Does Q1 Ultra Hardware Deliver?

A "Littlest Hobo" for the 21st Century, our favourite curmudgeon Mike Cane has been wandering the streets and pestering people at the Samsung Experience, trying his best to coax a Q1 Ultra UMPC into falling in love with him.  Turns out it's not the love affair of the year he was hoping for; if his hands-on report is anything to go by, the 800MHz unit (remember, this is the faster processor option) running Vista is a tardy, frustrating experience.

Mike seems pretty convinced by the physical design – although he wishes it was MacBook matte black so that the glare from the casing and keys doesn't make typing tricky – but it's the software and OS that lets it down:

"The slowness of the Control Panel building was not my imagination. The Q1U had to be reset rebooted and when the Samsung rep called it up, he thought it had finished after 4-5 icons appeared. I had to tell him, No, wait, it's sloooow. And it still was, even after a reboot!"

From the sound of it, things only got worse: YouTube videos were jittery and far from smooth, audio performance through the speakers (something the original Q1 was regularly praised for) sounded "like AM radio" and there was some intermittent problems with controls for screen rotation, resolution switching and other UMPC-specific features.

Is this a one-off problem with a demo unit?  Considering the Samsung rep told Mike that the machines had only come in at the weekend, it's difficult to imagine that they'd crap out already.  We'll have to wait for a full hands-on to see just how well – or otherwise – the spec's of the Q1 Ultra live up to the UMPC ideal.

Samsung Q1U Fondle[Mike Cane's Blog]