April 2012 Archives

I've been using a second generation Samsung Series 9 laptop for about a week now and here are my early thoughts.

First off, this is the most visually attractive Windows laptop on the market today. There's just nothing ugly about it -- no "nice except for the ..." problems that all other 2012 Windows laptops suffer.

Photo from Samsung, and used without any license

The chassis is super-thin. It's thinner than the 13" Macbook Air and where the Air prefers straight lines and wedges, the Series 9 is designed around a few thoughtfully crafted curves. There's the obvious curves at the ports area and the hinge and base of the lid, but this motif also extends to the gentle recess of the keyboard and the rounded rectangle carve-out for the trackpad. These lines help to give the Series 9 an even thinner profile than the Air without looking anything like an Air clone.

The bezel around the screen is quite small. It's 3/8 of an inch on the right and left sides and 1/2 an inch on the top. Further, the actual LCD goes right up to that edge so you don't get the giant bezel "black eye" look that so many laptops suffer. Surprisingly, with 180,000 more pixels than the 13" Macbook Air, the Series 9 13" is smaller by almost 1/2 inch in width and 1/3 inch in length. When closed, it's also thinner by about 1/6 of an inch at its thickest point.

The laptop's Samsung branding is mostly under control -- something that many Windows laptops make a mess of. The off center, slightly raised SΛMSUNG label on the outside of the lid is a strikingly bright silver but not so large that it's obnoxious. They could have done away with the nearly as large but not so shiny SΛMSUNG white silk-screened badge on the interior below the screen, IMO. Of course the underside of the laptop is a bit of a mess with silk-screened Intel and Windows logos, but out of sight is nearly out of mind.

There are a couple of seams I don't like, including where the inside hinge cover meets the screen bezel, but the main seam for the base of the chassis being wrapped under the edge and mostly invisible is a welcome move for a Windows laptop and the design is well ahead enough compared to other Windows laptops that I'm willing to overlook the couple of places where it falls short in hiding its seams.

Photo from SamsungTomorrow Flickr account, and used without any license

The aluminum shell coloring on this model is called "Mineral Ash Black". It's a rich gray matte finish that's actually leaning a bit towards dark slate blue (compare with the much truer gray finish of the trackpad, for example.) The edges of the shell give the appearance of having been carved off revealing a bright aluminum interior. It's a nice accent but I would have preferred it to not have been carried through to the cut aluminum edge surrounding the trackpad, where I find it somewhat distracting.

The black keys of the chicklet keyboard have white labels for the primary keys and light blue labels for the Fn keys. When the keyboard backlight is active, the key labels glow a nice pale green (and a blue-ish green for the Fn keys.) There are also three bright blue indicator LEDs that glow rather strong at night. I'd prefer if the power LED, "radios are on" LED, and Fn lock LED weren't quite so strong and blue, but they're not overwhelming and at least it's only three little LEDs and not the mess of huge ones you see on previous Samsung laptops.

So, for a fairly clean laptop, there are a fair number of colors here: the dark matte slate blue shell, the bright silver branding, the brushed aluminum accents, the gray trackpad, the black keys, the white silk-screening, the green backlighting, and the blue LEDs. Surprisingly, the colors mostly all work well and come off as restrained compared to other models.

That's the look, so what about the feel. First, this thing is solid. It's super-solid. There's no flexing and the hinge is fluid, opens quite wide, and holds the screen with no movement at all even at the hinge boundaries. Second, it's really light. It's the lightest 13" laptop I've ever used. At 2.56 lbs, it's nearly half a pound lighter than the 13" Macbook Air and about half way between the 13" and 11" Air weights. Carrying the laptop around the office, both open and closed, is a joy.

The keyboard is shallow but it's not causing me typos except where the key layout differs from my other laptops. There's no comparing any chicklet keyboard to the classic ThinkPad keyboards I love so much, but it compares favorably to other chicklet keyboards I've used (except the ThinkPad Edge keyboard which is actually pretty nice.) Still, if you can't live without deep key travel, I recommend avoiding this machine. If there's any place where this laptop doesn't stand up to competitors, it's the shallow travel of the keys.

The trackpad is made by Elan and it's much better than anything I've used on other Windows machines. It's certainly not as refined or as advanced as you'll get on a Mac laptop, but two finger scrolling, right and left click, pinch to zoom, and tap to click all work quite well. The Elan-supplied trackpad utility doesn't have as many options as I'd like but it did let me set two-finger tap as middle-click so I'm satisfied. As I do with the keys from my ThinkPad x220, I'll also miss the ThinkPad Trackpoint. Fortunately, this trackpad with decent two-finger scrolling works well enough that I'll get by. If you've been avoiding Windows laptops because of the absolutely horrendous trackpads, this one warrants a test. As I said, it's not perfect (like a Mac's is) but it's functional.

