Well, I got the thing yesterday... my initial impression is a bit disappointing. I'll need to spend a lot more time with it before coming up with a firm assessment, but my first thoughts are:
- Heavy for its size. Not exactly easy to hold.
- Very slow. This is probably because it's attempting to run the full version of Windows Vista Home Premium on its 800MHz processor and 1GB of RAM. People on the Internet strongly suggest upgrading the memory to 2GB (which will void the warranty) and disabling certain processor-munching Vista features.
- Touch screen feels cheap and inaccurate. After experiencing the iPhone's excellent scrolling and zooming, the difficulty involved in scrolling around a page on the Q1 is a real disappointment.
- This is probably a problem with using IE, but while attempting to read books on Safari Books Online, IE doesn't reformat the page to fit the (maximized) browser window but instead insists on presenting scrollbars. Ugh. Anyone know a better browser for reading HTML eBooks?
- The screen is nice (but not great), but the aspect ratio doesn't look like it'll lend itself well to full-page reading. It's very wide (or very narrow in portrait mode), and I think that a page that's stretched to full width in portrait will waste a lot of space at the bottom of the screen.
Again, I just got the thing yesterday and haven't done much playing with it, but these are my initial impressions, and while it may be a useful device I'm not sure it'll make a great eBook reader.
(It did come preinstalled with Microsoft Reader and Adobe Reader, which is a plus, I guess.)