Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

Hi all.

My name's John Valentine and I'm the IS Manager for one of the Manchester Metropolitan University Faculties. We are a very large Faculty with almost 6000 students and 600 staff.

I'm here to look at other peoples use of mobile devices in education, especially UMPC's.

I saw the Samsung Q1 for the first time a year ago and loved it. A few months later I got hold of a few and began evaluating it for staff use.

We got a new VC last year and he spotted the Q1 in one our departments new technology centre. A little while later I got a call requesting that I demo the device to him and a few other interested parties. The demo went well and to cut a long story short, we now have £30k to spend on a pilot scheme for our students.

I would very much welcome comments from anyone who has successfully (or unsuccessfully!) implemented such devices.

Cheers,

John.

I used a Q1 for about six months.

My main problems with it were with the battery life.

For a typical run of the mill laptop you generally expect to get about 1½ to 2 hours. I was always impressed with the VAIO SRX41P which managed to get over three hours on its normal battery and over seven on its extended battery. The VAIO T2XP/S has a much battery life with the battery lasting over four or five hours usually with general use.

So back to the Q1, how long then do you think?

It is small, but it is using the new Intel mobile chip, so you can imagine my disappointment to find that the battery life was just over two hours. This is really not sufficient for anything really. Watch most of a film, do some browsing, write quite a few short blog entries…

It certainly is not enough for what is being marketed as a mobile device. I was hoping for at least six to eight hours or even four at a push, just over two just isn’t good enough.

As soon as you start using video and audio this does decrease.

I would factor in spare batteries or there is now a power pack for it available.

James Clay

I have just taken delivery of a large quanity of Q1's.
They are the education spec with Intel Processor and 2 batteries. One battery is the extended life battery.
I ran this all day today. Background light set at 50%. I put the battery into standby between classes as required. The Q1 started at 8am and died at 5pm on the extended battery.
My plan is to push the loading on this machine in various circumstances to see how performs.
I am treating this run through as the baseline. The minimum that I would accept as useable.
As far as I am concerned it is pretty good battery life.