Too Little, Too Lame

I'd been carrying the Samsung Q1 Ultra-Mobile PC around for over a week before I finally heard "what's that?" from a stranger. I was listening to some music on the train to RFK Stadium for Thursday night's debacle when the man sitting across the aisle popped the question. The guy on the seat next to mine, evidently impressed by this laptop-esque device as well, leaned over to hear the conversation.

I took the headphones out and, feeling vaguely like a salesman, said something along the lines of, "It's what Microsoft calls an 'Ultra-Mobile PC,' something you carry around to check your e-mail and browse the Web." My fellow passengers seemed impressed.

When I got to the stadium and had to show the contents of my bag to the folks checking for smuggled drinks at the front, the Q1 had a similar effect. The lady who inspected by belongings eyed it appreciatively and said, "That's cute!"

Those, unfortunately, were about the only times this device made any sort of positive impression on me.

As you might be able to tell from my review yesterday, this was the worst product I've reviewed in a long time, possibly years. It may very well be Microsoft's biggest blunder since Microsoft Bob -- the cartoonish interface for Windows that launched with a massive PR blitz and then promptly went down the toilet, sales-wise.

The sheer awfulness of the Q1 did lead to some interesting rethinking on my part of the last few miniaturized Web-enabled computers that I've tried -- the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the OQO palmtop and Toshiba Libretto U100 laptop.

The OQO most closely resembles the Q1, thanks to its too-high price and painfully small screen. But at least it has a keyboard -- plus a nifty software utility that lets you select a higher screen resolution, then view only a fraction of it on the screen.

The Libretto, nasty keyboard aside, is a much better take-everywhere computer. On the other hand, if you do want to carry around a Web-specific device, the Nokia 770 is a much better and vastly cheaper choice than the Q1. (Well, if Nokia can deliver updated software later this year that addresses the bugs and flaws that I found.)

Tax Travails: The 2006 Edition

One of the lesser-known perks of living in the Commonwealth of Virginia is the extra half-month to file your taxes -- you don't need to ship the paperwork (or upload the bits) to Richmond until May 1. This year, I again took full advantage of the opportunity to not think about that for an extra couple of weeks.

And so Monday morning found me double-checking our Virginia return in TurboTax, then frowning as it flagged two errors that would keep me from filing electronically. One couldn't be helped -- a tax deduction we took for buying a hybrid car last year. The other couldn't be explained -- over $1,000 in mysterious "other withholding."

Clicking the "Go to Forms" button revealed the line where that item appeared in my Virginia form, but not where it had come from originally. (I don't know why you can't double-click a number in the form to jump to the relevant part of TurboTax's interview screens. Sure would help ... but I digress.)