The Flybook...what's keeping it from being YOUR handheld PC?

Check this out: http://www.handtops.com/show/review/4/0/FlyBook_Laptop_review.html

and tell me, what's keeping it from being your handheld PC...is it a bit to the large side? is it too expensive? does it lack basic PDA requirements?

me, two things keeping it from being my handheld PC; the size and the price, although the Win XP is a huge advantage.



the size is 9.2 X 5.5 X 1.2
here's a picture: http://www.handtops.com/product/handtops_com-product-7-3.jpg

here's the specs: http://www.dialogue.com.tw/english/products/flybook.htm

Well, for me it's gotta be the fact that there are no screw fittings for the VGA cable...

Seriously, it's about the same for me, though you can also add battery life. If my 680e had a better screen, full USB connectivitity, 64-128MB of RAM and could run the current Windows Mobile OS I'd be very, very happy.

My dream HPC would be something like a flybook the size of the Sony U50 that came with a 3" CD reader/burner (Why doesn't anyone do anything with the 3" disk format? Every drive known to man accepts them.) It would also run for 6-8 hours on a charge.

Personally, I'm interested in seeing where that Sony PSP with keyboard idea is going.

price.

there are many such small laptops. however the only ones with touch screen would be Fujitsu's P1000 series and that Flybook. BTW, there is a rumor that the Flybook was originally created by the company who created the Smartbooks.

Flybooks are available directly from www.flybook.com

The U50 has a very small screen, with resolution too high for the size, but not high enough for today's websites. Compared to the Jornada, it is smaller but just as heavy.

3" CD has terrible capacity (a third of a 5" CD). However the technology used in DVDs provides a more practical capacity at that size (Gamecube, anyone). As for "all drives known to man [sic]", most of the slot loading drives (e.g. car CD player) cannot accept 3" disks, and I have never seen a vertically mounted drive to properly hold a 3" disk either.

Lastly, with all this talk about alternatives, perhaps we should have an extra forum for them. Not to promote them over HPC, but rather be prepared for the inevitable change in our user base. I think it would even be nice to let the ex-hpc users (xhpcu?) who moved on to another platform, to stick around, just so they might still contribute to the HPC community with their experiences. ...

2299.00 EUR ????? ... can someone tell me why they keep releasing products in 90s pricing???

For me it is too large and ultimatly it isn't a PDA.
The Jornada can slide into my jacket pocket and that is just where I need it.

Add XP you ad hard drives, you add mechanical parts, less battery time - boot times...
When I need a laptop, I tend to need one with some teeth.

why won't i buy it?

price, size, battery life, no instant-on. price is the least (still big) problem. the other three factors are a must for any hpc replacement. only advantage is XP.

so... i'm still hoping for hpc comeback... nothing can replace them properly?!

yep, i forgot to mention hard drives. i'd be afraid breaking them ...

Edited by cmonex 2005-03-07 8:12 AM

Talking about harddrives ... I might try using a flashdrive to replace a harddrive. Granted, that makes the size itself a limitation, but it means we have no moving parts, reduced power consumption etc.

But I'm not too sure which desktop OS will run well on a flashdrive ... say 512mb?

I got two 384MB Sandisk flashdisk for cheap. Found that the innards is just a pccard flash card with a flash->2.5"ide adapter. So maybe I can get 1 GB CF and use it to run win98se on a notebook?

What do you guys think?

Sounds good in theory doesn't it.

Alas the practicalities of it are the reason why we don't have devices running off of flash media already.
Flash devices have a very low fault tolerence and while they have an extreamly long shelf life - around 100 years without use. Most average about 15,000 read / write operations before fail over.

If you consider the number of read / writes to boot an operating system (loading unloading drivers, reading the registry, many thousands of library files, temping and paging etc) then 15,000 will fly by.

You can use dependency walker to see how many library reads the average application needs, and that is woutout the writes and settings pickup.

You will also need to create a primary disk partition on the CF card to boot an OS, and that is easier said than done - just ask 'Master Rory'

I know what you mean, and on the NetBSD newsgroups, there is some discussion on that. However it seems like the compact flash life for read/writes are fairly sufficient for NetBSD as it is.

I agree that the kind of hdd accessing will more like than not kill the CF in no time! Matter of fact, I just loaded up FileMon and low and behold, there are all these frequent read/writes by IMs, FireFox, explorer (even though I am not running IE, but only because it is *the* desktop itself!!! arggghhh) and others. After closing up IMs and all the gritties found in the systray, FileMon is finally quiet.

Granted, in a typical usage environment, we would have all the IMs etc running and that would burn the CF. Maybe a SRAM drive would do it? How about a microdrive? Granted, for microdrives, it still has moving parts, but its power usage should be lower than a typical 2.5" IDE yes?

EDIT:

About running NetBSD, the thing is that the footprint for NetBSD is so tiny, the available ram can run as it is without much swapping if ever. At least when I was running dillo from NETBSD on my 790, it was not swapping like crazy ala WinXP. Given enough ram, XP can run without much swapping too, but that would have the burden of doing ram refresh which needs maintenance power over time.


Edited by Snappy! 2005-03-07 9:41 AM

The Micro Drive is the recommended installtion method for NetBSD on the H/PC, it allows for full partition support by and partition manager, and there for is easy to setup with the OS, data and swap partitions.

I beg to differ. A 512MB CF card will allow for full partition as well. I have 1.6.2 running perfectly with all the necessary partitions on my 512MB CF.

The one advantage a MDrv have over CF is its runlife. That much I agree.

Yes I know, but how many scripts and obscure software applications did you have to use / write / compile to setup partitions on the CF card.

It all takes *nix out of the realm of the end user and places it squarely back with the *nix head.

With a MicroDrive you can use the Windows DiskManager or any commercial partition manger to do it as the programs recognise it as a standard ATA drive. They get pickey about CF.

erm ... actually, have you tried the NetBSD sysinst 1.6.2 yet? Its a menu driven app that gives you a recommended default that *works* out of the "box". For those linux/unix gurus, you can always tweak the setup ... eg, if you plan to run the HPC as a access point, ftp, www server or something, you can tweak the partition sizes accordingly too.

I wrote *zero* scripts or app altogether. Just sysinst.

And all the installation using sysinst NetBSD 1.6.2 works on a CF 512MB
Some even got it to run on 64MB (miniroot or access pt config), 128MB (without X11), 256MB (with X11) etc.

So ... maybe you want to check with the latest build. Besides, I'm not even running NetBSD2.0 yet!

Actually I was dossing about with BSD 2.0 for mips on Sunday - complelty coincidental.