What do you think? Is it fair to judge this as a tablet or should it be in a category of its own? Why were Microsoft SO bad at adapting to the tablet market? And why aren't goats more interested in technology? Thank you as always for watching. If you'd like to support The Cave and get access to videos 1 week early with no adverts then head on over to patreon.com/retromancave where I'm really appreciative for your support in making this channel a reality. Thank you! Neil - RMC
The reason why Microsoft was so bad in the tablet market is the same reason why Motorola and IBM produced such spotty competition and slow delivery in the home PC market in the 90s, with the PowerPC: They never really had their heart in the game. They only cared about their embedded and corporate market, and Microsoft (as well as Intel), for the longest time, only really cared about desktop PCs and servers. This tendency with IBM specifically goes all the way back to the 80s and it's why they're in the less than stellar position they're in now.
Windows 10 fixed nothing. It’s literally just windows 8.1 again, and the “start menu” is a complete LIE - it’s just the windows 8 start screen shrunk to the size of a start menu. Even Windows 8 RT for Surface RT and Surface 2 RT managed to include a proper start menu like windows XP/Vista/7 had. Windows 10 even continues the awful Metro interface of 8/8.1, but without even the animations that helped 8/8.1 to even counteract Metro’s gross simplicity compared to 9x/Luna/Aero Windows 10 is straight up awful and I’m putting my remaining Windows 8 laptops onto Ubuntu 22.04 when win 8.1 gets dropped in 2023, and if proton has achieved at least 80% of compatibility with my steam library, then I’ll probably put my gaming pc on Linux Mint 23 as well.
Manufacturers in 2007: Let's give them everything they'll need to get maximum use out of this Manufacturers in 2020: Here's a USB cable and nothing else
Ah, but: USB Standards Committee in 2007: 60 MiB/s should be enough for everybody. USB Standards Committee in 2020: ROUTE ALL THE THINGS OVER THIS TINY CABLE So ultimately, a USB cable is practically all you need.
I connect a keyboard and mouse to my tablet (and phone) a lot and watch TV (admittedly over the internet now) with my tablet and phone, and - as bulky as it might be - I wouldn't mind being able to listen to CDs on the go from the one device considering ripping CDs is illegal for some reason (not that its stopped me listening to music on the go, anyway). Also GPS, VoIP abilities, front and rear cameras, WiFi, mobile internet, and a touch driven desktop environment that can compete with mouse driven desktop environments are all expected nowadays. Maybe we don't want all of that hardware now, but we have all of that functionality available in other ways.
Hard to believe as it is, this product was positioned as a premium device back in its' time, and those usually have every accessory but a kitchen sink included. Do you remember some of Asus' premium motherboards from circa mid-2000s? Chock full of IR receivers/remotes, WiFi antennas, TV-out/in breakout squids, rear-panel brackets for all the ports they couldn't fit on the back, you name it.. they threw it in the box.
I remember QVC endessly trying to shift these around the late '00s. They were also trying to push them as a device to record TV on to the older demographic.
1st example of a tablet computer I see was in a 1967 film, 2001 a space odity, Leonard rositer was looking at it, it also had an alexa device called hal.
UMPC's really were the bomb, especially those like Fujitsu U810...horrible to type on, crawling with a 1.8" mechanical drive, battery life pathetic, but what an AMAZING toy.
I uh, actually own one of those. Bought it brand new when they came out. I was always a huge fan of portable computing, being an early adopter of electronic organizers, Palm PDA's, Windows CE and Pocket PC. So, a UMPC made perfect sense to me. Mine actually didn't come with a keyboard and such, just the device itself. It was actually pretty decent. It was quite heavy and felt quite well built. It was pretty zippy with some minor tweaking. You could even play some older games on it, which was pretty cool with the little joystick mouse. I honestly didn't use it as much as I expected to, but it was still pretty handy to grab just a bit more computing power compared to the netbooks that were out at the time. I should dig mine up and see if it still works.
"I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a 1.5-megabit fibre-optic T1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my Ethernet LAN configuration?" Homer: "Can I have some money now?"
I used to work in a Best Buy and every time you ask an old person what they'll be doing with their computer, they either said "oh you know standard computer stuff," not realizing that everybody uses computers for different tasks, or they'll say "I'm not a gamer"
1:59 “Bunch of CDs and DVDs... So it must have DVD drive somewhere.” I remember unboxing my brand new laptop few years ago, and I was surprised that a DVD was included when you couldn’t even find spot to insert that disc on the laptop lol And of course, laptop didn’t came with USB optical drive.
Rainbow Blazer SD cards aren't really a standard way to distribute software so I imagine Windows that will inevitably come on the device will probably say "thats a camera drive!" and not "thats software I can install!" Because - on top of all the usual problems you get with preinstalled software made by a monopoly - Windows just sucks in general.
@@sarowie I got a flash drive in the mail that was half a gig specifically 512 megabyte and yes it had software on it from a company I still have it lying around somewhere
We legitimately thought these UMPCs were awesome when they came out. More gizmos than you and 5 of your best men could poke a stick at. That Samsung one was updated with a Core Solo CPU later on and was quite a rocket for something this size. These were usually not intended for the same market that tablets are today, this one is an exception. They were primarily marketed for business use but only really worked for niches and pretty much only geeks bought them outside of that.
This! If younger me had the money (was like 1700€ which was roughly 2/3rd of my monthly income back then) I would have absolutely bought one. But I opted for a VIA based 7 inch netbook instead which was like half the price but it was garbage. Just recently I got the GPD MicroPC for 360€ which seems like the ideal UMPC and it even runs a Windows 10 VM inside qemu-kvm on linux which is just impressive!
i love this thing, i want one! I'd definitely take it to bits and see what i can do to enhance it the best i can. Maybe replace the hdd with a tiny SSD.. or compact flash. Increase the ram to 1GB, maybe even BGA replace the celeron with with something beefier and compatible, but not outside the limits of it's cooling(with fresh, and modern thermal paste) I love stuff like this.
>Maybe replace the hdd with a tiny SSD.. or compact flash. Increase the ram to 1GB,\ I did both of these to mine. Got an IDE zif to msata kit from ebay (the kind you stick into old ipods) and a 120GB Msata SSD. Also upped the ram in mine to 2GB.
