Turning a Miniature Into a Lightweight

Samsung's Q1, an "Ultra-Mobile PC," weighs less than two pounds and has a seven-inch screen. It lacks a keyboard and CD/DVD drive. (Photo Illustration By Julia Ewan -- The Washington Post)

(A VGA port on the side can drive an external monitor. So if you just buy a keyboard, CD/DVD drive and monitor, you're well on your way to working around this device's foibles.)

With that dinky display and no optical drive to gobble up electricity, you'd think that the Q1 would at least provide excellent battery life. Wrong. In its default settings, the review model allowed only 2 1/2 hours of music playback. Under its maximum-performance option, the Q1's battery ran down after just two hours. Selecting its maximum battery-life option and sticking to just Web browsing stretched that run time to 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Many laptops last longer even when assigned the far more energy-intensive task of playing DVD movies. On a device as limited as the Q1, these times are pathetic.

This device also puts out a fair amount of heat, and its cooling fan emits a slight but constant whine.

These issues make for a thoroughly unsatisfying mix. The Q1 has all the flaws of a full-size Windows PC -- it can get infected by viruses and spyware and so needs a herd of security programs, takes its sweet time to boot up or wake up, and will require the usual mind-numbing maintenance over time -- but only provides a weak approximation of a real PC's capabilities.

And it costs $1,100, more than many heavier laptops and not that much less than ultralight models that only weigh a pound or so more than this crippled contraption.

There will be other manufacturers selling Ultra-Mobile PCs, some of which could include such interesting additions as Global Positioning System capabilities and (here's a crazy idea) a keyboard. If they sell for anything close to Samsung Q1's price, any potential the Ultra-Mobile concept might have will continue to be Utterly Missed.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.