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CF-01 Impression & Performance
CF-01 Impression & Performance

New MessageCF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) oturn
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I Received my CF-01 yesterday (Monday) and love it! Coming from the ePods, I'm in heaven with the speed of this unit. Granted, it's equivalent to only a low-end Pentium, but general web browsing, which is my primary interest, is great. I immediately loaded IE 5.5 on the unit. It strains a bit under the load, but easily handles it. How fantastic to have a complete, modern browser all in a compact, portable package! Also, in comparison to the ePods, it's also great to not have to wonder whether this program or that program will work. Newsgroups? Outlook Express. File or Music Sharing? Napster or Bearshare. FTP? WS_FTP, etc. etc. As long as you do any extreme multitasking, they all run fine.

One dramatic comparison I wanted to mention is web page rendering. For example, on my ePods, using IE 4, it takes msn.com 70 seconds to fully render! The CF-01, using IE 5.5, renders the page in 10 seconds!! This is using a Buffalo Tech 802.11b PC Card to a cable modem.

Needless to say, I think my ePods will appear on eBay very soon.

04-17-2001 14:12:49

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Randy
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Just got mine in the mail, and what can I say except "wow." First impression is really good. Haven't booted mine yet, but this little devil is very handsome looking indeed. My hat's off to Bus_Depot for gathering and posting the information, arranging the group buy, shipping, etc. Thank you! I'll give my operating impressions later this week after I get a chance to play with it.

Randy
ePods hack web site

04-18-2001 09:48:42

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Groch
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My CF-1 arrived today well ahead of schedule, and I wanted to echo Randy's and Oturn's sentiments about the quality and cool factor of this thing. It is definitely in a whole other class than the Epods in terms of speed and expandibility. At $200 the Epods provides a lot of fun and is a great Ebook reader and note pad. At $370 this looks like a real useable computer. Well deserved thanks to Stinger2 for finding these on Ebay, and especially to Bus_depot for setting up the deal and making the investment. Anyone looking for a very slick toy jump on this quick while they are still available.
04-19-2001 19:20:06

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Glitch
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I feel like I'm piling-on, but what the heck.

I've had a chance to play with the CF-01s. They are very nice. I don't see them as competing with the ePods. They are fairly different machines. IMHO, the ePods has a slightly better display and touch screen and much better battery life. The CF-01 has too many advantages to list.

Based on the original prices (ePods $150-210 vs. CF-01 $360-$370), it is hard to choose which machine I like better (for the money). If I was buying a machine right now (eBay ePods vs. busdepot CF-01), I would say the edge definitely goes to the CF-01. YMMV.

Glitch
Electronics run on smoke, if you let the smoke out they won't work
04-19-2001 20:58:08

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) sharksfan
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Where can I order one? I want it!!

please send me an email at sharksfan@earthlink.net.

thanks!

04-20-2001 09:51:51

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Glitch
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sharksfan: Look here for general info:

http://home.ptd.net/~busdepot/

Contact busdepot (email adress is on the website above) to see if he has any left. Otherwise, check eBay. HTH.

Glitch
Electronics run on smoke, if you let the smoke out they won't work
04-20-2001 10:03:12

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) SiliconIce
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Just got mine today (thanks bus_depot!!!!!) and it ROCKS!
It really is just about everything I wanted ePods to be, except no sound.

Only complaint is the screen is much "softer" or "spungier" than ePods so it is harder to use when I am used to the hard ePods screen. Seems like you have to press more.

Other than that, wow, am I impressed!

04-27-2001 16:39:05

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Steve
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Silicon, I know what you mean. I have two and it varies. On one the touchscreen is bowed out a bit from the screen so it feels very mushy to use the stylis. The other is better, more flat against the LCD. When I take one apart it'll be the one with the bowed out touchscreen. I'll see if it can be adjusted.

BTW, I got two LinkSys pcmcia wireless cards working in them last weekend. Very cool. I left one in the apartment and took the other outside and they talked to each other just fine. It's about impossible to see the screen in the sunlight but I was out there to test the wireless. I'm going to play with them some more on the weekend. The hard part will be trying to get a wireless card working in my 486 Linux box that acts as an internet gateway for the lan. I don't know much about Linux yet.
I love the CF-01. The docking bay is such nice icing on the cake. What a nice design.

04-27-2001 17:53:53

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Linuxguru
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To second the earlier impressions, the CF-01 is a superbly engineered unit. I got it today (thanks, bus_depot), and I have just started playing with it. It's a keeper, and I'm going to leave win95 on it (although I may do a dual-boot linux installation later). The DSTN screen is excellent and uniform, like the early IBM Thinkpads, and has very little smear from window edges, etc.

Possible uses are the usual ones: Kitchen-top and mobile web browsing, GPS moving map display, hand-held intelligent remote for home theatre and security, X-10 controller, board games - chess, scrabble, and generally anything which does not require typing.

05-02-2001 18:30:17

New MessageRE:CF-01 Impression & Performance (modified 0 times) Pat the Hack
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It's so Small! Compared to my ePods, it is a dream (with the exception of battery life and handwriting recognition). But my real comparison is with my Fujitsu Stylistic 2300...

Stylistic things I miss on the CF-01: 1) Sound (Sound Blaster vs. beeps), 2) display (800x600 TFT vs. 640x480 DSTN), 3) Processing power (266mhz vs. 133), 4) HWR and pen tools (CIC 1.66 vs. Pen Tools 2.0), 5) Pen/Screen (electromagnetic digitizer with 2nd button vs. stylus and "squishy" resistive membrane)

CF-01 things I miss on the Stylistic: 1) Size (2.2 lbs vs +4 lbs - practically palm sized vs. definately arm rest), 2) Cool docking station (w/integrated floppy drive vs. no docking station and remove the battery to hook up the floppy), 3) Hibernation (works well vs. stopped by NT4's lame PCMCIA support - won't come back after hibernation) 4) Did I mention size?

When you take into account the fact that I spent nearly $1000 more for the Stylistic, you can see that the CF-01 is a great little hand held. All in all, I am very pleased. It is a well engineered system, but has some flimsy bits - the cover for the docking station port comes to mind. Oh, and one nice thing, the Stylistic and CF-01 seem to have compatible power supplies, so my auto adapter for my Stylistic will work with the CF-01...

05-07-2001 14:02:40

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