I wonder what a tablet would be like in 2020 if someone tried to make the most premium and high-quality tablet they could that I had the old fashioned resistive touchscreen on it (like the 3ds touch screen)
Why were there actual animals running around on a tiny Island that were running around in the exact same place as the real animals on the big island I mean most other movies would have used Holograms
I feel like Asus of this era was just throwing everything out there just to see what took. I had their EEEPC 701 Netbook around this time, and it was actually useful for computing on the go.
The company I work for had several Samsung Q1s (with built in split keyboard), people really liked them for using basic software on the go. We replaced them with Surface Pro tablets and nobody really likes those as much, mainly due to the lack of built-in keyboard.
Oh man, Autoroute. What a classy piece of software. I didn't have a tablet so my route planning back then was doing the routes on my home PC and printing of pages of routes with pictures of junctions where I had to change direction. For each junction I had to navigate I had to remember it since I couldn't read the pages while driving. The police kinda look down on you for that.
I have a Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC. With the right upgrades and tweaks, these things make really fun portable retro-gaming machines. A 1.8" ZIF SSD is a must-have... They are still being made brand new. Not as obscure as some might assume. Rebuilding the battery cells is often necessary, but not for the faint of heart. You can try to downgrade the OS to Win98 SE to better complement the single-core CPU... but hardware drivers can be tricky, and you almost always lose touchscreen support. A customised Lite version of XP is a decent alternative. A Lightweight Linux distro is the fallback plan.
I remember back in 2006-2007 my desktop computer's boot up time allowed me to go and make a cup of tea and return before it was ready to use. I didn't take much notice of tablets until the mid 2010's when I purchased an iPad, but I certainly wouldn't have looked twice at this chunky thing a few years earlier :-)
@@mwbgaming28 I love how people say that when they realise that 7 ending support isn't only about the security updates and it's more about the devs ending support for their programs themselves
@@axethepenguin well all my programs still work, I only u0date something when it stops working, I don't trust updates now since companies sneak annoying shit in (like ads, UI changes, paywalls.etc)
I remember having a TV tuner in my computer about 20 years ago... I was dual booting Windows 95 and NT 4.0 As it happened the TV card had drivers for both. While it kind of makes sense, it still surprises me just how big the difference in stability was. On windows 95 the card would have issues finding channels, all kinds of video problems, and the program would crash constantly (sometimes crashing windows for good measure) On NT 4.0? Rock solid. Everything worked. Video playback was flawless, it never crashed, etc. Amazing how much of a difference there was simply due to a different OS and different drivers...
I think people who aren’t really into tech just don’t get it but when I was younger this stuff was great and gave you ton of options to play around with and a glimpse of the future .
I had a Celeron M laptop around that time and I can recall how frustratingly slow it could be with less than 2GB of RAM. I eventually swapped-out the processor for a Pentium M and then overclocked it. This involved carefully placing a tiny strand of wire over two of the pins in the CPU socket, and then re-mounting the CPU! Happy days! :)
5:43 - I really do like looking back at old cameras and their cruddy but deliciously retro sensors as they really do remind of what were internet golden years for me.
So many things that appear on this channel are either things I owned and remember fondly, things that I experienced via friends, school or magazines, or items I lusted after but which were out of my reach.. This is none of those things. Although it does make me very, very grateful for my iPad.
One of those with modern hardware (same form factor, same size/weight, including the removable battery, and with all the ports/features) would be awesome
Love the goats. My first experience of computers was using a school teletype connected over the phone line to the mainframe at Norwich City College back in 1976-77. Filled in coding sheets when I first started working in IT until they bought enough terminals so we didn't have to share. How times have changed.
I think you summed it up pretty well. I wonder if you could install DOS or windows 98 on it and have a mini retro gaming machine. Drivers would probably be the difficulty though, especially sound.
Oh man, I remember this UMPC era. It was in that weird time period just before the tablet market took off when they were looking at these kinda awkward devices. I actually got one, the Samsung Q1 Ultra. I barely used it because it ran on Windows Vista and it was so slow when it came to just about everything that there was barely anything I could do with it. The touch screens back then were also awkward to use, back when they were still using stylus pen screens that felt iffy to use. The actual built in controls weren't too bad but it was nowhere near as quick and easy as a conventional laptop. Ultimately it was just a strange experimental design where the hardware performance just wasn't there yet.
I got this donated around 2 years after it came to market. Upgraded it to 768MB ram and managed to put Windows 7 on it later. Stripped it down as much as possible and used it as a digital image frame and home automation control for several years. The battery bloated after a few years, but it ran happily without a battery. Wasn't much use for anything else. A flash based disk would have given it a needed boost.
M P I have almost every single thing they made, I worked for them :P and they sorta still exist. And honestly most of what they made was cool idea but absolutely garbage to do anything with.
Actually, 3:04 isn't bad for a hard drive back in the xp days, mine use to take 5 minutes until I upgraded to a velociraptor, than it went down to about 55 seconds. After awhile I upgraded it to an ssd and found out windows can boot in 15 - 20 seconds and was amazed. First thing I use to do back in the e-machine days was remove the adware / bloatware, to have a decent running pc
I think you're right in the money when you mentioned these kludge type devices. Instead of really seeing mobile devices as their own class if PCs I think too many companies were comfortable with just forcing a desktop OS with some minor tweaks to work instead. And the hardware was often terrible. Resulting in a terrible and expensive device.
Oh memories. There were UMPCs also from other manufacturers. I wanted one but they were so damn expensive for not being a good laptop or desktop replacement. Some like the Asus had a low res screen, others like Samsung had GPS and TV missing (IIRC) but had the full keyboard next to both sides of the display. The one from Sony (think it was the UX-Series) had a slide up display with a keyboard underneath. Then there was OQO which was even more expensive but seemed most promising out of all of them. I was so close to buy one, but I could never decide which compromise to take. It would have been too expensive for what I would've got anyway. Now I bought a UMPC with a low powered gemini lake CPU which runs circles around the old 900 MHz Celerons, is considerably smaller and was under 400$.
