM has a very annoying feature.. when you're chatting to more than one person, the chat window will pop-up whenever you recieve a new message. This is very annoying when you're in the middle of a sentence to someone else or when you're simply doing something else and don't want msn windows popping up everywhere...

Cheers
SainT

Edited by Half-Saint 2008-11-26 7:02 AM

Just realizing that the battery is very weak in my NBP. After graduately going down to 44% it went to 19% in a matter of minutes. Great! I expected to get at least 5-6 hours but got measly 3 hours instead.. yes, I'm a little bit upset over the whole matter.. the batteries and everything else

Edited by Half-Saint 2008-11-26 12:55 PM

Audio: I never use WMP for either audio or video, only TCPMP. I get a little crackling too, but I already know that there's a sound bug in the latest ROM image. Do you have the most recent ROM image available on yours too?

WiFi cards: While your cards are all Agere-based, they might all have different firmware IDs - I'm not sure since I only have the original Agere card. Check the labels for this.

¸I have no idea what ROM image I have on mine as I don't know how to check. I checked Psion's website and the only available ROM image is 404. Old ROM images aren't available for download as far as I can tell..

As far as the sound problem is concerned.. if I leave the Netbook alone, the sound is ok. As soon as I start using the touch-screen, switching windows and especially scrolling pages in IE, I get hell of a lot crackling. I'm used to having music playing while I'm at the computer so this is quite an annoyance. Combined with the bad battery problem it actually annoys me so much that I almost wish i didn't get the Netbook in the first place.

I forgot to say I get the same sound problem with HPC Player..

Just for once I wish I'd get a hassle free experience

Edited by Half-Saint 2008-11-26 4:00 PM

The last revision before 400 was 309, but I'm not able to locate it anywhere for download. I've contacted Psion about it and will see if I hear back (I sent both an email and a software download request).

Great! Let us know how it goes If I could get rid of the sound bug and find a new battery, I'd gladly keep the Psion.

Hey,

Mr. Pulster was kind enough to have sent me firmware 309. Does anyone here have any experience with downgrading Netbook Pros?

Cheers
Saint

could you post firmware 309? i could check it then ..