Ultra portable Laptop for Storage ?

what model o fhte Vosonic are you using?
regards - tom

cary smith said:

what model o fhte Vosonic are you using?
regards - tom

Click to expand...

Actually, I purchased the Vosonic unit under the brand name “Aigo” (as I live in China, it was easier to find the Aigo brand, as Aigo is everywhere), same unit, different model number. The Aigo unit model number is UH P706, the equivalent Vosonic model number is VP8360, both can be purchased with various size hard disks, and I purchased an 80GB hard drive, and am pleased with the overall performance.

thanks shmspac

When displaying a jpeg photo of maybe 1 meg size, about how long does it take it to load on the screen? My old Archos 320 takes about 6 seconds, way way too slow. Thanks again.
regards - tom

cary smith said:

thanks shmspac
When displaying a jpeg photo of maybe 1 meg size, about how long
does it take it to load on the screen? My old Archos 320 takes
about 6 seconds, way way too slow. Thanks again.
regards - tom

Click to expand...

Hi Tom,

I wasn’t sure so I opened a couple of photos. A 4MB .tiff file took less than 2 seconds to load and display from the hard drive. I checked a 7.3MB .CR2 (RAW) file and from the CF card, it took less than 2 seconds to load and display. Actually, I was rather surprised they loaded so quickly. By the way, I use standard 1GB SanDisk CF cards. I keep several with me and change as needed, unless I am downloading directly to my tablet PC. Let me know if there is anything else I can provide.

One word of caution, although I don’t feel it’s an issue, these units use a special Li-ion battery. The battery is made by Sanyo, Model number UR18650F. The battery specifications are: 3.7V Min. 2300mAh.

Regards - shmspac

PS: If I had the purchase to do again, I would have opted for the 120GB hard drive rather than the 80GB, mainly because I shoot in RAW which as you know fills storage space quickly.

thanks shmspac, sounds reasonably quick
regards - tom

I have the Panasonic W5 myself. Got it about a month ago.

It would be an interesting device for this usage at 2.64 with bulit in DVD writer and 12" screen. Pretty much no other ultraportable can match that.

The 12" screen on it is a good screen not outstanding like say the one I had on my Fujitsu 6231. But compared to a downloader sure its a better screen.

The claimed battery life is 12 hours , which is an exaggeration requiring you to turn off Wifi and but the screen on an unusably dim setting - but I normally get 8 hours for sure without struggling at at all.

It has a built in DVD-RW drive so you can burn discs right on the unit.

It has a flash card slot (SD/MMC/Memory Stick. XD card) and a PCMCIA slot that you can put a compact flash converter into. No express card though if you are looking that far ahead.

It is fanless and therefore basically silent in usage. Totally. No irritating fan. None.

This laptop comes with choice of either 60GB hard drive or 120GB. Bith 4200 rpm though, which means it boots up slowly. So I prefer to hibernaate it at all times rather than turn it off. However unlilke most fanless ultra portables this laptop uses 2.5" hard drive drives, which means that if you are enterprising, handy with a screwdriver - and dont mind voiding you warranty - you can get an off the shelf 2.5" hard drive (for example a 160GB 5400 rpm or a 100GB 7200 rpm one) and really spup this thing up.

Certanly worthy of thought, but its not cheap. Cheapest source is http://www.conics.net at about $1700 for the 60GB version or a few hundred more for the 120GB version. Conics is certainly reputable and very efficient. That said if are US based, you could spend some more and buy from http://www.dynamism.com , who can do some (limited) warranty support locally in Chicagi. Otherwise both will send your laptop to Japan if it needs fixing.

The W5 will be offered locally by Panasonic USA in about a month - but caveat is that their version will have built in DVD reader/CD-writer, NOT the DVD writer.

Conics and Dynamis are also excelllent websits to take a look at some other devices you might consider - UMPC's such as the Asus R2H.

I read a review on the Samsung Q1 and it said that the transfer speed on the CF port was terribly slow, even when using a fast SanDisk Extreme card. This is unfortunately a stopper for me. The device has to be very quick at emptying the memory card onto the device while I am in the field for it to have any useful purpose at a photobackup.

--

John Christian
http://jclphoto.blogspot.com
http://photo.lonningdal.net

Are you sure the device is actually loading the RAW contents of the file and not only the embedded JPG file? It sounds to me that its a bit too fast for actually decoding the RAW content in 2 seconds.

Although thats good enough actually. The embedded JPG is there for fast proofing of the picture. And as long as the device can read that its very nice.

--

John Christian
http://jclphoto.blogspot.com
http://photo.lonningdal.net

I use a Sony Vaio TX3 with a Delkin cardbus CF adapter as my first line. The CF cards can be pulled out of the adapter, while that stays in the cardbus slot. I use DownloaderPro to automate this step.

Once the pics are on the harddrive, I use a Freecom Toughdrive to do a secondary backup using MS SyncToy. I have this set up to automatically sync the Photo directory on the Vaio to the toughdrive whenever it is connected (AutoPlay). I have SyncToy set up to sync as "Contribute" so that files I delete from the vaio remain on the toughdrive.