Really this is a good example of a product being released a bit to early, especially when considering that within a couple of years after the release of Asus R2H UMPC, the Atom chipset and modern ARM (post Motorola 68000 range) architecture became popular. Asus did make good use of both the Atom and ARM processors within latter products. As an example, in 2008, Asus started to incorporate Atom processors within their EEE PC range (I am currently using a modified 2011 EEE PC 1015PEM as a portable workstation. This device has an up-to-date version of openSUSE installed as its operating system) and made successful strides within the ARM market (the 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7 tablet devices are a good example of Asus manufactured ARM based computers).
I used to own this tablet! My very first Windows tablet PC~~ Was super excited to have it because I was a huge fan of PDAs.. So having a bigger version of it running a full OS was really exciting. But then... The technology was not advanced yet for such device.. The processor was super slow and it was torture to use the damn thing, LOL. But I'm glad tablet PCs have gone a long way now with better storage and processor. One thing that remained the same though is the pricing. Tablet PCs are still as expensive as they were back then!!
I just bought the same for 3$ in a second-hand market, unfortunately mine has a broken back cover, and I can't find any spare parts, in the end I'll design the back cover and print it. What surprised me was the good performance.
I had one of those.Back in 2009-10.I started the digital on the tip of the pen painting on it.I have aSamsung Note 12.2 pro and aLenovo X220 and a Wacom Cintiq 27.It is a real retro feeling to see it again.For a retro experience I use Samsung Q1U UMPC for ma Opel diag (Hungarian Op-com).I kept the external USB DVD drive.Using it sometimes.
I wonder if you had the included antenna vertical when using it? Broadcasts from main transmitters are horizontally polarised so I would not be surprised that you did not pick anything up. There is a reason why these antennas are magnetic at the base, so they can be placed on a fridge freezer or metal object in a horizontal orientation. I have a USB dongle for Android tablets and I use both an indoor wideband antenna and a cheap less than £2 telescopic antenna I got from a bargain shop. I have been able to pick up SD and HD channels including from the much weaker COM7 and COM8 multiplexes from a transmitter 50km away in the living room by having the antennas horizontally polarised.
I still have a Samsung Q1 and I remember that even a few years ago, the battery could still hold a couple minutes' worth of charge. I used it as a file sharing server because it was actually pretty good for that with the USB and ethernet ports.
Say what you will about the performance and the screen, but the form factor of this thing is absolutely gorgeous. I would love to load that shell with contemporary technology and use it.
in my opinion, this thing is delightfully chunky, and that "Designed for Windows XP/Windows Vista Capable" sticker is the icing on the cake. Then i compared it to my Toshiba satellite 2-in-1 tablet laptop and yeah, things have come quite a long way.
I would have absolutely loved having one of these back in the 2000s. I had one of the Palm Zire PDAs. And this is light-years ahead of that in comparison.
I had something similar, a Sony VAIO UX1, purchased from Micro Anvika for about £800 I think, which was about half the original price as they were trying to get rid of it by that point. It came with Windows Vista, had a Core Solo CPU, and I believe used some sort of flash storage (but I can't remember how much). It didn't come with these sort of extras, but did come with a dock for it to sit on with extra ports etc, and a dongle which I think used the same connector to give some of the same ports while mobile (Ethernet, VGA and a 3.5mm composite video, and I think the only port on the device itself was a single USB). It also had a slide-up screen which revealed a keyboard underneath it, but it wasn't particularly good to type on (at least compared to the keyboard on the HTC phone I had at the time which did the same thing, before their hardware keyboards went downhill too). I thought it would be useful for work etc, but I think the most use I ever really got out of it was when I moved into a new flat in 2007 and BT managed to take 4 months to connect my phone line, so I used it to create a WiFi hotspot by connecting it to my phone via USB and a spare wireless access point via Ethernet (built-in mobile hotspots/tethering in phones were not a thing in those days). Mainly just so that I could get an internet connection while sat on my sofa with my main laptop (as the phone had to be placed on a windowsill in another room to get a usable signal). I remember I could, somehow, *just* barely fit it in my trouser pocket in the soft case/pouch thing it came with. Unfortunately the few times that I did get it out and try to use it while out and about (mainly just to show it to people), it turned out to be completely dead because it seemed to have an issue where it completely drained the battery within about 24 hours even while in hibernation (i.e. completely powered off). The only way to stop that seemed to be to remove the battery when not in use, but then there was no way to fit it in any of the space it came out of without it making contact again, so it then wouldn't fit in the case (or my pocket) and was just awkward.
Oh yes I would jump at the chance to try all these back in the day, I got through so many WinCE devices it was unreal, all in the hope that the next one would be the good one!
Isn’t it ironic, watching this on a modern 2017 iPad..... it emerged from the mobile phone and is slowly starting to become a laptop replacement. The samsung Galaxy tab and the note where pretty good competitors of the iPad.
I had an old HP netbook that had a weird screen resolution that required either an external monitor or screen scrolling to use some programs and games. If you've never had the "pleasure" of dealing with that, more power to you.
That actually looks like a decent little machine. I like the buttons and so on. With a modern spec and a suitable OS, that would be a wonderful thing to have for portable use. Tablets and phones are just too thin and delicate. And fiddly too. Something with buttons and such as well as the touchscreen would be brilliant!
say what you will about ASUS. They do know how to seal everything in plastic. Kidding aside. That foldable keyboard is really something. I'd actually have use of such a keyboard. But if one were to install an SSD and a more modern OS (like win 8 or 7 or even 10) I can see this still being a bit useful to this day. Thick as it is the old girl
A single core mobile Celeron of that era (coppermine?) is painfully slow, even for then. My guess is it would be terribly slow on win10 - probably unusable.
@@umageddon Dreadfully slow. That i agree wholeheartedly with. I mostly meant my comment for fun to be honest. (But maybe for simpler office stuff it could be run)
"say what you will about ASUS". Okay. I got an ASUS graphics card from them. It broke under warranty. They refused to replace it. So, as far as I am concerned, in my opinion, they stole a graphics card off me and are criminals.
I have one of these tablets, got all the accessories with it. upgraded the drive to an SSD and it's really fast now and usable. Also, the ram can be upgraded to 2GB.
Whenever some innovative technology concept goes onto the market, it is usually best to wait a few years before jumping in... as this device I think well demonstrates. If the idea has a future, the design will likely dramatically improve in years to come.
