I just got a Branium Wibook $99 BIN CE.net 4.2

I just got my Brainium WiBook from off eBay. Here are my initial observations:

-screen is a nasty dstn with lots of ghosting/shadows
-touchscreen
-glidepoint
-keyboard has a very mushy feel to it
-has 1 CF slot on the right side and another hidden under a plastic panel on the bottom. Also appears to have a few JTAG / misc diagnostic ports under same panel. May be flashable/hackable, so an excellent candidate for running other OSes.
-2 USB ports. Appears to have USB Mass-Storage drivers built in. Tried it out with a 256 MB card and it worked fine.
-Has Serial, Mic, Speaker, IRDA ports
-Has a blank plastic coverplace where a floppy drive was designed to go. May be possible to add a floppy disk.
-Freaking HUGE for a HPC.
-32 MB of ram. Was expecting more for some reason.
-NO VGA OUT (one was advertised in auction)

A few things I should add:

-unit does come with onboard ethernet
-power adapter was included, but is a surplus DELL adapter with the correct tip soldered on + electrical taped. Adapter is 2 amp, which is a bit less than the official 2.5 amps, so unit may charge more slowly.

So i'm guessing your dissapointed with your purchase from the sound of things ?

Yeah i got the generic adapter 2 but it works fine so i had no complaints.....

Big for your avarage hpc, but for a subnotebook line hpc...it would fit right in there with the Aero 8000 size wise.....

Almost forgot to mention, yes your right no vga out port, but it does have built in voyager shadow drivers...

Edited by thcrw739 2005-12-12 11:47 PM

Voyager Shadow is VGA out card, I take it? I am not unhappy with my purchase, as I am sure it will serve the purpose for which I intended it. I bought it mainly as a way to check out the CE 4.2 OS and figure out what applications could be hacked to run on it in advance of buying a more expensive 900c or Netbook Pro. I can definitely see a lot of great uses for a device like this...it just doesn't fit with my highly mobile lifestyle. I am thinking of selling it at cost to Cmonex or donating it to a friend of mine who is wheel-chair bound.

Yes its a cf card, I'm guessing this guy got a load of just units....by the looks of thing they probily orignally came with the sync cable a colorgraphic voyager card and software cd manual and a few other things....Mine does look brand new so im guess it was a surplus supply of just the units that were never boxed to ship....

From what I understand, the Branium WiBook was often sold as part of a "computer lab in a box" type kit. It came with like 10 units and a central charging unit where you just slipped the wibooks into a slot on a rack of some sort. You will notice there are two flat metal tabs next to the standard round power port. My guess is that the tabs are the electrical contact points for the charging station. This would explain why these units came without any sort of conventional charger unit.

hrm, this thread should be in the ce.net forums

Rocketman, thanks for the additional information on this machine.

Edited by cmonex 2005-12-13 10:07 AM

Ah yes, i forgot about that...but they do have there own ac adapters as well as i do have an orignal adapter as well from the IT i have....perhaps some setups did include the voyager card? otherwise not sure why they would have the software included in rom

Posting this from my WiBook, btw. I am using my Socket CF Wifi card to get online. The ppc2003 drivers seem to work just fine and I am using the integrated "Wireless Zero Config" program to find/connect to networks. I had a bit more of a chance to pla with the WiBook last night and here are some additional thoughts.

-CF slot on right side looks like it will accept type 2 micrdrives
-Glidepoint doesn't have any buttons, which makes click and drag operations difficult./
-IE 6 is significantly better for browsing than IE 4. Much less rendering weirdness.
-Lack of built in backup application is irksome. As I am "experimenting," I have managed to hag the Wibook a few times necessitating a hard reset. The reset hole is microscopic, so better off just pulling the main battery.Any recommendations on a good backup application?
-No delete key on keyboard. The top rightmost key says <- with delete as a second function. I have been unable to get it to act as a delete though, just as a backspace
-Direction arrows aren't in an inverted T configuration, which as a hardcore typest annoys me to no end.

Got mine today it shipped on the 2nd of Oct. to Boston. Also got the dell 2.0amp adapter. Seems like a lot of horizontal banding at start up but ok after a few minutes,what else ya want for $99.US.Definately HUGE kind of like a George Forman grill for hamburgers and such.Thanks for the tips on serial sych. Anyone speculate on this compact flash wifi card might work http://www.meritline.com/mewlwicoflad.html

On the delete it acts as a 2nd funtion?

Mine works like a regular delete key....

on your wirless card will it fit down in the bottom slot, would be nice to have a internal wifi type plan....

- bsquare backup, even has a version for ce.net
- my sigmarion III is like this with the delete key. i got used to it well, it does act as a delete key in word, but it doesn't in filemanagers
- oh you never used an MP (770, 780, 790, 900), right? maybe the program for converting the mobilepro arrow keys to the inverted T would work on the wibook too.

The inverted T should work on the Wibook, I don't see why it wouldn't.

That's what it looks like to me.

Here are some updates:

- You can get rid of a lot of the banding/shadowing by increasing the contrast and decreasing the brightness.
-I am hanging my WiBook quite a lot while experimenting. Usually this sort of hang leaves the "hold the power button down for a few seconds" method of soft resetting inoperable. Any other ideas as to how to achieve a soft reset (which I don't believe is a true soft reset)? I have had to hard reset my WiBook about a dozen times now and it isn't making me happy. I am storing all my applications, a folder containing shortcuts to all applications and read only copies of the install files for my wifi driver on a CF slot. I still have to go in and reconfigure a number of applications every time I hard reset, though.
-Anyone find a setting for the wincesoft.de GAPI? I would really like to get accelerated video going for gaming and video playback.
-The BMQ Benchmark application is turning in a combined score of ~250 for my Wibook. My Jornada gets 376. For a 400+ mhz Xscale, this device sure seems to be a slug. Has anyone found a way to verify the processor speed? I don't see it indicated anywhere.