I'm using Lightroom at the moment and it works great as a workflow for underwater trips, so long as I have access to dry area to use the vaio once my cards are full.

I'm looking at getting a Jobo Evolution and running that the same way, doing a second line backup to the toughdrive once the images are on the Evo. That should be a more robust solution in situations where there may be some spray around. The Evo should by design be less susceptible to it.

Martyn

what about Portable Image Storage? it is a lot cheaper (for 80GB =$150) a lot cheaper and a lot less weight than a laptop - but not as general purpose...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1203
v

http://www.oqo.com/hardware/basics/
world's smallest Windows XP computer

The OQO model 01+ ultra personal computer (uPC) is a fully-featured Windows XP computer. The OQO has a 1GHz processor, a 30GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM, a color transflective display, and integrated wireless, as well as FireWire and USB ports.
fits in your pocket

Just 4.9 inches long, 3.4 inches wide, 0.9 inches thin, and weighing only 14 ounces, the model 01+ can fit in a pocket or purse and go with you anywhere. For easy typing and cursor control it has a complete thumb keyboard with TrackStik and mouse buttons as well as digital pen and thumbwheel.
connects to your networks and peripherals

Connect to wireless networks with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth. Connect all your peripherals including monitors, projectors, full-size keyboards, optical drives, printers, and speakers to the OQO docking cable and the model 01+ is your desktop computer.
the only computer you need

With an OQO model 01+ you can move throughout your day and enjoy constant access to all your information and Windows XP programs. You can use the same computer for high-powered applications at work, sending email at home, listening to music on a train, or watching a movie on an airplane. It is the only computer you need.

I want one, but with everything incuded you're facing close to $2000 :-(.

--
Philip

Flashlight said:

I want one, but with everything incuded you're facing close to
$2000 :-(.

--
Philip

Click to expand...

Nope. It ships with everything you need ( removable lithium polymer battery, docking cable, desktop stand, universal power supply, air/auto cable, carrying sleeve, Win XP Home and digital pen) for $1199:

http://www.oqo.com/store/shop.cgi/op/op_index.html

Al,

I've been very seriously weighing the options between one of the UMPC models and a Jobo Giga Vu Pro Evolution. (I happen to have been able to get one of the 120MB units allocated to me for shipment on Monday).

The OQO is definitely the form-factor and connectivity champ. Also, its ability to run XP gives the option for tethered shooting, which is a definite plus, and something the Jobo unit can't do, period. The OQO also adds a thumb-pad, something the Samsung Q1 doesn't, plus the OQO is WAY more stylish.

Here's the rub, however. Given 512MB of RAM (which doesn't seem to be upgradeable), and a 1GB Crusoe processor, what is the actual usable speed of the OQO? I certainly don't plan to use it for anything exotic or CPU intensive, but I'm really concerned about the performance of XP upon it. Furthermore, do you know what the Vista/Crusoe performance is bound resemble?

Can you offer any insight?

Thanks.

Al_10D said:

Flashlight said:

I want one, but with everything incuded you're facing close to
$2000 :-(.

--
Philip

Click to expand...

Nope. It ships with everything you need ( removable lithium polymer
battery, docking cable, desktop stand, universal power supply,
air/auto cable, carrying sleeve, Win XP Home and digital pen) for
$1199:

http://www.oqo.com/store/shop.cgi/op/op_index.html

Click to expand...

Elan,

I know nothing more than it is publishede about oqo, sorry. I think it is perfect storage/email/laptop replacement solution for travel. I'm considering buying one.

Regards,
Al

How does one load software? I did not see any mention of an external or tethered cd or dvd drive.

rg

Any USB or firewire CD/DVD/HDD drives could be connected.

The Sony UMPC is rated much better than the old OQO. It has a newer and faster Intel Core Solo chip, even comes with the option of a solid state hard drive for a price. Better screen, BT and WiFi built in. The HD based version goes for about 1.6K.

exe said:

The Sony UMPC is rated much better than the old OQO. It has a newer
and faster Intel Core Solo chip, even comes with the option of a
solid state hard drive for a price. Better screen, BT and WiFi
built in. The HD based version goes for about 1.6K.

Click to expand...

True. I now think we are in that $2,000 territory.

rg

Nice to see they have lowered the price on this device now to compete with other UMPCs. Its a cool little gadget, and by little I mean that its too little in my opinion. The screen is too small for the kind of use I see for it, and the processor is a tad too slow. I have seen a Samsung Q1 with a Celeron 900 MHz which is a faster cpu than this one and it feels a bit sluggish - although the drive can also take a lot of the blame for that (the Samsung SSD version is very fast in comparison).

I wish someone had made some kind of performance comparison between these UMPC options we have now. Things like Win-XP boot time (with same number of services running of course) and application startup time, some benchmarks and such. Especially wondering how much better the Samsung Q1 Pentium edition is compared to the older celeron and the new Via version.

--

John Christian
http://jclphoto.blogspot.com
http://photo.lonningdal.net