NGL that folding keyboard is dead sexy. I wanted an OQO UMPC back in the early 00s so bad I could taste it, but the price point...OW. I didn't know Asus had gotten in to the game, too...as to your question I think the UMPC falls in to a narrow niche even smaller than the subnotebook that rolled out just a few years later, not a tablet. MS had been supporting (and promoting) tablet PCs since the 1990s. Apple were the johnny-come-latelys, IMO.
Perhaps it might be worth using a Linux, I saw someone put a Mandriva into it. Also be careful with that driive looks like they have a high failure rate. I would imagine it would make an interesting Wifi / petesting device on the go.
Basically a souped up Eee Pc for which Asus was known at the time. Shame it was powered by Windows XP, as my Linux Eee Pc is still a very useful network computer running a current debian derivative.
A 110 second boot is actually pretty good for any computer from 2007, even for a good one. The issues with the TV tuner might because of incompatibility with DVB-T2? And I had a similar TV tuner from the same vintage, and the included rubber ducky antenna was useless, to the point where a coat hanger stuck in the window gave better reception.
My dad bought me the vista version with 512mb ram . Since vista needed more ram to work properly I decided to go down to xp. Unfortunately the WiFi drivers didn't work with xp which made it more useful as a brick than a tablet.
In 2007 this would be very nice to have, as the first Ipad was still 3 years apart from being released. I wonder if if would run faster and better if you install android or any form of linux on it. From a technical perspective, this device must have been a dream back then. Ethernet Port, Wifi, GPS, USB, etc... too bad it came out just before that Smartphone/Tablet Hype began to lift off....
@@inkshock I use the 7" cheapest ones for basically youtube and the web and maybe some app for those days I cannot use computers because of the heat. It is basically like a cheap smart phone. If you get a decent ssd and if this has a cpu upgrade (or a modern equivalent) would be great because of the ports and the sturdiness. But with some improvements. Still this Asus tablet can run old emulators and programs decently.
@@inkshock there are ways but I was speaking of the old celeron processor. The closest thing today is the atom. Dosbox and wine can run dos and w32 software.
Нашел такой недавно, без аккумулятора, но рабочий от блока питания. Мне понравился его брутальный вид и куча функций и разъёмов со всех сторон. Там стоял Windows XP и работало всё медленно, но вполне не плохо по тем годам 😊
What do you think? Is it fair to judge this as a tablet or should it be in a category of its own? Why were Microsoft SO bad at adapting to the tablet market? And why aren't goats more interested in technology? Thank you as always for watching. If you'd like to support The Cave and get access to videos 1 week early with no adverts then head on over to patreon.com/retromancave where I'm really appreciative for your support in making this channel a reality.
Thank you!
Neil - RMC
Possibly one tape dispenser more than it deserved... You must be feeling generous!
Guy on a train back in the day had one of these I thought it was so cool......I tried watching the movie they were watching but got a look lol
@@MudSluggerBP Check out the Compaq Concerto, it was a Microsoft Surface but 20 years earlier.
I have one of the later Fujitsu ones, just now being retired after being unable to take W10. It all feels a bit solution looking for a problem
The reason why Microsoft was so bad in the tablet market is the same reason why Motorola and IBM produced such spotty competition and slow delivery in the home PC market in the 90s, with the PowerPC: They never really had their heart in the game. They only cared about their embedded and corporate market, and Microsoft (as well as Intel), for the longest time, only really cared about desktop PCs and servers.
This tendency with IBM specifically goes all the way back to the 80s and it's why they're in the less than stellar position they're in now.
Microsoft in 2007: Let's take a desktop OS and cram it into portable devices
Microsoft in 2012: Let's take a portable UI and cram it into a desktop OS
Windows 8 🤢
@@ForeverMan who hurt you as a child? Windows metro interface basically ruined windows for me.
@@GoldenGrenadier its nice if you have a 2 in 1 or any other pc with a touchscreen
8.1 is basically made for something like a Surface.
Windows 10 fixed nothing. It’s literally just windows 8.1 again, and the “start menu” is a complete LIE - it’s just the windows 8 start screen shrunk to the size of a start menu. Even Windows 8 RT for Surface RT and Surface 2 RT managed to include a proper start menu like windows XP/Vista/7 had. Windows 10 even continues the awful Metro interface of 8/8.1, but without even the animations that helped 8/8.1 to even counteract Metro’s gross simplicity compared to 9x/Luna/Aero
Windows 10 is straight up awful and I’m putting my remaining Windows 8 laptops onto Ubuntu 22.04 when win 8.1 gets dropped in 2023, and if proton has achieved at least 80% of compatibility with my steam library, then I’ll probably put my gaming pc on Linux Mint 23 as well.
Manufacturers in 2007: Let's give them everything they'll need to get maximum use out of this
Manufacturers in 2020: Here's a USB cable and nothing else
On top of that - they also take away the headphone jack nowdays... XD
@@TheUltimateBlooper more like XP.
Ah, but: USB Standards Committee in 2007: 60 MiB/s should be enough for everybody.
USB Standards Committee in 2020: ROUTE ALL THE THINGS OVER THIS TINY CABLE
So ultimately, a USB cable is practically all you need.
You guys are getting any cables with your devices?!?
That's a lot of accessories for a tablet.
Not many full PCs come with that many accessories these days, much less coming with modern tablets.
I connect a keyboard and mouse to my tablet (and phone) a lot and watch TV (admittedly over the internet now) with my tablet and phone, and - as bulky as it might be - I wouldn't mind being able to listen to CDs on the go from the one device considering ripping CDs is illegal for some reason (not that its stopped me listening to music on the go, anyway).
Also GPS, VoIP abilities, front and rear cameras, WiFi, mobile internet, and a touch driven desktop environment that can compete with mouse driven desktop environments are all expected nowadays.
Maybe we don't want all of that hardware now, but we have all of that functionality available in other ways.
jameswalker199 AFAIK ripping CDs is not illegal, you just can't go around sharing those rips.
@@AnonymousUser77254 depends on the local laws.
Ripping a CD here is 100% illegal.
cgwworldministries a TV Tuner and a KBM combo would be a nice addition to modern tablets.
