Hands-on with the OQO 2+ MID

We were lounging around the Intel area and saw this big collection of Mobile Internet Devices. These things are so weird we could barely tell what’s new and what’s years old, but we did spot the freshly-announced OQO 2+ and decided to give it a spin. There were guys standing around it so we picked up a Willcom D4 first for comparison.

As it turned out, we kinda liked the D4 better; the 2+’s navigation nub was a bit unintuitive, although it is a slick little thing. It may be that you would get used to it, and the 2+ does have some serious guts in it; it’s faster and more spacious than most netbooks and appeared to run Vista perfectly well. The screens on these things are so tiny, though, even I could barely make some of the text out. I think I’m just not a tiny-device kind of guy.

Here are its vital specs, by the way:

• 1.86GHz Atom Z540 processor
• At least 1GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM
• 5″ 800×480 screen (it’ll make itself look bigger though if you want)
• Integrated Gobi 3G, and of course Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi
• HDMI out
• Battery should last at least 3 hours
• Some other ports… USB and all that.
• Sweet magnesium casing

Maybe this one will run Leopard better.