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Old-school gamer shares more insight on UMPC gaming

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via Ars Technica

via Ars Technica

Still calling his Samsung Q1UP a Tablet PC, Jon Stokes at Ars Technica follows up on his previous report on old-school gaming on a UMPC with updated minimum specs and battery performance.

Responding to complaints over the price of his rig, he notes he can underclock the 1.33GHz processor down to 800MHz without suffering a hit in the gaming experience, which means gaming should be okay on older, cheaper, non-Ultra, non-Premium Samsung UMPCs. Keep in mind, though, the Q1UP runs an Intel Core Solo processor, while previous versions featured older processors, such as Pentium M and Celeron, so your mileage may vary. Also note, he’s got 2GB of ram vs. 1GB or 512MB in older models.

And now that he’s had a couple weeks to play with it, he’s found his regular battery life is less than previously reported: about 5 hours instead of 6-7. Still very good, and playing an old RPG for more than five hours straight probably isn’t the best way to spend your time anyway.

He closes with new insight into why MIDs and UMPCs aren’t taking off (ironically still not counting his Samsung Q1 as a UMPC):

…all software usability issues aside, Atom-based MIDs just don’t offer the right combination of screen size, battery life, performance, and functionality to be widely compelling. Fix that, and the MID form factor might just have a future, especially if Microsoft can get its act together and offer some sort of multitouch MID/UMPC edition of Windows 7 with a completely rethought, finger-friendly interface. I’m not holding my breath, though.

Yeah, definitely don’t hold your breath for that. I’ve been waiting for serious small-screen support and/or a UMPC-optimized edition of Windows for three years. Not happening with the release of Windows 7. Probably not happening any time soon.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. bluespapa

    09/05/2009 at 9:15 am

    I absolutely adore my Samsung Q1 and take it everywhere. Since I use a stylus most of the time, and can fingernail for quick work, I don’t at all miss a more touch-friendly UI, and found efforts like the Origami Experience not very useful.

    I agree that Microsoft hasn’t bothered to try to make a UI more touch friendly, and most efforts have been limited to program launchers, but for me, the stylus rules when I don’t need a keyboard.

    The two places where I notice a touch friendlier would be more useful to me are the pinch and squeeze to zoom in and out on a small screen (but remember that before going belly up, OQO had zooming down cold with Windows on a five inch display), and Streets and Maps is unbelievably irritating to use with GPS because the icons are too small on even a normal size screen.

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