CES 2005 - The Last Word

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It was on my last day at CES that I had the meeting I’d been looking forward to most. OQO is a company that I’ve been keeping an eye on for a while, since its model 01 hand-held computer looked very cool indeed.

Like the Sony VAIO Type U that I reviewed a while back, the OQO model 01 is a hand-held device with a full-blown PC inside it. The model 01 sports a 1GHz Transmeta Crusoe CPU and backs it up with 256MB of DDR memory. Graphics are handled by a Silicon motion Lynx 3DM+ chipset with 8MB of video memory, while storage is taken care of by a 20GB 1.8in hard disk. The model 01 is built to run Windows XP and can ship with either Home or Professional flavours.

The OQO model 1 is smaller than the Sony Type U, and I have to say that it’s more aesthetically pleasing. With dimensions of 122 x 85 x 22 (WxHxD), the model 1 is slightly more pocket friendly than the Sony, but it’s the sliding screen and hidden keyboard that really make this pocket sized PC special.

With the screen closed, the model 01 looks like a big PDA or a very small tablet PC, but when the screen slides up, a keyboard, TrackStik and numeric keypad are all revealed. Having a real hardware keyboard rather than an on-screen soft one, makes the OQO a more versatile product than the VAIO Type U, and although the keys are small, I didn’t have too much trouble typing on the device.

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