Wow. This is like someone was reading my mind. The only thing that would be better is if it had the option to run Maemo on one screen, and Android on the other (and swap them back and forth, to suit a given situation). Or at least being able to dual booth between Android and Maemo/Mer/Ubuntu.


http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/19/e...-oversaturated

I just sent them these questions in email:

1) I see USB ports, and "bluetooth keyboard", but what about a USB keyboard?

2) Is there any form of video out? If I am going to use this as a netbook, it would be quite useful to hook it up to my KVM switch when I get to my desk.

3) does it charge via USB-client? (does it have usb-client support at all?) or via a proprietary connector?

4) can I use one screen for display, and the other screen as the keyboard for it? Like a real netbook, only with a virutal keyboard?

5) how much RAM, and what type/speed CPU?

6) the hinge looks like it has 360 movement, so you can fold one side back behind the other. Is that true?

7) The main weakness of Android, in my opinion, is that the browser only runs the mobile versions of some web sites. Especially Google Apps. For my cell phone (G1) this is a minor annoyance. For a netbook, this would become a more significant problem. Do you have any solution for this? Also, support for flash sites (youtube, hulu, etc.)?

8) It would be ideal, to me, to be able to dual booth this and something like Nokia's Maemo OS. Or, really ideal, would be to run Android on one screen and Maemo on the other (being able to swap them back and forth, as my needs required). But I doubt that's in the cards. Still... just thought I'd put that out there.

on 7, thats more a issue of the web pages then the browser, as they see it id itself as android and automatically hand it a mobile page.

hell, lately gizmodo for instance have been doing the same on my N800, even tho it used to give me the full page earlier...

Wow.
If only the e-paper side has capacitive screen then it'd be more useable as virtual keyboard.

Well, yes, and no. It's still something that the browser has some control over (by controlling what it sends to the server). The main one that bugs me is actually Google Apps themselves. I wish Google would give me the choice whether I want their browser to be displaying mobile vs 'real'. Maybe even on an application by application basis. It would be as simple as altering what's in the string the browser sends the server ... something like "android-webkit-mobile" vs "android-webkit-normal" or something.

But even with that said, I have noticed that there are some sites that do mess with the android browser (not in the way you mean, but in the "the browser isn't up to the task" way). I think it might be that the browser isn't a fully Ajax capable browser. It probably makes UI, memory-footprint, and cpu-power compromises that are appropriate for a phone ... but may not be appropriate for a netbook/tablet (meaning mid-range size tablet, not MID/NIT size tablet).

All of that says to me that it might be easiest done, on mid-range devices with Android, with two browsers -- the default android browser, and a more conventional browser (Chrome? a port of Firefox?), and have a menu option on both browsers that says "open this in (the other browser)".

Yeah, I asked them about that in email. They haven't answered yet.

If the e-paper screen is more like a N800/N810, where you can use fingers and/or stylus (as opposed to stylus only) then it'll be golden. Not perfect, but usable as a netbook in a pinch. Otherwise, you'll need to have settle for using the portrait mode keyboard on the LCD screen. For many apps, that'll be fine. But, I don't know if the Android SSH client (ConnectBot) will work well that way (as far as I've ever used it, it only wants to render in landscape mode).

And, that would be my main use for it as a netbook (ssh'ing somewhere). :-}

i think i spotted something about wacom in the specs.

as for the android browser, i think it uses a different javascript engine from the one used in chrome, so that may have some effect on the ajax performance...

Are wacom drawing pads "stylus only"?

Or we'll have to grow claws to type

http://www.daydeal.com/product.php?productid=16138

:-)