OQO Update

I'm taking a break from a conference to jot down a quick update on my OQO -- from my OQO.

I'm in a hotel room in Washington, DC, online via the OQO and the built-in Sprint EVDO.

I brought my dock, and a bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

The keyboard is a Think Outside "Stowaway Sierra" folding keyboard that works great. I just got it yesterday on the way out the door, heading toward the airport. As I mentioned, it's works via bluetooth. It's very easy to set up, and it didn't require a driver (though a CD came with drivers on it for various devices). It runs on one AAA battery (included). Don't know how long the battery lasts, too soon to tell. Thankfully, the keys are actually large enough and spread apart far enough that I can type on it without my hands cramping up. (The external keyboard for my previous Sony Vaio UMPC was just too small; caused a lot of pain trying to type). The Sierra comes with a little stand that probably works great for a smart phone, but is worthless for the OQO; it's just not strong enough to hold it up. Oh well. I hope to find a better stand soon.

So, my Sprint woes have been intermittent. The OQO will just seem to lose its mind for no reason once in a while and say that the (integrated) Sprint modem can't be found. It's worked flawlessly here in DC, but flaked out twice while sitting at the airport in Chicago yesterday. I don't know what to make of it.

OQO support has been friendly and helpful, but I'm just not sure what to do next. Keep pounding on it, I guess. It feels like it HAS to be a hardware issue -- my USB Sprint modem occasionally would lose the connection, but the modem device itself would never dissappear from the view of the computer.

Overall, I'm still happy, and today has been a really good day. At the conference, a lot of people have stopped to ask me about the OQO. Everybody assumes it's some sort of PDA at first -- nobody realizes it's a full Windows XP laptop in disguise.

The double capacity battery has been a god send. I got from 9:00 this morning until about 3pm today, with an hour off for lunch, and a few minutes off here and there where I put it into hibernation when I didn't need it. Now I'm back in my hotel room, and I'll leave the double battery to charge, and bring the regular battery along to the next conference session.