Handtops, UMPC - British FlipStart users?

03/23/08 + Joshua

How many British FlipStart users are there? Disregarding Blazepoints optimistic initial pricing (for their own reasons, I am sure), did the FlipStart reach many people over here?

03/26/08 + itslifejim

I got one :-)
Great PC, better than expected, fast and the slim battery also lasts longer than expected (about 90 mins - which is great for my commute).

Does anyone know if the sprint mobile hardware will work with a UK Mobile provider? - I didn't buy it for this but would be good to get it working

Also interested in anyone who can work out how to take advantage of the little screen, I only use web mail so it's a bit pointless at the moment - again wasn't part of the purchase decission but getting it to do something usefull would be nice.

03/26/08 + wodin

I don't think so. Sprint uses CDMA technology. I believe that CDMA is exclusive to the USA.

I think the only ways to get WWAN in Europe are to use a USB Broadband adaptor or a hardware hack to replace the CDMA modem.

03/26/08 + Joshua

Sprint won't work in the UK - I'm trying to get a Mini PCI-E card modem such as the Dell or Novatel one for a "if it doesn't work I won't be annoyed" price to try installing. It has a SIM slot and early on Blazepoint indicated it might have a unit (but then they also claimed to have 1GB RAM models and models already with 3G WAN and 'SIMs inside them' when discussing what might be happening - oddly enough they were reluctant to restate that the next time I spoke to them...

The screen really won't do anything besides talk to Outlook.

I must admit that if it weren't for the "it's gotta do this!" aspect, I'm perfectly happy to use it paired with my $nokia3Ghandset (usually an N73) on T-Mobile on bluetooth. It works just fine.

Re: the slim battery - one of the great things I liked about FlipStart was that clearly the device dimensions are supposed to be around the slim battery - every other firm sells their devices with profit-making extended batteries as an option - and the slim battery makes it easily pocketable. However, they bundked the "extended" battery instead, giving it much better battery life that the lower-power VIA based machines - the Origamis only manage about 90 minutes on their HUGE (physically) tube batteries.

itslifejim; did you get it via Blazepoint, or Dynamism, or elsewhere?

CDMA is also used in Asia, or was for a period.

03/29/08 + itslifejim

I got it from Dynamism, I'm not overly bothered about the WAN, it was performance and size that mattered, most UMPCs are far to large, meaning you might as well have a small laptop, those that are smaller are either really expensive (OQO) or too slow or both.
As for value for money... at $700 with high capacity battery, port replicator, case, cloth it wins hands down. I plan to make a bracket so I can connect it to my telescope tripod and use it to control my DSLR, CCD, and mount.
About the only thing it is missing is a memory card reader but I can live with that.
I recon without the crazy dino infopane there would have been a little more room for a card reader - a project for the future perhaps...

03/30/08 + kamodt

@itslifejim,

Zio! makes a USB memory card reader that you might try. I'm still trying to get my telescope, DSLR and FS sorted but I hadn't thought of the memory card reader.

Recent Blog: Some choices

04/08/08 + itslifejim

Adding to my list of software that works well on the flipstart...

I took my Flipstart to the BAA (British Astronomical Association) Winchester weekend, did some imaging of the Sun using a webcam (external) the flipstart ran RegiStax4 no problem :-) Registax appears to be 'portable' software too, so if you simply copy the exe file to the flipstart or a USB stick you can run it from there without any install :-)
Tried to use GIMP Portable to do some image processing but it only processes 8bit images :-(

I didn't really want to install photoshop on the flipstart as its a resource hungry program, I would be interested in any views on performance from people who run PS CS2 on their flipstart.

04/09/08 + wodin

I have PhotoShop Vs. 6 loaded, and it works ok, albeit kind of slow. But on the tiny screen it's kind of useless. Needs and external monitor.