{"id":606,"date":"2007-11-30T18:38:25","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T23:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2007\/11\/30\/some-long-term-thoughts-on-using-a-koh"},"modified":"2007-11-30T18:38:25","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T23:38:25","slug":"some-long-term-thoughts-on-using-a-kohjinsha-sa1f00v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/2007\/11\/30\/some-long-term-thoughts-on-using-a-kohjinsha-sa1f00v\/","title":{"rendered":"Some long term thoughts on using a Kohjinsha SA1F00V"},"content":{"rendered":"

Awhile back I bought a Kohjinsha SA1F00V<\/a> to test it out as a lightweight Tablet PC. After a few months of usage, I can say that I’ve not been that impressed with the device but neither have I been so frustrated with the device that I felt the need to toss the thing out the window.<\/p>\n

The Bad<\/h3>\n

Annoying default partitioning scheme<\/h4>\n

I hate these laptops that advertise the hard drive size (40Gigs) then you get some weird partitioned scheme that you didn’t ask for
\n (with of course a few more gigs knocked off for a recovery partition). What this means is that you really only get 16GB or 19GB but not the full 40GB – (Win XP + Bundled Garbage) thanks to these partitions if you’re not willing to suck it up and reinstall the preinstalled OS<\/p>\n

Slow<\/h4>\n

Yes it’s slow as a dog. This is one of those things that I wish you could test drive at the store by being allowed to install a stack of apps that you<\/em> like and play around with it for a couple of hours. Once I loaded up an AntiVirus program, iTunes and Firefox life got pretty miserable trying to use iTunes and Firefox together. Also, the virus scan just slows the machine down each time I boot up Windows since it feels compelled to download updates and run full disk scans when I’m planning on using it. *sigh*<\/p>\n

Keyboard tactile is awful<\/h4>\n

There have been other reviews on the keyboard not being that great and I’ve even came to the conclusion it wasn’t that great before I picked one up but decided to forge ahead anyways. After using it for a longer period of time I realize a crappy keyboard makes it very annoying to do anything requiring serious input on it without readjusting your brain how to type well on it.<\/p>\n

Graphics drivers don’t support monitor mirroring<\/h4>\n

This is really bizarre and disappointing. I came up with a plan to try to use it as a cheap tablet by mirroring the output of the display to a larger monitor and drawing on the 7″ screen however the drivers for some inexplicable reason don’t have mirroring support which sucks. I spent some time trying to see if I could just use the touchscreen while outputting to an external monitor but it’s really disorienting. Even some SLIGHT visual feedback on the 7″ touchscreen itself would have been REALLY helpful.<\/p>\n

The Good<\/h3>\n

Okay now that you’ve read some of my more outstanding gripes on the device. Here are some things that I considered nice about the Kohjinsha<\/p>\n

Not a complete ripoff<\/h4>\n

The price point wasn’t that bad considering you do get lightweight tablet functionality<\/p>\n

Standard components<\/h4>\n

The parts that most people will fiddle with are mostly standard laptop components instead of weird proprietary junk. The hard drive is a normal 2.5″ PATA drive which you can swap out if you try instructions like these<\/a> (I just did). The memory is standard SO-DIMM instead of Micro DIMMs which saves a bit on price.<\/p>\n

Portability<\/h4>\n

This thing is easy to toss into a bag and be mobile with it. I’ve even held it one handed while traveling on the train from Yokohama to Tokyo and that didn’t kill my arm (try that in a crowded train you 17″ notebook warriors)<\/p>\n

Decent battery life<\/h4>\n

The battery life is around 3-4 hours with the usage that I do<\/p>\n

Standby when the lid closes doesn’t suck<\/h4>\n

I’ve had so many variables with trying to get a Windows laptop to sleep when I close the lid compared to a Mac. I’m happy to say the Kohjinsha does the job without requiring a lot of fiddling with anything. Perhaps if I was a heavier power user on it I’d bork the drivers to prevent it but in my usage it worked which was a lifesaver when you’re trying to catch a train transfer.<\/p>\n

Better than the rest of the PDAs at reading PDFs<\/h4>\n

The design of the Kohjinsha makes it a very good platform for reading stuff while on the move. I’ve tried a Zaurus, Palm, and a couple of other PDAs and reading novel or long textbook type of stuff was very painful due to screen resolution and slowness of the platform. I can say that the Kohjinsha makes a better eBook reader than these other solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awhile back I bought a Kohjinsha SA1F00V to test it out as a lightweight Tablet PC. After a few months of usage, I can say that I’ve not been that impressed with the device but neither have I been so frustrated with the device that I felt the need to toss the thing out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1216,1101,1215,260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fixes","category-geek","category-gripe","category-tech"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hoanga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}