Everybody's doing it. We're all doing it. In the park, at the garage, on the bus. You just can't get away from it, no one seems to care, they're all just doing it. The Disgo net browser 3000 allows you to do it anywhere and everywhere too so you're not missing out. Browsing the internet on the go has become a feature of everyday life for most people as their phones have merged with their laptop to create an online experience that gives a little, but not a lot. The Disco aims to fit right in between the laptop and the mobile phone by offering users the chance to get basic internet functionality with a physical keyboard, with a few extras on top.
To look at, it's quite impressive as the design of the unit means it appears to be a very small laptop, coated in a glossy black finish, it really does look intriguing and will have people asking themselves 'what is that?'. Open the lid and you'll find a 7 inch TFT screen that is capable of displaying 800x480 resolutions. This combination provides a sharp and crisp display for your eyes and is just high enough to make text smooth and readable. You'll find a keyboard sits on the bottom part of the unit with a touchpad just below. It all looks standard fare, nothing to shout home about and will be good enough to type the odd email and web address.
It also has three USB ports, two specifically for an external mouse and keyboard only and one for any other USB function devices. Built in speakers with headphone port mean you can get music on the go to, although the 2GB flash memory will limit your musical ambitions somewhat. It's only when you dig in to the inside of the Disgo that things start to show up badly. First, you might be fooled into the thinking that this is essentially a laptop, but smaller. Well, it isn't. It runs on a Windows CE 5 operating system, but is essentially an operating system that Microsoft designed for PDA's. Whilst it has it benefits, it doesn't allow you to install any new programs or applications so you're stuck with what's preloaded on to the system when you purchase it.
You'll find an application that allows you to view the basic office documents such as Word, Excel and PDF's, an image viewer, WordPad for basic word processing and Internet Explorer for that web use. (We'll come back to that in a minute). It can support MP3, MPEG, AVI and MP4 files to allow for basic video and audio playback as well as support for JPEG images. Any other format and you're out of luck. You have to get in to the frame of mind that says this is not a laptop; it's a device that will allow you to do what it tells you it can do.
The biggest problem is the lack of Flash support and corporate email access. For a time when Flash is on just about every website and enables some of the best features of the web, its absence here is very disappointing and renders the Disgo almost useless for content rich websites. It'll run a Facebook profile for you, but try to view a video that someone has posted to share with their friends and it won't be able to. Whilst the processing power required to run such content is quite high, there should have been some compromise on price to allow for this to have been included. At just under £90, it's a very cheap way of getting on the net and doing the very basic things one does on the net, but ask any more of it and it'll slam the door shut it your face. Good attempt but could do much better.
| All Rights Reserved