I've covered look and feel, so what's left? Ah yes, performance and specs. I haven't run any benchmarks (and don't intend to) but here's what I will say. The Series 9 does what I need it to plenty fast. It boots up in less than 10 seconds! It wakes from sleep in less than 2 seconds.

The screen is a matte 1600x900 which is a small step up in resolution from the 13" Macbook Air but not quite the horizontal resolution I'd prefer. The matte screen is a huge win for those like me who dread the highly reflective glossies Apple is pushing these days. It's also very bright (400 NITS) and I have to run with it turned down a couple of notches during the day except when I'm outside in bright sunlight. In the sun, with the brightness cranked, it's just stellar. At night, the lowest brightness setting is just about right but I sometimes wish for one or two steps dimmer when the room is pitch dark. Colors are reasonably accurate next to my well-tuned external IPS monitors and contrast is great in all but the widest vertical viewing angles where it's still tolerable but not great.

The processor is a second generation dual-core Intel Core i5-2467M clocked at 1.6Ghz and while that's plenty for my tasks, if you're trying to set records or doing really processor intense work all day long, you might want to wait on the upgrade to Intel's Ivy Bridge which I expect sometime later this year. Ivy Bridge should bring a nice boost to power, graphics, and battery life.

Speaking of battery life, I've been spending a lot of time on battery this last week. I've measured anywhere from 5 hours to 6 hours depending on screen brightness and how actively I was using it. This is very close to what I've experienced with my limited Macbook Air usage, and for a Windows machine of this size and weight, it's not bad at all.

The Series 9 comes with a 128 GB SSD, and 4 GB of RAM. I look forward to future versions with larger SSDs but I'm really not complaining here.

There are two USB ports, a 2.0 and a 3.0, and micro HDMI port. The LAN port and the VGA port require dongles. With so many co-workers using Airs and the office video set-ups all including Mac hook-ups, I'd have preferred a mini DisplayPort for compatibility. One of these days we'll all get on the same page with display ports :-)

One last note on specs. The audio on this thing is LOUD. It's loud and pretty clear. The sound field is wide too. Dynamic range isn't great but it's not bad either. I was really surprised by this volume though considering the tiny package. It may be the loudest speakers I've experienced in a laptop. That sound, combined with its decent LCD, and this machine makes for a nice movie-watching experience. The glossy screens will be a bit better for movies, but IMO they're far less nice for non-movie content. The Series 9 is a good balance.

The second generation Samsung Series 9 is well ahead of all the other Windows laptops in looks, feel, and power, and it matches or beats the Macbook Air in many respects. This is the first Windows machine I could say that about with a straight face since I began looking for a Windows Air alternative several years ago. If you're looking for a Windows laptop that can stand its ground with the Macbook Air, this is the one.

Photo by Flickr user Nokia RSA, used under a cc license

I've spent the last three to four months immersed in Windows 8 Metro, from working with Google and Opera teams to investigate its capabilities, to watching hours and hours of Build videos, to reading a much documentation as I could stomach and spending a large piece of my time on Windows 8. I've got a Samsung Series 7 Slate, a ThinkPad laptop, an HP all-in-on TouchSmart, and a Sony all-in one L Series each running Windows 8 and I've spent countless hours forcing myself into a Metro mindset so that I can better help Mozilla define a compelling Firefox on Metro experience.

Recently, I decided that I was going to go a step further and move over to a Windows Phone to experience even more Metro. Because I'm not a fan of the the super-sized smartphones, I sought out a solid Windows Phone device in the sub-4" range. It didn't take me long to see there was really only one choice, one phone that shined above all others: the Lumia 800 from Nokia.

I've been using it for a while now and I'm posting here to say that it is without a doubt the most beautiful phone experience I've had.

The Lumia 800 phone body is a dense and brightly colored polycarbonate. It's available in cyan, magenta, and black. I have the cyan version.

The polycarbonate feels amazing in your hand. It's got the heft and rigidity of metal and ceramic, but the touch isn't as cold and unforgiving, and the ever so slight texture of surface is easily gripped with absolutely no fear that it could slip from your hand. The CMYK print-maker-inspired colors are pure and powerful -- simply stunning.

The sides of the body have a true round edge while the top and bottom follow the ark of the curved glass face, starting with a gentle bevel that culminates in a sharp cut.