Hard to believe as it is, this product was positioned as a premium device back in its' time, and those usually have every accessory but a kitchen sink included. Do you remember some of Asus' premium motherboards from circa mid-2000s? Chock full of IR receivers/remotes, WiFi antennas, TV-out/in breakout squids, rear-panel brackets for all the ports they couldn't fit on the back, you name it.. they threw it in the box.
I remember QVC endessly trying to shift these around the late '00s. They were also trying to push them as a device to record TV on to the older demographic.
Christsake Larry, I spot you all over this site!
"Karen the gaming tablet died recording Fraiser. How do I charge it up?"
1st example of a tablet computer I see was in a 1967 film, 2001 a space odity, Leonard rositer was looking at it, it also had an alexa device called hal.
"We've been conditioned over the years to put up with this kind of rubbish"
applies equally well to every generation of mobile devices, really
Headphone jack anyone
First Name Last Name
* sighs* its so dumb, like, bluetooth can always fail but wired is forever
What a silly device. I need one NOW.
UMPC's really were the bomb, especially those like Fujitsu U810...horrible to type on, crawling with a 1.8" mechanical drive, battery life pathetic, but what an AMAZING toy.
kbbbb7 I have an iPod! Another fun toy!
I believe the modern parlance is "CHONKY BOI"
or thiccboi
I believe the PC term is now Rotund-American
Big chungus
Thicccc Chungus with 4 C’s and an extra for the chung
ugh
I uh, actually own one of those. Bought it brand new when they came out.
I was always a huge fan of portable computing, being an early adopter of electronic organizers, Palm PDA's, Windows CE and Pocket PC. So, a UMPC made perfect sense to me. Mine actually didn't come with a keyboard and such, just the device itself.
It was actually pretty decent. It was quite heavy and felt quite well built. It was pretty zippy with some minor tweaking. You could even play some older games on it, which was pretty cool with the little joystick mouse. I honestly didn't use it as much as I expected to, but it was still pretty handy to grab just a bit more computing power compared to the netbooks that were out at the time.
I should dig mine up and see if it still works.
"So what do you want this computer to do?"
Homer: "Yes"
Hey! They got the internet on computers now!
"I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobaud Internet connection to a
1.5-megabit fibre-optic T1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP
router that's compatible with my Ethernet LAN configuration?"
Homer: "Can I have some money now?"
I used to work in a Best Buy and every time you ask an old person what they'll be doing with their computer, they either said "oh you know standard computer stuff," not realizing that everybody uses computers for different tasks, or they'll say "I'm not a gamer"
1:59 “Bunch of CDs and DVDs... So it must have DVD drive somewhere.”
I remember unboxing my brand new laptop few years ago, and I was surprised that a DVD was included when you couldn’t even find spot to insert that disc on the laptop lol
And of course, laptop didn’t came with USB optical drive.
Hmmm why?
Why not include a SD card or USB drive
@@Rainbow__cookie DVDs are still cheaper to mass produce then a flash driver.
Rainbow Blazer
SD cards aren't really a standard way to distribute software so I imagine Windows that will inevitably come on the device will probably say "thats a camera drive!" and not "thats software I can install!"
Because - on top of all the usual problems you get with preinstalled software made by a monopoly - Windows just sucks in general.
@@sarowie I got a flash drive in the mail that was half a gig specifically 512 megabyte and yes it had software on it from a company I still have it lying around somewhere
We legitimately thought these UMPCs were awesome when they came out. More gizmos than you and 5 of your best men could poke a stick at. That Samsung one was updated with a Core Solo CPU later on and was quite a rocket for something this size. These were usually not intended for the same market that tablets are today, this one is an exception. They were primarily marketed for business use but only really worked for niches and pretty much only geeks bought them outside of that.
This! If younger me had the money (was like 1700€ which was roughly 2/3rd of my monthly income back then) I would have absolutely bought one. But I opted for a VIA based 7 inch netbook instead which was like half the price but it was garbage. Just recently I got the GPD MicroPC for 360€ which seems like the ideal UMPC and it even runs a Windows 10 VM inside qemu-kvm on linux which is just impressive!
Problem was... when UMPC Fuad first announced, it was supposed to be a “sub-$500 tablet”. In the US, most started at $699.
I have to say - describing it as "a tablet Homer Simpson would design" was pure genius here. The amount of stuff that comes with it....wtf!?
i love this thing, i want one! I'd definitely take it to bits and see what i can do to enhance it the best i can. Maybe replace the hdd with a tiny SSD.. or compact flash. Increase the ram to 1GB, maybe even BGA replace the celeron with with something beefier and compatible, but not outside the limits of it's cooling(with fresh, and modern thermal paste)
I love stuff like this.
Lazy Bunny yes! I would like to see extreme measures taken to make it as best as it could be!
>Maybe replace the hdd with a tiny SSD.. or compact flash. Increase the ram to 1GB,\
I did both of these to mine. Got an IDE zif to msata kit from ebay (the kind you stick into old ipods) and a 120GB Msata SSD. Also upped the ram in mine to 2GB.
I want a stylus HERE, HERE, and HERE! You can NEVER find a stylus when you need one!
I wonder what a tablet would be like in 2020 if someone tried to make the most premium and high-quality tablet they could that I had the old fashioned resistive touchscreen on it (like the 3ds touch screen)
who needs a stylus?
RMC: oddware
LGR: Hey, don't mess with my stuff kiddo! (In Duke Nukem voice)
And Perifractic buys woodgrain tech off of eBay that was sold to him by Nostalgia Nerd who didn't need it for his episode of 8-Bit Keys.
My favorite movie when I was young was Spy Kids 2. Those folding keyboards have a special place in my heart.
Why were there actual animals running around on a tiny Island that were running around in the exact same place as the real animals on the big island I mean most other movies would have used Holograms
I feel like Asus of this era was just throwing everything out there just to see what took. I had their EEEPC 701 Netbook around this time, and it was actually useful for computing on the go.
ReaperRob I had a friend with one of those netbooks back then and it was great for what it was.
Fantastic review. And that XP OS, it does sure bring back fantastic memories.
This script was nothing less than spot on- fantastic job! Your really kept the call rolling with jokes and savvy information
Heads up RUclips. Get another plaque ready for this man, about to have 100,000 subs
I remember how cool it was having cable on my computer back then.. crazy how far we've come in just 13 years
I would love to see a memo of the meeting where this thing got approved. Awesome review!
