pma430: Thu Jun 14 01:46:00 2007
Thu Jun 14 01:46:00 2007
After poking around OpenPMA a bit, I picked up a PMA430, and
immediately installed the Boothack and the "OpenPMA 0.2 Giraffe"
firmware. The directions were clear, the only thing missing was any
hint as to where to find the forced-reset hole :-) Page 14 of the
manual that came with it points it out, though, it's on the "bottom"
(not back) near the speaker.
First impressions:
- A modern USB keyboard works fine - but QT2 doesn't seem to have change-app or change-window accelerator keys.
- in USB drive mode, the screen is on and backlit, which seems like a waste of power
- the stylus is flexible which is at best kind of strange
- the screen cover doesn't fold over, so it's in the way when not detached entirely
- the screen seems low res, and even hand-picked fonts seem atrocious, when compared to the (2 years newer) Palm TX
- apps take seconds to start. Just barely fast enough, I think, but palm users will hate this (at least at first.)
- the native video player seems ok but uninteresting (at least until I get it talking to youtube)
- Opera is a much more accurate browser than palm-blazer, but still seems clumsy.
- the TV cradle is meant to stay with a TV, as the huge wad of cable is hardwired; a standalone cradle for desktop or tray-table use would be nice
- I need to start wireless and start a browser - Palm's "push this one key and we'll figure it out" workflow is vastly superior
- The PIM apps look like engineering demos - lots of input panes, stupid wastes of screen space, weak workflow
- landscape mode only (which is how I tend to keep my Palm TX, but for some things the choice is worthwhile)
Generally positive points:
- My Kinesis Freestyle (cable-split qwerty, not freaky bowl-thing) just works, and that's the starting point for captioning; this causes me to forgive it a number of other things
- The firmware upgrade was smooth, and adding ssh and python 2.5 was trivial (rsync was already there!)
- 10oz is just about the maximum for wearable, and it fits in the belt pouch I was using for the Optio S4
- suspend and resume take a few seconds each, mostly in UI, vastly slower than the Palm, but are fast enough once I got used to them.
Next steps: actually sync from the camera, and make arrangements to build ipkg files myself.
Footnotes: