WiBook pictures

I promised some time ago to take some pictures of my WiBook. Here they are! Anyway my WiBook is quite useful, as I can use the internet in my bedroom. IE6 works as charm, and integrated ethernet does the job very well.

WiBook resources

It’s not easy to find anything about Brainium WiBook.

There’s a thread in HPCFactor forum. I’m trying to summarize it:

• Brainium WiBook, successor of DreamWriter was made for K-12 students in the USA. That’s why it’s rugged and powerful but cheap and ugly.
• It was made to use it in the school, so lot of units were sold without AC adapter. HPCFactor forum says: “From what I understand, the Branium WiBook was often sold as part of a “computer lab in a box” type kit. It came with like 10 units and a central charging unit where you just slipped the wibooks into a slot on a rack of some sort. You will notice there are two flat metal tabs next to the standard round power port. My guess is that the tabs are the electrical contact points for the charging station. This would explain why these units came without any sort of conventional charger unit.” Anyway it calls for 12V 2.5A. Mine is operating with a Canon AC adapter (13V 1.8A).
• Some WiBooks came with a touchscreen and some didn’t. Floppy is also optional. Mine doesn’t have neither.
• On HPCFactor another owner says his WiBook doesn’t have onboard ethernet. It seems there are a lot of different models.
• Main board is a Intrinsyc Cerfboard PXA250 and the display is some kind of Sanyo.
• WiBook is underclocked by default! You have to use an OC app (the bsquare one for example) to set it to 400 mhz. It will run stable at 472, too.

It’s really an interesting topic. I tried to summarize it but if you are really interested you should take a look.

There are two interesting posts from The Deliverator about WiBook:

• http://deliverator.silverfir.net/?p=248
• http://deliverator.silverfir.net/?p=253

WiBook pros and cons

First the cons:

• I can tell you, it’s big as a laptop. It’s bigger than my Vaio. It’s not a palmtop.
• It’s ugly. I’m quite sure that the designer was completely stoned 😀
• Display is not bad, but reacts really slowly
• No standard office applications (although there are 3rd party options)
• Loudspeakers are a joke
• Touchpad… it’s not bad, really, but hard to get used to it

There are lot of pros…

• Ok, it’s big but it seems to be pretty solid. You don’t have to take care of anything.
• CE.NET 4.2 – It’s better than I expected (I never had a HPC before)
• Display is big
• USB port rocks. It easily handles my pendrive and storage card reader. However no success with my US Robotics wifi stick, MSI bluetooth and Freecom CD writer.
• Full-sized keyboard is a dream. There are some weaknesses (you have to use Alt key to switch between backspace and delete; dumb cursor keys) but much much better than living without keyboard.
• I didn’t have the time to try the integrated LAN but the seller said it’s just perfect
• You can easily add a CF wifi card. There are some compatible ones, D-Link, Pretec, etc. And there are 2 CF slots so you don’t have to choose between connectivity and storage.
• The same with GPS
• Real Internet Explorer, not that lame pocket one.
• Media Player 9 – I didn’t try the video playback

I’ll come back with some photos later.

Brainium WiBook – a unique piece of CE.NET

Yesterday I bought a Brainium WiBook. I’m going to share my first impressions here in the following weeks. But first…A COMPLETE BRAINIUM WIBOOK FACTSHEET (pretty hard to find anyway…)