That was very good for it's time, and this thing was very necessary, for us to have progressed up to the modern tablet we have today. Show respect.
The company I work for had several Samsung Q1s (with built in split keyboard), people really liked them for using basic software on the go. We replaced them with Surface Pro tablets and nobody really likes those as much, mainly due to the lack of built-in keyboard.
Apple : we can't fit in a port into our pro laptops because they're too thin,
Asus on a 2007 tablet : Hold my dongle.
Oh man, Autoroute. What a classy piece of software. I didn't have a tablet so my route planning back then was doing the routes on my home PC and printing of pages of routes with pictures of junctions where I had to change direction. For each junction I had to navigate I had to remember it since I couldn't read the pages while driving. The police kinda look down on you for that.
The police are such spoilsports, no sense of humour at all ;)
I have a Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC.
With the right upgrades and tweaks, these things make really fun portable retro-gaming machines.
A 1.8" ZIF SSD is a must-have... They are still being made brand new. Not as obscure as some might assume.
Rebuilding the battery cells is often necessary, but not for the faint of heart.
You can try to downgrade the OS to Win98 SE to better complement the single-core CPU... but hardware drivers can be tricky, and you almost always lose touchscreen support.
A customised Lite version of XP is a decent alternative.
A Lightweight Linux distro is the fallback plan.
I remember back in 2006-2007 my desktop computer's boot up time allowed me to go and make a cup of tea and return before it was ready to use. I didn't take much notice of tablets until the mid 2010's when I purchased an iPad, but I certainly wouldn't have looked twice at this chunky thing a few years earlier :-)
Back on those days Microsoft wanted to force a desktop OS in a tablet. Now they want to cram mobile nonsense into the desktop. They never learn...
I hate how Windows 10 comes with games like candy crush and other mobile style bloatware. Also why can't I turn off automatic update?
@@DragonBuilds that's why I still use Windows 7
Windows 7 is perfectly safe to use if you have a decent antivirus and antimalware program
@@mwbgaming28 I love how people say that when they realise that 7 ending support isn't only about the security updates and it's more about the devs ending support for their programs themselves
@@axethepenguin well all my programs still work, I only u0date something when it stops working, I don't trust updates now since companies sneak annoying shit in (like ads, UI changes, paywalls.etc)
Apple: "What on earth are all those 'holes' in the case, with cables plugged in? Who would want that?"
This is fascinating. I really like old and obscure devices seen with today's eyes .
Omg I just watched that car episode yesterday and now there’s this video in my recommended.
A coincidence? I think not.
THE STARS HAVE ALIGNED.
"Win XP feels like those old comfy pants now." …and like with the old, comfy pants, you feel the holes.
You wouldn't want to wear them outside, but for a chill evening at home they're just fine.
I remember having a TV tuner in my computer about 20 years ago...
I was dual booting Windows 95 and NT 4.0
As it happened the TV card had drivers for both.
While it kind of makes sense, it still surprises me just how big the difference in stability was.
On windows 95 the card would have issues finding channels, all kinds of video problems, and the program would crash constantly (sometimes crashing windows for good measure)
On NT 4.0? Rock solid. Everything worked. Video playback was flawless, it never crashed, etc.
Amazing how much of a difference there was simply due to a different OS and different drivers...
Run Linux on it, would be funny and maybe still usefull.
THIS
I have one of these in my collection. Xubuntu 18.04LTS runs really well. and the ram can be upgraded to 2GB
Linux Mint xfce edition is slick and very lightweight.
linuxmint.com/download.php
Install a SSD and lubuntu for a modern experience
No, this is collectors item.
I think people who aren’t really into tech just don’t get it but when I was younger this stuff was great and gave you ton of options to play around with and a glimpse of the future .
I had a Celeron M laptop around that time and I can recall how frustratingly slow it could be with less than 2GB of RAM. I eventually swapped-out the processor for a Pentium M and then overclocked it. This involved carefully placing a tiny strand of wire over two of the pins in the CPU socket, and then re-mounting the CPU! Happy days! :)
5:43 - I really do like looking back at old cameras and their cruddy but deliciously retro sensors as they really do remind of what were internet golden years for me.
I loved this thing. Still have it.. from this, to tablets and now the Steam Deck.
Can it be opened to install an SSD? Can you install a variant of Linux on it? Or even Android x86?
Yes it can. Source: I have one i upgraded.
Ryan Martinez why bother? You can get a myriad of Linux capable things, and you can get phones and tablets with android?
So many things that appear on this channel are either things I owned and remember fondly, things that I experienced via friends, school or magazines, or items I lusted after but which were out of my reach.. This is none of those things. Although it does make me very, very grateful for my iPad.
One of those with modern hardware (same form factor, same size/weight, including the removable battery, and with all the ports/features) would be awesome
The TV add-on looks like a vape pen.
9:15 Oh I love that show! Can't Pay, We'll Take It Away!
I trawled the comments hoping to find someone else who knew it!
@@kinghock I hope they make a new season or 2. Missing the adventures of those debt collectors.
Thanks for another great video. It is always interesting to see devices such as the one reviewed here.
That camera have such a nostalgic 2000's feeling on it
Love the goats. My first experience of computers was using a school teletype connected over the phone line to the mainframe at Norwich City College back in 1976-77. Filled in coding sheets when I first started working in IT until they bought enough terminals so we didn't have to share.
How times have changed.
I think you summed it up pretty well.
I wonder if you could install DOS or windows 98 on it and have a mini retro gaming machine. Drivers would probably be the difficulty though, especially sound.
Oh man, I remember this UMPC era. It was in that weird time period just before the tablet market took off when they were looking at these kinda awkward devices. I actually got one, the Samsung Q1 Ultra. I barely used it because it ran on Windows Vista and it was so slow when it came to just about everything that there was barely anything I could do with it. The touch screens back then were also awkward to use, back when they were still using stylus pen screens that felt iffy to use. The actual built in controls weren't too bad but it was nowhere near as quick and easy as a conventional laptop. Ultimately it was just a strange experimental design where the hardware performance just wasn't there yet.
I got this donated around 2 years after it came to market. Upgraded it to 768MB ram and managed to put Windows 7 on it later. Stripped it down as much as possible and used it as a digital image frame and home automation control for several years. The battery bloated after a few years, but it ran happily without a battery. Wasn't much use for anything else. A flash based disk would have given it a needed boost.