The front of the phone is a beautifully curved dark black glass set just into the polycarbonate with carefully beveled edges that complete a face that's nearly symmetrical with the polycarbonate back. The phone's glass and screen are perfectly balanced in both landscape and portrait mode.

Power and volume buttons, along with a dedicated camera button, raise just slightly out of the right side of the phone. The silver buttons have edges and texture that make them an easy target for your fingers with no learning curve. The camera button is positioned precisely under your right index finger when holding the phone in landscape mode and button travel is just deep enough to feel a complete press, better than most other phone hardware buttons I've used.

I'll leave this quick review focused on the hardware interfaces and follow up with some thoughts on the Windows Phone operating system experience in a later post.

One parting note though. I've spent time on considerably more capable devices including most recently a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. While the Lumia 800 isn't even in same league when it comes to specs, it's a generation ahead in user experience. As I said at the opening, the Lumia 800 is the most beautiful phone experience I've had. It's nearly a perfect piece of design.

Photo by Flickr user bitninja, used under a creative commons license

As some of you know, I've been using Windows 8 Metro for nearly 7 months (since its debut at Microsoft BUILD conference in September.) More recently I decided to investigate Windows Phone to get even further immersed in the Metro experience. Windows Phone (7.5) has been a pretty nice experience overall. But there's one thing that definitely comes to light using Windows Phone and Windows 8 together.

Windows 8 Metro is very much incomplete. Everything that's beautiful about Windows Phone's fast and fluid experience is a bit clunky feeling in Windows 8. All of the amazing typography and text animations are crude and under-developed in Windows 8. All of the clever physics of Windows Phone have been reduced to simplistic movements in Windows 8.

I'm hopeful that Microsoft can bring some more of the spirit of Metro to the desktop, because it really is a nice modern experience on phones. I haven't toyed around with Windows Phone 7 so perhaps it shipped in an equally unfinished state and they got it right with the follow-up release. If they can get more of Metro in time for Windows 8, great. If not, I hope Windows 9 follows quickly.

Photo by Flickr user tanakawho, used under a creative commons license

So here's the deal about touchscreens and Windows 8. There are lots of x86 touchscreen devices available that can run Windows 8. This is because Windows 7 had pretty good support for touch and multitouch and so more laptops and all-in-one desktops made their way to consumers. I've used an HP all-in-one Touchsmart 610, a Sony VAIO L Series all-in-one, a Samsung Series 7 Slate, and a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 tablet. Each of these machine was designed for Windows 7, so their CPU and memory configurations; their keyboards, trackpads, cameras, and other inputs; and their drives and ports are all very compatible with Windows 8. They're both compatible in terms of giving you decent performance and in terms of available drivers. Add to that a touchscreen and you might think you've got yourself a perfect Windows 8 kit. Unfortunately, it's not quite that rosy. While almost all of the machines I've tried were pretty much fully driver-compatible with Windows 8, and all of them had plenty of horsepower to drive Windows 8 with great performance, the touch experience ranged from absolutely unusable to wonderful.

Microsoft explains this quite well over at the Building Windows 8 blog. What it boils down to is that touchscreens that were built for Windows 7 focused on accuracy and increased capabilities (like multitouch) in the main work area of the screen at the expense of touch sensitivity and accuracy at the edges of the screen. That made fine sense in the Windows 7 world where most of your work takes place away from the edges. Unfortunately it can be a huge problem with Windows 8 because basic Windows navigation requires swipes that comes in from the edge of the screen and with all apps running in a full-screen mode, you're far more likely to find yourself working near the edges.

Another problem with some of the Windows 7 touchscreen devices is that they have giant raised bezels. Even if a machine has decent edge sensitivity in its touch panel, if you cannot easily swipe your finger from off-screen to on-screen, you may not be able to navigate Windows well.

So, what have I learned over the last few months of testing various configurations. Let's go from best to worst:

Photo by Flickr user Stuart Bryant, used under a creative commons license

The Samsung Series 7 Slate (tablet) is really outstanding. It has edge detection that hasn't failed me once. It's got an edge-to-edge glass face so your swipes from off-screen to on are a breeze. It's got 8 finger multitouch so all Windows 8 touch gestures are fully supported. Finally, as you pan around, the content "sticks" to your finger really well and there's no problem selecting text with touch and drag. I'll also note that this x86 tablet is something of a beast. It comes with a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor, 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and a 400 nits, matte, 11.6", 1366 x 768, LED backlit panel. (Oh, and yeah, and it's got a fan ;-) Teamed up with its Slate PC Dock and bluetooth keyboard and you've got a pretty compelling Windows 8 device.

