My recent look at using at Samsung tablet PC for retro gaming generated quite a bit of interest from gamers, and also some moaning over the high price of entry. Now that I've traveled for two weeks with it and have done some more gaming on it, I thought it appropriate to post a follow-up for those who are thinking of adding such a system to their holiday wish list.
First, the good news: you don't actually need the $1,300.00 Q1 Ultra Premium edition, with a 1.33GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, Vista Business Edition to do Infinity Engine widescreen gaming. I down-clocked the CPU with Samsung's utility to 800MHz and suffered no loss of performance in gaming or overall system snappiness; I also downgraded my system to XP Tablet Edition (I described this in the original article). So you can pick up an XPTE Q1 with an 800MHz CPU for between $600 and $900 either new or refurbished and get the same gaming experience, but it has only 1GB of RAM. This is probably not a problem, but there are instructions online for upgrading the RAM if you decide you need to.
Ultimately, what all of this means is that you can put together a perfectly adequate Q1 tablet system for retro RPG gaming for about half of what I shelled out for mine, especially if you're willing to get a refurb unit. This might bring the project within the grasp of some readers who were excited about the idea but turned off by the price.
The bad news in this second look is that the battery life is about half what I implied in my original review. I didn't formally test the battery (I wrote the review the day after I had gotten everything set up and was able to play around with it to confirm that it worked as planned), but later formal testing indicates that I can play Planescape: Torment for 5 hours on a single charge (WiFi off, CPU throttled to 800MHz, LCD on two ticks of brightness).
Five hours of retro RPG gaming is still pretty sweet, especially given that the spare battery is quite compact. I had no problems keeping myself entertained with the unit on a roughly 11-hour flight from Paris to San Francisco.
On a non-gaming note, the Q1UP works extremely well as a mobile Skype device. It has two microphones on the bottom, the WiFi reception is very good, and everyone I've called on Skype has remarked on the clarity of the sound. While traveling in Europe, we used it like a WiFi Skype phone to do cheap international calling.
On second thought, maybe mediocrity killed the MID/UMPC
Overall, my travels with the Samsung Q1UP have slightly changed my assessment of what's wrong with the MID/UMPC form factor. Yes, it's still a drag to use a desktop OS on a small touchscreen, but the Q1UP's combination of notebook-caliber performance, long battery life, a bright 7" touchscreen, a PSP-style thumbstick that works quite well for mouse control, and generous accessories (two cameras, dual mics) go a long way toward making it a really useful entertainment and communications device for traveling with a family.
In other words, all software usability issues aside, Atom-based MIDs just don't offer the right combination of screen size, battery life, performance, and functionality to be widely compelling. Fix that, and the MID form factor might just have a future, especially if Microsoft can get its act together and offer some sort of multitouch MID/UMPC edition of Windows 7 with a completely rethought, finger-friendly interface. I'm not holding my breath, though.
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