7. Figuring things out (without reading the manuals)
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"Look Ma... no Hands!"
Famous last words? What can I say, I am as guilty of it as the rest of the sentient race. Who, in their right mind, reads manuals before they encounter any problems???!!!
So off I went, pressing buttons here, and flipping knobs there. After 5 minutes, I began to sort of understand the UI.
THE UI
You press the filer button to bring up the WristTop screen (essentially a list containing the last 10 apps executed by the user) or the Filer (a file Explorer menu). You traverse the menus using the joystick knob, and you press the Execute button to execute the selected item. I learnt later (ah... the rewards of actually sitting down with the manuals) that Execute button can be simulated by toggling the joystick right, twice in rapid succession, ala a mouse double click, and I never looked back. At any time, pressing on the menu button will bring up the menu specific to the current running application. To terminate the application, bring up the menu for that application using the Menu button, scroll up to the EXIT option and double right click. A short cut is to simply double press the Filer button, a feat that can be achieved without popping up the Time applet only after a couple of days (for me, that is). One thing that takes some getting used to is the manner by which the scrolling down or up to either end of the menu options will wrap around to the other end. It actually slows me down during scrolling as I have to be careful not to miss the stop.
It all sounds pretty easy, but it took me a couple of hours to get the hang of the onHand PC UI before I do not need to think about the operation of a particular button before pressing it.
I was able to go through the basic functions of setting the internal clock, home city (which, incidentally, does not come with Singapore pre-installed as a city), and operate all the built-in PIM and game applets.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It was like what I had expected and much more. I was pretty impressed at how usable the size of the screen was, although I must say that the watch is not designed for continuous operation in the dark. The backlight times out after a maximum of no more than 10 seconds, and it was difficult to read in dim rooms without the help of lights. So much for using the watch as entertainment on long, dark plane rides. Sigh.
Like most palmtops, only one application can run at a time. Transiting from application to application brings up a wait icon (a dolphin frolicking in the waters) and normally takes between 2-3 seconds to load. During the execution of the program, I have yet to get any annoying wait states as I would often get on multithreaded WinCE applications.
I somehow managed to get into the "Input" mode which presents a soft keyboard allowing users to key in data directly. While it is pretty neat, you can imagine the pain of having to use a mouse to navigate to each character in spelling out the words. The onHand PC does provide a list of "favorite" often-used words that you can select without typing in the entire word. However, to traverse the list, you still need to SCROLL down the list with the joystick. The reason why I gave up on the Palm Pilot or Palm PC is because it does not have a hardware keyboard for me to enter notes quickly. This is much worst, although I can imagine that Rex Pro users face the same problem. Nope, if you want to use the onHand PC for entering board meeting minutes, you must either have a very fast thumb or a very patient chairperson. I suppose the next logical enhancement of the onHand PC or Ruputer would be a touch screen.
Like some other users, my first reaction to the sound produced by the onHand is: "Hey! Where is the volume control?". It is simply way too soft and not very clear. But my Jack Russell had a field day trying to locate the source of tiny strains of "Joy To the World" that the onHand was producing...
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