Comments on: Mobinnova Beam — Windows CE Laptop Because… I Don’t Know

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 02:53:41 +0000

I would want one of these, but only if it were cheaper.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:34:38 +0000

With the Win CE Citrix Client and Open Office or Softmaker, these smartbooks would make a great device! Don’t know if these softwares will work.

By: Ray

Ray — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:21:15 +0000

weeomalley,

I can understand your position. If a classroom’s IT needs consist of what you mentioned, then yes, a set attractively priced Windows CE-based devices would do. One advantage of having an embedded OS is that since it is wholly or largely in ROM, it is less susceptible to infection by viruses, Trojans. It woulnd’t be invulnerable, but at least the attacks wouldn’t be able to penetrate to the core system files of the OS.

Windows CE already supports Adobe Flash (Lite), and I think MS’s own Silverlight too, so video-rich websites shouldn’t pose a problem.

By: weeomalley

weeomalley — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:16:10 +0000

I am a teacher of high school history. Over the past 6 months I have been trying to incorporate more web 2.0 tech in my classroom. The most effective has been Google.docs. A classroom full of laptops would be idea, however our last years economic dive has shriveled most would be suitors to educational spending. Netbooks 5-6 months ago seemed the likely route, yet again the belt for use teachers was tightened further. So here I see smartbooks running Windows CE.
Here is my question. If most of the work and exploration my students are doing is all web based: Google.docs, Discovery-Streaming, You-tube, Facebook, Flicker,School Loop, Weebly and the such, would not Windows CE be sufficient?

By: Perry

Perry — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:34:48 +0000

Hmmm… Not sure I agree about CE not being suitable for larger format devices. It worked pretty well on my ancient HP Jornada 820. I could see a market for an updated version of it supporting the latest web standards on a similar sized device.

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:18:07 +0000

Very good point about the carriers. I hadn’t thought about that.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:44:59 +0000

Oh, and another thing. I think cell phone carriers would love a device like this as a subsidized “netbook” precisely because it is so limited. They won’t have to worry about people installing all sorts of high-bandwidth using apps.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:38:49 +0000

Alot of these arguments could and have been made about netbooks vs. full function laptops. Call this a sub-netbook. It’s the same idea, but even more so. Portable, long battery life, instant-on, and presumabely cheap.
To succeed, this device will need to cost significantly less than a netbook. If they can sell this for $150 or less it will do well. If they can sell it for under $100 it will be very popular. If they sell it for $250 it will be DOA.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:49:13 +0000

CE in many situations in industry or business.

By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:31:18 +0000

Included 3G connectivity but the connection will connect through the browser Windows CE, by email.

By: Tai-Pan

Tai-Pan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:35:22 +0000

We did the first ever actual review of a smartbook and its not the form factor or necessarily the hardware… its the Windows CE that totally makes a device of this nature fail.

Review:
http://www.shanzai.com/index.php/component/content/article/12-smartbook-reviews/138-worlds-1st-real-smartbook-review

Video Review:

By: bhtooefr

bhtooefr — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:39:03 +0000

WinCE on a smartbook isn’t a good idea purely because of software availability.

There’s not much end-user software out there for WinCE in any profile other than the Windows Mobile profiles. Anything would have to be either a very well behaved .NET application (not many of those out there,) or modified specifically for WinCE.

ARM Linux stuff, OTOH, is just a recompile away for quite a lot of stuff. There’ll be an ARM Linux binary blob for Flash, I suspect there’ll be a Skype port, so that just leaves the nVidia driver, which I believe is being done, although you may not be able to download it from nVidia’s site.

By: MarkP

MarkP — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:16:31 +0000

I liked the specs of this netbook/smartbook/etc. I was wondering if a GNU/Linux distro would be compatible with the hardware. Could you just use an ARM Ubuntu for example, or is that missing a bootloader? My main concern would be non-free software compatibility; Flash, Nvidia driver and Skype. Would be an awesome little device if possible.

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:54:24 +0000

This is exactly what I was thinking, someone reviving the Workpad Z50 form factor IBM tried years ago. Windows CE can be given the Aqua or Aero theme, plus SoftMaker has a full-fledged Office-compatible suite for CE at http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofc_en.htm.

Now from what I’ve read Windows Mobile on smartphones uses just a subset of the full CE API, so porting an app from the former to the latter is in theory painless, if a port is needed at all. Maybe some tweaks to take advantage of the bigger screen and full keyboard.

I’d rather it not be called and marketed as a netbook. Not an UMPC either by Microsoft’s spec. Any other effective moniker, perhaps?

By: CTSLICK

CTSLICK — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:37:36 +0000

No…just stop it. ‘Nuff said.

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:41:59 +0000

Are you sure its not an IBM Z50 Workpad reborn? ;)

–Ken