This reminds me of old Archos Media Players. I kind of miss Archos.
M P I have almost every single thing they made, I worked for them :P and they sorta still exist. And honestly most of what they made was cool idea but absolutely garbage to do anything with.
@@noth606 thats cool, but I agree, sometimes I would be so frustrated with the software but still loved it lol
Actually, 3:04 isn't bad for a hard drive back in the xp days, mine use to take 5 minutes until I upgraded to a velociraptor, than it went down to about 55 seconds. After awhile I upgraded it to an ssd and found out windows can boot in 15 - 20 seconds and was amazed.
First thing I use to do back in the e-machine days was remove the adware / bloatware, to have a decent running pc
I think you're right in the money when you mentioned these kludge type devices. Instead of really seeing mobile devices as their own class if PCs I think too many companies were comfortable with just forcing a desktop OS with some minor tweaks to work instead. And the hardware was often terrible. Resulting in a terrible and expensive device.
I think one question is on everyone's minds.
How is Elvis?
And, will it run Crysis?
That's two questions....
@@retroretiree2086 Never was any good at maths. :(
Oh memories. There were UMPCs also from other manufacturers. I wanted one but they were so damn expensive for not being a good laptop or desktop replacement. Some like the Asus had a low res screen, others like Samsung had GPS and TV missing (IIRC) but had the full keyboard next to both sides of the display. The one from Sony (think it was the UX-Series) had a slide up display with a keyboard underneath. Then there was OQO which was even more expensive but seemed most promising out of all of them. I was so close to buy one, but I could never decide which compromise to take. It would have been too expensive for what I would've got anyway. Now I bought a UMPC with a low powered gemini lake CPU which runs circles around the old 900 MHz Celerons, is considerably smaller and was under 400$.
Definitely won't be investing in one of those, if it's review score is only two fuses and a tape dispenser 😄
1 apple sticker in a box is all what plebs need :DDDDD
Really this is a good example of a product being released a bit to early, especially when considering that within a couple of years after the release of Asus R2H UMPC, the Atom chipset and modern ARM (post Motorola 68000 range) architecture became popular.
Asus did make good use of both the Atom and ARM processors within latter products. As an example, in 2008, Asus started to incorporate Atom processors within their EEE PC range (I am currently using a modified 2011 EEE PC 1015PEM as a portable workstation. This device has an up-to-date version of openSUSE installed as its operating system) and made successful strides within the ARM market (the 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7 tablet devices are a good example of Asus manufactured ARM based computers).
I used to own this tablet! My very first Windows tablet PC~~ Was super excited to have it because I was a huge fan of PDAs.. So having a bigger version of it running a full OS was really exciting. But then... The technology was not advanced yet for such device.. The processor was super slow and it was torture to use the damn thing, LOL. But I'm glad tablet PCs have gone a long way now with better storage and processor. One thing that remained the same though is the pricing. Tablet PCs are still as expensive as they were back then!!
i loved my Asus R2h - was a daily portable machine i would take when travelling for work. I eventually upgraded it for a Samsung Q1 Ultra
I just bought the same for 3$ in a second-hand market, unfortunately mine has a broken back cover, and I can't find any spare parts, in the end I'll design the back cover and print it.
What surprised me was the good performance.
I had one of those.Back in 2009-10.I started the digital on the tip of the pen painting on it.I have aSamsung Note 12.2 pro and aLenovo X220 and a Wacom Cintiq 27.It is a real retro feeling to see it again.For a retro experience I use Samsung Q1U UMPC for ma Opel diag (Hungarian Op-com).I kept the external USB DVD drive.Using it sometimes.
I had a couple of micro USB tv tuners recently for adding live TV to Android devices. Tested on s couple of phones, works flawlessly.
I wonder if you had the included antenna vertical when using it? Broadcasts from main transmitters are horizontally polarised so I would not be surprised that you did not pick anything up. There is a reason why these antennas are magnetic at the base, so they can be placed on a fridge freezer or metal object in a horizontal orientation. I have a USB dongle for Android tablets and I use both an indoor wideband antenna and a cheap less than £2 telescopic antenna I got from a bargain shop. I have been able to pick up SD and HD channels including from the much weaker COM7 and COM8 multiplexes from a transmitter 50km away in the living room by having the antennas horizontally polarised.
I still have a Samsung Q1 and I remember that even a few years ago, the battery could still hold a couple minutes' worth of charge. I used it as a file sharing server because it was actually pretty good for that with the USB and ethernet ports.
the tuner would probably have worked back in the day, but since most TV in europe now is DVB-T2 it might really struggle with that.
Say what you will about the performance and the screen, but the form factor of this thing is absolutely gorgeous. I would love to load that shell with contemporary technology and use it.
in my opinion, this thing is delightfully chunky, and that "Designed for Windows XP/Windows Vista Capable" sticker is the icing on the cake. Then i compared it to my Toshiba satellite 2-in-1 tablet laptop and yeah, things have come quite a long way.
A score of two fuses and a tape dispenser😂, I sure hope they were blown fuses as working ones would be far too high a score.
Holy! That tablet is on life support
I would have absolutely loved having one of these back in the 2000s. I had one of the Palm Zire PDAs. And this is light-years ahead of that in comparison.
You have to admit that the accessories bundle is richly packed, though. Few devices today come with so many accessories out of the box.
I love that so much the weird 2000s stuff is being refound for a good gawk. XD
I was 17 at that time, i would've nerd out so hard over that tablet!!!!
I had something similar, a Sony VAIO UX1, purchased from Micro Anvika for about £800 I think, which was about half the original price as they were trying to get rid of it by that point. It came with Windows Vista, had a Core Solo CPU, and I believe used some sort of flash storage (but I can't remember how much). It didn't come with these sort of extras, but did come with a dock for it to sit on with extra ports etc, and a dongle which I think used the same connector to give some of the same ports while mobile (Ethernet, VGA and a 3.5mm composite video, and I think the only port on the device itself was a single USB). It also had a slide-up screen which revealed a keyboard underneath it, but it wasn't particularly good to type on (at least compared to the keyboard on the HTC phone I had at the time which did the same thing, before their hardware keyboards went downhill too).