The Lenovo X220 Tablet Convertible is also excellent. Edge detection is solid. The 1366 x 768, 300 NITs bright panel is pretty nice, though a bit glossy and reflective for my taste. There's no raised bezel to get in your way. Swipe and drag gestures really stick to your fingers and the 5 finger multitouch covers all of the most common gestures. It's possible that you'll encounter apps that need more than 5 finger touch, so if that's a concern to you then you should probably wait for the next generation from Lenovo which I'm sure will up that to ten or more. The X220T is the only touch laptop I've tested but if you know ThinkPads, then you know this machine. It's tough and practical with plenty of configuration options. It's not beautiful and it's not light-weight like the latest crop of UltraBooks, but if you want a machine with great inputs (nice multitouch and the best keyboard in the business, IMO) it's a fine choice for Windows 8. I'll note that it also works great in the Windows 8 Classic mode which is basically Windows 7 with a few tweaks.

Photo by Flickr user Matt Niemi, used under a creative commons license

The Sony Vaio L Series all-in-one machine is OK on Windows 8 and I'm hoping it can get slightly better with touchscreen driver updates. The PC has a 24" screen with glass that extends about an inch beyond the LCD on all sides so it doesn't have the raised bezel problem. (Though it does have a raised plastic bezel, it's far enough away from the screen that it's not a problem.) Sony also brags of a touch technology that extends beyond the edge of the LCD to provide off-screen gestures, but there's no support for that in Windows 8 yet. I'm hoping that Sony or MS can make a driver update that takes advantage of that to improve the screen's edge detection. The touchscreen panel has several shortcomings. First, it only supports 2 finger gestures. This means that basic Windows 8 gestures like pinch to zoom and turn to rotate work, but that's really not enough. Also, it doesn't have great edge sensitivity. It's possible to learn how to position your finger just so as you swipe in from the screen edge to get a pretty good hit rate, but that's less than ideal. For those of you who have this machine or are thinking about getting one because of its other great qualities, like a Core i7 quad-core 2.50GHz processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M GPU with 1GB RAM, Blu-ray player, 8GB of RAM, built-in TV tuner, and all around good looks, here's the trick to making it work: you can't use the tip of your finger. You have to use the face of your finger (where your fingerprint is) and you have to land your finger with some of it off-screen and some onscreen. For the swipe up and down gestures to raise the application toolbars, you don't actually swipe. You simply press your finger across that boundary. For the swipe in from the right, you do have to swipe in some but it helps if you have a very slight pause after initially pressing your finger down (again, with about half of your fingerprint off-screen and half on.) You'll see the very edge of the Windows charms bar become visible and if you start your swipe then, it works great. I know that sounds awful, but once you do it a few times it's pretty easy.

Photo by Flickr user Rupert Taylor-Price, used under a creative commons license

The HP Touchsmart 610 is a pretty nice all-in-one PC for Windows 7 but it's an absolutely horrible Windows 8 PC. The PC guts, including a 3.4GHz Core i7-2600 CPU, 8GB of RAM, Blu-ray, built-in TV tuner, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M GPU with 2GB RAM, are all pretty awesome. The reclining hinge that transforms it from a vertical orientation to a near-horziontal surface is actually quite nice. The machine has great (and very loud) speakers. The 23-inch, 1920 x 1080 panel is bright and beautiful. Unfortunately, the combination of limited 2 finger touch support, a giant plastic bezel, and just awful edge detection make Windows gestures simply impossible. I don't mean hit or miss; I mean impossible. There is no way to use this machine in Metro effectively without a mouse and keyboard. If you have one of these machines, I encourage you to keep it running Windows 7. I like the 610 a lot, but it's simply not Windows 8 ready.

One final note. Windows 8, even Metro, works fairly well with a mouse and keyboard. I have it loaded up on a bog standard ThinkPad T510 and the keyboard and trackpad/trackpoint controls work to navigate the system and use most of the apps and features just fine. It's not the preferred mode, but it's also not impossible. If you tried the Developer Preview that Microsoft released at Build last year, and were disappointed at how poorly the Metro experience integrated keyboard and mouse controls, the Consumer Preview has come a long way.

I've got a couple of touchscreen monitors on order, and as soon as I've had a chance to test them out, I'll blog and let you know how that goes.

Brian Bondy posted on our Firefox for Windows 8 Metro progress. We've got a solid proof of concept in short order thanks to Brian and Jim Mathies, with some helpful support from XUL Fennec lead Mark Finkle. Go team!