My review of this is up at Tom's Hardware.The latest ultramobile PC from OQO really is ultramobile rather than just ultraportable. Not only does it pack a decent processor, 1GB of memory, an 80 or 120GB hard drive and a 5” screen into a 1 pound form factor, the OQO model e2 also has built-in HSDPA connectivity as well as 802.11a, b and g versions of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Differences in HSDPA - and the difficulty of getting devices approved for connection to U.S. cellular networks - means the e2 is only available in Europe and Asia at the moment. Yet, the device offers a tantalizing hint of mobile PCs to come.

In short, pricey but nice if you need the portability. There are some questions on the review page and I can't seem to post a reply there at the moment, so here are some extra details for those readers. Also, the final edit suggests the e2 is smaller than an HTC TyTan - that should read "half as big again as a chunky Windows Mobile device like the HTC TyTan" or 1 e2 = 1.5 TyTans.

There were questions about how the e2 and Eee PC compare. I'm answering those, but I'll also explain why they're not comparable - and it's not just price.

I've looked at both the OQO model 2e and the Asus Eee PC and the e2's performance, screen quality and usability when surfing are all far superior to the Eee PC. As I said in the review, the screen quality is superb. Vista performance is no problem with enough memory in* and this machine was able to deliver enough power for image editing plus running five or six business applications at the same time without noticing any slowdown at all. Watching video with Sling or decoding DiVX video files are both quite demanding and the e2 performed excellently at both. That's about the limit of what it would be useful to do on a machine with a screen this size; you wouldn't spend this much money on a device for playing games and I don't think many people would be doing video encoding or other more demanding tasks on this size of screen. For what it's sensible to do on a machine this size, performance is impressive.

I'm impressed by the keyboard compared to anything except a real notebook keyboard - and if you want to type without a table a real notebook keyboard doesn't always prove the best thing anyway. It's the secondary keys that matter as much as the QWERTY keys. The @ key is needed so much these days that OQO promotes it to a function on the apostrophe key (next to P). The euro, yen, backslash and similar symbols are functions on the other keys, along with volume and brightness controls and the keyboard light. Not everything is where you expect it to be - but it all makes sense where it is.

Not everyone wants a tablet and a thumb-sized keyboard - but not everyone wants a miniature notebook form factor either. That means I was looking at the e2 compared to the whole range of ultraportable devices I've evaluated, not just the Eee PC - they are quite different beasts and not only because of the price tag. I don't think that they're equivalent or that the same person would want both.

Do I think the e2 is expensive? Yes.
Are there people for whom it will be good value anyway? Yes.
Are you one of them? Not if you're going to say the Eee PC is better value and you're happy with the compromises it makes. (I'm not implying you are wrong about the Eee PC; I am implying the e2 is wrong for you)
Am I one of them? Borderline - but since the Motion LS800 which I consider the closest alternative is no longer available and I want to be able to write on screen on something that fits next to my plate at lunch, the e2 is attractive. For me personally the HSDPA connection is a luxury anyway, but a very convenient one. Like the vast majority of cars and consumer electronics, not everyone needs luxury but a lot of people want it.

Time to get online depends on the method you use to connect more than the PC. Over wi-fi, the e2 is pretty much the same as the Eee with Windows XP or Linux, allowing for the fact that the e2 is a more responsive machine. I didn't test the Eee PC with HSDPA because it doesn't come with connectivity built in and it doesn't have a PC Card or Express Card slot for my HSDPA cards, but again, the speed limitation is down to the available bandwidth in the network more than the PC you use - if the network has sufficient backhaul and the cell isn't full of other users, you get a DSL-like experience. HSDPA has a connection time longer than most wi-fi hotspots but that doesn't vary much between devices; I did mention that the HSDPA software on the e2 is also the best I've tried - better than the equivalents from Vodafone or Toshiba, for instance.

