Once again, the road warrior in me caused the wallet to open and make a purchase in the name of portability.  This time it was the Sony VGN-UX280P Ultra-mobile PC.  Here are my thoughts.

For those that aren’t familiar with UMPCs, they are essentially handheld, very small and light PCs that are the tiny cousins of notebook computers.  They’re larger than Pocket PCs and Palms, but are full-featured computers running Windows XP (or perhaps some other desktop OS).

For those who like features, the UX280P is chock full.  It has a fingerprint reader, full QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, WWAN (Cingular EDGE only), sound, memory stick slot, and not one but two cameras.

The screen is 4.5″ and runs at 1024×600 (widescreen) and weighs in at a paltry few pounds.  It’s definitely ultra-mobile.  But be forewarned; whereas this is a full-featured PC, it is not that good for true mobile computing.

First of all, do the math.  The 4.5″ screen running at 1024×600 makes things really small.  If you don’t have very good eyesight, this will put a strain on your eyes very quickly.  As well, the keypad isn’t good for typing much.  In fact, I find it easier typing with my thumbs on my T-Mobile MDA Windows Mobile phone, than the Sony.  Mostly this is because the Sony’s keys aren’t raised at all, so it’s very difficult to know if your thumbs are correctly hitting the right keys.  And for a person with large hands, such as mine, this becomes doubly difficult.

But Sony has put some attention to detail in the way this PC should be held and used.  The screen slides up to reveal the keyboard and there is a thumbstick mouse-control on the right side with left- and right-mouse buttons on the left, making it relatively easy to hold the unit in both hands and manipulate the mouse.  Your thumbs can then maneuver to the keyboard for text entry.  As well, there is a “scroll” button on the that turns the thumbstick into a sort of scroll-wheel.  Very convenient and slick!

The shift key isn’t “sticky” so in order to get a capital letter you must use two fingers at the same time (there may be a setting to change this, but I haven’t found it yet).  That’s not so big a deal except that there is only one shift key, on the left.  So, if you want to type a capital letter A, it’s pretty awkward to do without setting the unit down.  And the same goes for the Alt, Ctrl, and Fn (second function) shifting keys.

I haven’t put the battery through its paces yet, but it seems to be about as beefy as a low-end laptop, around 2 hours of normal use.  Unfortunately, the boot-up alone seems to drain a good 10% of the fully-charged battery before you can even get to the desktop.

Aside from those minor nits, this is a solid unit.  I have scarcely had any issues with it, except for the Cingular WWAN (more on that later).

The fingerprint reader is a very convenient thing to have, allowing you to swipe your finger to enter passwords (even the password for your XP account on startup).  Passwords can also be tagged from windows or webpages (although at the time of this writing Firefox 2.0 is not supported for this functionality).

Did I mention the unit has two cameras?  That’s right!  With the screen raised, a camera is revealed on the back side, which can allow you to use the unit like a normal camera.  It’s only 1.3 mega-pixels, though, so you won’t become Ansel Adams with this thing.  Additionally, on the front is a 0.3 megapixel camera that can be used for videoconferencing and such.

The UX280P has a single USB 2.0 port in the main unit, but the docking station (included) adds 3 more (as well as video out, 4-pin FireWire, ethernet, and an AV out).  There is also an included mini-dock dongle which gives ethernet, AV out, and VGA out.

Now, about the Cingular EDGE connectivity.  I am pretty disappointed in it.  The unlimited plan (if you don’t have your cellphone service through Cingular) is $80 per month and the connectivity is nothing to write home about.  I ran DSL reports on it and got about 200kbps down and 40 or so kbps up.  I would rather have tried out Verizon’s or Sprint’s high-speed wireless, but the built-in hardware is Cingular only.  And there’s no PCMCIA slot, so to change from Cingular would require a USB dongle, which seem scarce by comparison.

As well, the WWAN hardware tends to lose its mind periodically, particularly when the unit is placed in suspend mode, but not necessarily only then.  Basically, it will just forget about its Cingular connection and only a reboot will get it back.

The unit will only allow either the WWAN or the wi-fi to be on, not both at once.  The Bluetooth, however, can be on or off with either of them.  But the switching between the WWAN and wi-fi can be a pain, because it remembers what’s on.  So, say I can’t find a wi-fi hotspot so I use the EDGE network.  Later, I know I am in a wi-fi hotspot, but the unit already has its EDGE WWAN on, so I have to switch it.  The switch isn’t that bad (a few button presses), but the unit takes a veritable eternity to get the unit fully switched over and searching for the hotspot.  I guess it has to try to shut the WWAN down gracefully.

All in all, for a unit that you can just pop out, pop on, and do a few quick things, it’s a very handy unit.  It doesn’t take much space in a carry-on bag.  And thus far, I have been testing the TSA and not removing it from my carry-on, just to see if they’ll notice.  So far, they haven’t.  I guess the reason for removing laptops and sending them through separately is due to size; or else they just think it’s a small video player or a large PocketPC.  Of course, it’s also in a bag with an iPod, an Archos 504, a GPS, a PocketPC, 2 portable hard drives, and a digital camera, so they may just go cross-eyed staring at my bag in the X-ray.

Prices vary; I got my UX280P at CompUSA for $1,800, but I have seen it on special for a few hundred less, so shop around.  I am currently looking for peripherals for it.  Sony has an external FireWire DVD-R/W for it that may be a good purchase.  As well, I would like to find a good Bluetooth (or USB) keyboard for it that’s super portable.  I have one that works, but it’s designed for PocketPCs, so the function keys aren’t all there.  If anyone knows of a good portable keyboard that has full-sized keys, I would love to know about it.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Gadget.