Teaching, Technology, and Learning

Performance

A hot topic for debate is the performance of the VIA C7-M processor. I ran the PCMark05 benchmark and reported the results here. MeanSquare has added these results to his table that compares them to the Sony UX series. Needless to say, the OQO 02 does not do so well. On many tests it is equivalent to the OQO 01+! Overall though, it is better than the OQO 01+ and one surprising area is the texturing on the 3D fill rate which has some nice implications for games (discussed below).

I've been one of the lucky ones to receive an OQO 02 from the first batch that went out in early April. I received it on 4/5/07. I purchased the OQO 02 "Best" configuration with a 1.5 Ghz VIA processor, 60 GB HD, 1 GB of RAM, standard battery, and Windows XP Tablet PC edition. I didn't get the WWAN option since neither Sprint nor Verizon offer service where I live (Alaska), so it's just Wi-fi for me. Now that I've used the machine I feel competent to write a review of my experience so far.

Overview of the Machine

By request I made a video showing the response times for the OQO 02 on a variety of apps. First I show how long it takes to boot (around 1 minute and 5 seconds) and them demonstrate running some office apps.

I think this is a better indicator of the machine's performance if you're going to run mostly productivity apps than the PCMark05 benchmarks I previously posted.

I still intend to post a more detailed review at some future date, but hopefully this will give you a better idea of the machine's general performance!

Video created by Camtasia Studio is available here:
http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/video/OqoDemo/OqoDemo.html (17 Mb. My apologies for the mediocre production quality.)

I just got my OQO 02! First up, it's a beautiful machine. I'm totally geeked over it. Second, I've been real curious how it will perform.

I ran the PCMark05 benchmark from my OQO 02 compared to my desktop and TC1100.  I added in results from meansquare's tests using his 01+.  I believe the TC1100 is using the same processor as the Flipstart, so results might be comparable, although my TC1100 has a 7200 RPM drive and 1GB of RAM while the Flipstart does not. 

A new blog extolling the virtues of a tablet or UMPC for a lab/research notebook:

http://www.e-lab-book.com/

Add your comments to the blog if you have other ideas on using these devices in the lab.

I've had some conversations with a Chemistry prof on using UMPC's in a teaching environment. The idea is students would put their results into their tablet or UMPC as they complete a lab. Students would be able to "peek" at the work done by other groups, to see their progress, so they could get an idea how others are doing and maybe get hints about how to proceed by communicating with each other. We'd still have to figure out how to prevent them from blatantly cheating and just copying someone else's work, though.

Personal Response Systems (aka "Clickers" or "PRS") are the little handheld remotes that students can use in class to give feedback to their instructor. They were popularized in the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" game show as the devices used by the audience. They come in two basic flavors, either using infrared or RF, with RF being the more expensive.

I took the plunge a few weeks ago and purchased an OQO Model 02. It was a tough call because it's pretty underpowered for a lot of things I like to do, like run compilers and other computationally expensive software. For the same price I could get a pretty nice 12" tablet. In the end I decided to go for it as I'm really interested in trying out the UMPC-style form factor, and I think I can still get another year of mileage out of my tc1100 (in addition to having tc4200's available).