Tiqit cPC FlipStart Sony VGN/U OQO
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I love this little thing. Infinitely more usable than the Sony Vaio UX390N, both in screen size and keyboard usability, not to mention speed (but that most likely was the Vista crap on the Sony). Screen isn't as large as the Vye S37 I had, but I much prefer the weight and size of the FS.

Replacing the 30GB drive with a 60GB was easy and a worthwhile upgrade (not to mention cheap) at $70 shipped. It's not just doubling the capacity, but going from a 2MB buffer to an 8MB buffer.

Faster, yes. Cooler, not real sure. When it's doing processor- and disk-intensive tasks, the device does get somewhat warm to the touch, but no more than any laptop would, and certainly nowhere near as hot as the VYE S37 did.

I'm sorry these have gone the way of the dodo; they're great little devices. Quite spry. I couldn't install Adobe CS2 or CS3 due to screen resolution checks by the Adobe installer, but I was able to install Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS without difficulty. They both run just fine.

Acrobat Professional 7.0 runs well. Have not yet installed the Pitstop plugin.

I installed Adobe FrameMaker 7.1, and it's very peppy and usable. Would I do full page layout from scratch on the FS? No, but there are times when I need to tweak book files and index entries at a moment's notice, and this works well.

Next step: install some games and see how they do.

1-2 years from now, when 64GB SSD are semiaffordable (and if there is one in a 1.8" 5mm form factor), it will be interesting to see what those do to the device as far as performance and battery life.

One problem though: Couldn't find if there is a Fn combination that gives you a PrintScreen key... I wanted to do some screen captures but couldn't figure out how without installing 3rd-party software...
 
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By way of comparison, here are Orgwon's original PassMark numbers from a different thread:

FlipStart w/512Mb Ram:
Over All Passmark Rating = 185.9 Composite Average
CPU Mark = 291.4 Composite Average
2D Graphics Mark = 240.5 Composite Average
Memory Mark = 199.6 Composite Average
Disk Mark = 146.5 Composite Average
3D Grphics Mark = 69.8 Composite Average

Now here are my numbers. Most of the numbers are close, but slightly lower (I ran mine on battery power; I will rerun the benchmark tonight on AC power when I get home to see if it makes a difference), with the exception of the hard disk numbers, which skews the overall result in my favor. You can really see the difference that upgrading the 30GB 2MB drive to a 60GB 8MB drive made.


FlipStart w/512Mb Ram:
Over All Passmark Rating = 189.4 Composite Average
CPU Mark = 276.0 Composite Average
2D Graphics Mark = 214.8 Composite Average
Memory Mark = 188.5 Composite Average
Disk Mark = 213.3 Composite Average
3D Grphics Mark = 68.8 Composite Average
 

Needed PrintScreen myself...15mins later I just installed Shup link
 

(Secret Key Combo) - To do a SCREEN PRINT on the FlipStart use: Fn+ Bksp
 

heavyharmoni, you should definately try installing some games. I have installed about 30 games, some of which are Fear, Transformers The Movie, Jedi Knight 2 Outkast, Warcraft, Tiberium Sun, Battlezone 2, GTA SA, GTA3, Swat 4, Half-life, Halo, Age Of Empires and Aleins Vs Predator 2.Even Spiderman the Movie PC game worked but I uninstalled due to some problems with control. I also installed Project 64 N64 emulator and games run flawlessly. CPS3 also runs perfectly as will Snes, GBA etc. I think a UMPC targeted at gamers would be great, since getting the Flipstart I find I no longer play my Psp / DS anymore. There is nothing like the depth of full PC games.
 

Well, with tweaking I was able to get a hair better but nothing major. I'd love to know how Orgwon got the 2D Graphics mark results he did. Roughly 35 points higher than on my unit. Using different drivers?

New results:

Over All Passmark Rating = 191.4 Composite Average
CPU Mark = 286.4 Composite Average
2D Graphics Mark = 217.3 Composite Average
Memory Mark = 188.2 Composite Average
Disk Mark = 207.8 Composite Average
3D Grphics Mark = 68.8 Composite Average
 

I run the test on my FS using a 32 SSD from Sandisk and I obtained:

Disk Mark = 211.4 Composite average

On SW that works well...
- Visual Basic express 2008 works fine and doesn't seem any slower that my desktop (which is a aging - but well maintained) 1.8Ghz Athlon)
- Virtual Moon Atlas Expert works fine
- C2A (planetarium program) works fine with Tycho data base
- freemind work fine
- Open Office (portable) works fine
- CleanUp! works fine
I didn't try Photoshop CS2 assumed it would be overkill for the device (at least for my needs) GIMP portable works fine.

My strategy has been to install as little as possible and rely on portable software, not sure if this is necessary but it works ok for me.

One thing I would like, is an equivalent to AventGo and a way to automatically sync the flipstart to my main PC - any suggestions?
 

tknguyen said: "I run the test on my FS using a 32 SSD from Sandisk and I obtained:

Disk Mark = 211.4 Composite average"


Interesting. Very little performance gain over the 60GB. I would have thought the number would be higher. Any idea the effect on battery life versus traditional hard drives?
 

I have never tested the battery with and without the SSD so I do not know. For my application there almost no disk acess so the difference should be little.


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