Screen size and surfing; again, the higher screen resolution of the e2 and the better screen give a better experience. I talk in the review about how you can scroll down with the finger-touch capacitive scrollbars without opening the keyboard - the Eee PC doesn't have the tablet format so you can't as easily hold it in your hands, you don't see as much of a Web page on screen and the screen quality of the Eee PC is nowhere near as good as the e2 (or an ultraportable Sony for that matter). With either machine you have a full PC browser so there are none of the compromises you make on a smartphone.

One reader comment asked why this got a good review - or rather suggested that my review wasn't entirely independent. I trust I don't need to say to anyone who knows me that my opinions are independent and have been for the nearly 18 years I've been writing about technology. This isn't a positive review because of the opinions of the supplier; this is a positive review because if you need something this portable and you have the budget for the e2, you'll have a good experience using it. Hope that answers some of the reader questions.

* I'm happy to discuss Vista performance. I'll discuss it with people who have used Vista and who can provide the specification on the machine they used and the figures for the performance they're not happy with. I'll agree with anyone who says Vista file copying and related operations are absurdly slow; in a couple of days I'll have an opinion on whether SP2 fixes that. I'll agree that Vista needs a lot of RAM; I use 2 or 3Gb on my machines and get excellent performance - memory is cheap enough that I'd not consider that an extreme amount. A 4200RPM hard drive is also a bottleneck and I plan to replace that on my Toshiba R400 ASAP to improve performance. I'll agree that 2007 Office is slower than it should be. Other than that, I find no problems with Vista performance personally.

Bose QuietComfort 2 noise canceling headphones are generally considered the standard to beat, but they're big and bulky. If you seek something smaller and lighter, Bose has brought out the QuickComfort 3 headphones - which are still large but small for true noise canceling headphones. The question is, are they as good - and why has the price gone up? Want something even smaller and lighter? Bose's in-ear TriPort IE headphones don't offer noise cancellation nor do they fit tightly enough for noise isolation - will they suit listeners who don't usually like ear buds and canal phones? Find out in the rest of my review!

Covering the history of portable music players for Tom's Hardware has been fascinating; sbisson did a lot of the research and we turned up some fascinating details, from the inventor who took his stereoradiogram to the beach (reminded me of Tony Levin putting an expresso machine in a flight case) to the MP3 player company who went out of business after handing out free players at the Academy Awards. I got to see the first car radio at Motorola's headquarters last year; I wish I knew what happened to the portable wind-up gramophone I once had; I still remember the Hango PJB-100 (the first hard drive MP3 player) with fondness.

So how far have we come? I've just looked at two midget music players. I don't like the new iPod Shuffle at all (on consideration I think I was too polite about it in the review, but I do try to bear in mind that some people want just that kind of cheap, convenient reduction ochoice - sorry, simplicity) and I actually like the Samsung YP-U2 quite a lot; find out why...

Smartphones have plenty of tools and services, but if you don't fancy viewing them on a very small screen and using them with a couple of softkeys and a four-way controller, look at a PDA phone. You get the widest choice of applications and input, plus a bigger screen-and you don't have to sacrifice phone features either.

If you've used a PDA already, you'll find the familiar names and operating systems here like Palm and iPAQ, alongside Symbian devices from phone manufactures such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson. As with smartphones, many Windows Mobile devices are made by HTC and branded by the operators (the T-Mobile Dash, the O2 XDA range, the Orange SPV models and the Cingular and Verizon own-brand models), though HTC now uses its own brand as well as i-mate and Qtek and other Pocket PC manufacturers like Samsung and Mio have phone models now. Blackberry isn't just for business users and the Sidekick may not have as many applications as other devices but it's more like a PDA than a pager these days. Read the rest...

sbisson

PDAs and smartphones can browse the Web, but small screens and poor support for JavaScript and plug-ins can make browsing a cramped and unsatisfying experience. UMPCs give you a standard browser but they're still too big (and expensive) to carry all the time. Nokia's 770 Internet tablet fits - not necessarily neatly - in the middle, in terms of size, price and features.