She gave me a brief tour of the office but asked me not to elaborate about it here, nor to take pictures inside the office. I took a picture outside the office before leaving, though
She introduced me to Adam Gould (support engineer), and we went to Cafe Gratitude for lunch. There we spent about an hour talking about the OQO.
I shared my first impressions of the OQO with both of them, primarily from the perspective of an ultra-mobile user. My OQO arrived Tue Nov 9, so my time spent using it is still pretty limited.
The only problems I've experienced so far are:
* Small fonts are hard to read on the small screen, but this is because of my bad eyes and Window's bad user interface (not all fonts are scaled up when you select larger fonts in the display properties), and not because of the screen itself
* The WiFi signal is pretty weak just like the Titanium Powerbook
* The tablet is not as accurate as I expected even after careful calibrating
* I'm getting a lot of random "blue-screen" type crashes ever since Thu evening (the only addtional software installed at the time was Winamp)
Then I asked them some questions and here are the answers:
* The docking cradle was axed because of technical problems if I understood Elizabeth correctly
* An extended battery is being designed but there is no ETA
* No car/plane power adapter is being planned for now, but I suggested that adding a 5-12V DC input to the AC adapter and selling it as a universal power adapter would be a good idea
* No larger internal hard drive are being planned for now, but Adam confirmed that Toshiba's 30 GB MK3006GAL fits if you're brave enough to void the warranty by taking apart your OQO
* RAM is limited to 256 MB because it would be physically impossible to fit more memory inside the OQO
* The external WiFi antenna connector is proprietary and is used at the factory for radio compliance testing. No external WiFi antenna with a compatible connector is curently available or is being planned at this time
* The OQO dynamically assigns either internal antenna to either the WiFi radio or the Bluetooth radio based on WiFi signal strengh
* The GPRS module Jori Bell (CEO) mentioned in an interview was just an illustration of the kind of accessories that could be developped by OQO or third parties in the future. No GPRS module is being planned at this time
* The Sony U-50/70 screen protectors fit the OQO after some cutting down to size
I forgot to ask if a backlit keyboard could be added in the future... Doh!
After lunch we returned to the office. Adam introduced me to Eugene (QA department), and we looked into the random "blue-screen" type crashes I'm getting with my OQO. We managed to reproduce the problem once in half an hour but then I needed to go.
I ended up leaving my OQO with Eugene until that evening for him to do some tests. He was unable to further reproduce the problem and performed extensive tests, so my OQO is probably alright. Adam suggested that if the problem persists he'd approve an RMA for me.
Today I experienced more random "blue-screen" type crashes which I investigated using the event viewer and Microsoft's knowledge base... But the problem is apparently undocumented! So I'm planning to reinstall XP soon.