How cool is this?

So cool!

I’m with the family in Michigan for the weekend and my FIL was showing us his new toy. He recently got a Toshiba network for using at home to check his email and do some minor web surfing. He added on an AT&T wireless connect card to use when he’s on the road and when he saw me salivating over this nifty gadget he graciously handed it to me to play with. We’re now cruising down an expressway heading for brunch with some extended family and I’m blogging.

It’s pretty nice little machine. The keys are standard size and although the keyboard is cramped on the non-alphabetical keys, everything is in the usual place so there’s no searching for arrows or function keys. The touchpad is also a reasonable size but its location leaves a bit desired. It’s so close to the space bar that I’ve already brushed it with my hand several times while typing which results in my cursor jumping to the wrong position. The screen, which is hyped as being large, is 10.2″ but what they don’t explain is that the diagonal dimension is achieved with a fairly wide screen that is quite short. When IE is opened the program header takes up about 25% of the screen height.

Overall this is a pretty good little machine. If I find out that I can use it to comfortably read ebooks I may end up putting my $300 into this rather than a Kindle or Sony e-Reader.