If you need something really basic to access the web when you are
travelling, the DreamBook Lite E79 could do the trick. We mean basic,
though. Really basic. Really, really basic. And tiny, with dimensions
of 213.5mm W x 145mm D x 32mm H. Powered
by a Samsung 533MHz chip designed for personal organisers, the E79 is
essentially a nice little 7 inch screen (of 800 x 480 pixel resolution) with a keyboard
attached, with just enough power to surf the web and run a suite of basic word processor, spreadsheet and even presentation
software. Pioneer Computers has done a good job making it look like a tiny laptop (see it compared to a Lenovo ThinkPad below).
The DreamBook Lite E79 is powered by Windows CE 5.0, a version of
Windows which looks very superficially like XP but is designed to run in mobile
devices and embedded systems. Version 5.0 is actually the older version
of the OS, already superseded by Windows CE 6.0, but, either way, you
can't run any standard Windows programs on Win CE. You have to make do
with the applications that come with the DreamBook. Still, they're not too bad
given that they have to function in 128MBs of RAM and 2GBs of storage
(expandable to 32GB via an SD card slot). The office suite is SoftMaker
Office 2006 for Windows CE, which its maker claims lets you
open, edit, and save any Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file
without requiring conversion and retaining formatting. We tried
importing two Word files into the word processing program, one created with Office 2003 (which it
recognised and converted) and the other with Office 2007 (which it
wouldn't).
The built-in Windows CE web browser displayed a variety of
websites, including this one (above) without any problem. We even tried the
Commbank banking site, and the browser delivered up to the point
where were asked for our username and password, which we weren't game
to enter on a test machine. The problem with a non-conventional browser, however,
is that it may not be supported by some sites or applications. A Google online app warned that it would shortly be
stopping support for this browser. We tried to install Opera Mobile, which is
designed for many phones, including Windows Mobile, but we could not
get it to run.
The best way to use the E79 is as a web surfing device,
connecting to the Net via Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g), Ethernet or even an
optional 3.5G wireless broad band modem [for an additional
$99], and using the mobile versions of cloud- based apps offered by
many providers. The DreamBook E79 is not a netbook. For
$199 you get what you pay for, an extremely portable device with 3 USB ports that lets you view the web bigger than on any mobile phone and provides a keyboard that makes it easy to
generate simple word documents and spreadsheets.
Buy it from Pioneer Computers (ignore the Windows 7 symbol on the one shown, it won't run Win 7!)
