A Deeper Look at the Tiqit and Windows XP Handhelds

In my last column, I discussed the promise of Windows XP handhelds in theory. That piece was driven by some recent hands-on experience I had with a Tiqit handheld. This column shares more impressions of the device itself, and some thoughts for the future of these products.

The thing I probably liked most about the Tiqit was its form factor. Frankly, Tiqit allows you to use a portable PC in a way thats never really been practical before: standing up. I quickly adjusted to the thumb-board, which had a few keys in novel places; it proved ample and comfortable, and allowed effective text entry.

Still, Im concerned that the keyboards on other entrants in this category may fall into that awkward "in-between" zone—too large to thumb-type on and too small to touch-type on. When entering data into the Tiqit, I found I rarely had to revert to the stylus, which was fortunate since there was no well for it and odds are good that it would be easily lost.

As a prototype unit in an emerging category, the Tiqit had some drawbacks. Since it uses the Geode processor, the Tiqit wont set any land-speed records. In fact, the machine crashed when I tried to run a QuickTime movie after downloading the latest plug-in. Tiqit, however, ships some Windows Media clips that the company claims works well. I did not view them.

Furthermore, boot times were relatively slow and, worse, a driver glitch prevented waking up from standby mode. Also, the machine runs very warm, and its heavy enough so that your arms start to get fatigued after holding it for 20 minutes or so. On the other hand, when was the last time you used a handheld for a 20-minute session? The extra functionality of Windows XP enables a more PC-like usage model.

The screen, at 640-by-480-pixel resolution, approaches the boundaries of Windows usability; the on-screen text, particularly on some Web pages, is sometimes hard to read. Pushing the envelope, I used ExpertCitys GoToMyPC on the Tiqit to look at my home machine running at a resolution of 1,280 by 1,024 pixels. I could make out some text that my wife Eileen (aka, "Wife-Ei"), who has better eyesight, could actually read. The result of this experiment is that theres still room to grow on even this tiny screen.

One general criticism is that Tiqit seems to have focused more on the engineering achievement of shrinking a full PC instead of addressing market-responsive features. For example, it should have come with Wi-Fi built-in and probably could have done without infrared. However, given that many of its first customers will likely be in vertical markets, they probably felt a need to go broad. Indeed, theres one key enterprise application that the Tiqit reinvigorated.

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