I thought it would be useful for work etc, but I think the most use I ever really got out of it was when I moved into a new flat in 2007 and BT managed to take 4 months to connect my phone line, so I used it to create a WiFi hotspot by connecting it to my phone via USB and a spare wireless access point via Ethernet (built-in mobile hotspots/tethering in phones were not a thing in those days). Mainly just so that I could get an internet connection while sat on my sofa with my main laptop (as the phone had to be placed on a windowsill in another room to get a usable signal).
I remember I could, somehow, *just* barely fit it in my trouser pocket in the soft case/pouch thing it came with. Unfortunately the few times that I did get it out and try to use it while out and about (mainly just to show it to people), it turned out to be completely dead because it seemed to have an issue where it completely drained the battery within about 24 hours even while in hibernation (i.e. completely powered off). The only way to stop that seemed to be to remove the battery when not in use, but then there was no way to fit it in any of the space it came out of without it making contact again, so it then wouldn't fit in the case (or my pocket) and was just awkward.
All that said, for tech geeks, back in the day these were the most exciting things out there.
Oh yes I would jump at the chance to try all these back in the day, I got through so many WinCE devices it was unreal, all in the hope that the next one would be the good one!
Isn’t it ironic, watching this on a modern 2017 iPad..... it emerged from the mobile phone and is slowly starting to become a laptop replacement. The samsung Galaxy tab and the note where pretty good competitors of the iPad.
I had an old HP netbook that had a weird screen resolution that required either an external monitor or screen scrolling to use some programs and games. If you've never had the "pleasure" of dealing with that, more power to you.
That actually looks like a decent little machine. I like the buttons and so on. With a modern spec and a suitable OS, that would be a wonderful thing to have for portable use. Tablets and phones are just too thin and delicate. And fiddly too. Something with buttons and such as well as the touchscreen would be brilliant!
say what you will about ASUS. They do know how to seal everything in plastic.
Kidding aside. That foldable keyboard is really something. I'd actually have use of such a keyboard.
But if one were to install an SSD and a more modern OS (like win 8 or 7 or even 10) I can see this still being a bit useful to this day. Thick as it is the old girl
A single core mobile Celeron of that era (coppermine?) is painfully slow, even for then.
My guess is it would be terribly slow on win10 - probably unusable.
@@umageddon Dreadfully slow. That i agree wholeheartedly with. I mostly meant my comment for fun to be honest. (But maybe for simpler office stuff it could be run)
"say what you will about ASUS". Okay. I got an ASUS graphics card from them. It broke under warranty. They refused to replace it. So, as far as I am concerned, in my opinion, they stole a graphics card off me and are criminals.
Omg the wealth of accessories, you’d be feelin like a boss in 2007
I have one of these tablets, got all the accessories with it. upgraded the drive to an SSD and it's really fast now and usable. Also, the ram can be upgraded to 2GB.
I absolutely love he scoring system!
Whenever some innovative technology concept goes onto the market, it is usually best to wait a few years before jumping in... as this device I think well demonstrates. If the idea has a future, the design will likely dramatically improve in years to come.
NGL that folding keyboard is dead sexy.
I wanted an OQO UMPC back in the early 00s so bad I could taste it, but the price point...OW. I didn't know Asus had gotten in to the game, too...as to your question I think the UMPC falls in to a narrow niche even smaller than the subnotebook that rolled out just a few years later, not a tablet. MS had been supporting (and promoting) tablet PCs since the 1990s. Apple were the johnny-come-latelys, IMO.
that was actually a surprisingly good layout of "free Peripherals" to get with an untrusted new product from an established manufacturer.......
Perhaps it might be worth using a Linux, I saw someone put a Mandriva into it. Also be careful with that driive looks like they have a high failure rate.
I would imagine it would make an interesting Wifi / petesting device on the go.
Get an SSD upgrade kit for old ipods. they use IDE Zif like these and work well.
Basically a souped up Eee Pc for which Asus was known at the time. Shame it was powered by Windows XP, as my Linux Eee Pc is still a very useful network computer running a current debian derivative.
A 110 second boot is actually pretty good for any computer from 2007, even for a good one.
The issues with the TV tuner might because of incompatibility with DVB-T2? And I had a similar TV tuner from the same vintage, and the included rubber ducky antenna was useless, to the point where a coat hanger stuck in the window gave better reception.
I remember the UMPC era. It's so cringe now but damn I was so excited for these to come out as a high school student.
My dad bought me the vista version with 512mb ram . Since vista needed more ram to work properly I decided to go down to xp. Unfortunately the WiFi drivers didn't work with xp which made it more useful as a brick than a tablet.
Not bad! It was 2 decades ago since it was made in late 2000’s since I wasn’t remembered it. Wow man.
This thing gets extra nostalgia points for the American Megatrends BIOS and the Windows XP boot screen.
In 2007 this would be very nice to have, as the first Ipad was still 3 years apart from being released. I wonder if if would run faster and better if you install android or any form of linux on it. From a technical perspective, this device must have been a dream back then. Ethernet Port, Wifi, GPS, USB, etc... too bad it came out just before that Smartphone/Tablet Hype began to lift off....
Looks like a militar device, and it's quite complete. I like it.
@@inkshock I use the 7" cheapest ones for basically youtube and the web and maybe some app for those days I cannot use computers because of the heat. It is basically like a cheap smart phone. If you get a decent ssd and if this has a cpu upgrade (or a modern equivalent) would be great because of the ports and the sturdiness. But with some improvements. Still this Asus tablet can run old emulators and programs decently.
@@inkshock also I forget about that I use the tablets for remote desktop for using my desktop pc with a wireless keyboard with mousepad.
@@inkshock there are ways but I was speaking of the old celeron processor. The closest thing today is the atom. Dosbox and wine can run dos and w32 software.
Нашел такой недавно, без аккумулятора, но рабочий от блока питания. Мне понравился его брутальный вид и куча функций и разъёмов со всех сторон. Там стоял Windows XP и работало всё медленно, но вполне не плохо по тем годам 😊
Wow, a blast from the past. I had a R2Hv in 2012-ish. Real shame the Pentium M with the GMA900 iGPU is just too slow.
Wholley Chonkyness, Buttman!! That thing is the THICCest tablet I've ever seen!!