Casio Zoomer review, part 2 (startup and general operation)
brian@piano.grot.starconn.com (Brian Smithson)
From: brian@piano.grot.starconn.com (Brian Smithson)
Message-id: <9310122211.ZM123@piano.grot.starconn.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 22:11:57 -0700
X-Mailer: Z-Mail (2.1.1 01dec92)
To: zoomer-list-1993@grot.starconn.com
Subject: Casio Zoomer review, part 2 (startup and general operation)
Status: OR
This is part 2 of my Casio Z-7000 review: startup and general operation.
Startup
-------
When you first turn on the Z-7000, it provides a test screen for adjusting
contrast and for calibrating the pen, asks you for your preferences of
time, date, currency, and numeric formatting, asks for the current time
and date and your name.
General operation
-----------------
Fixed icons:
Across the bottom of the screen are 10 "fixed" icons. These are actually
printed icons -- I guess this is so that they're always available you don't
have to rely on applications to keep repainting them. Or maybe its to save
LCD real estate? I kind of thought that it limited the flexibility of the
platform, but in any case, they are:
- Launcher
- Address/phone book
- Calendar/todo list
- Notebook
- Pocket Quicken
- World time clock
- Calculator
- Menu bar
- Keyboard
- Help
Laucher pops up a cascading menu system from which you can launch any
application on the Zoomer, including those which have fixed icons.
I'm not sure how one adds apps to the launcher menu, but hopefully there
is a way; otherwise, you'd have to use the file manager.
Address/phone book, calendar/todo list, notebook, pocket quicken, world
time clock, and calculator, are all applications. I'll talk about them
in some future part of this review.
Menu bar displays a pull-down menu bar (with things like File, Edit, ...) for
applications which have such a feature. For the most part, one doesn't need
the menu bar. Most applications have buttons on screen or other mechanisms
for navigating, changing modes, etc. That's a Good Thing, because pull-down
menus are kind of a pain with a pen.
Keyboard displays a little on-screen keyboard for applications which can use
one. The keyboard has several modes: standard QWERTY, alphabetical,
international, special symbols, and writing grid. OK, the writing grid
isn't really a keyboard, it's a handwriting recognition aid.
Help displays a hypertext help system, pointed conveniently to some help
data which is relevant to the current context.
Launching applications:
When you start an application, a small message box appears which says
"Activating _________, one moment please" (where the blank is filled in
with the application name). There's no way to quit or put away an
application. You simply start up something else or power off.
Applications are kept "activated" as memory permits, and it keeps the
most recently accessed applications alive. If an application gets
deactivated, it retains state but takes "one moment" to reactivate.
Launching an active (but obscured) application is very quick.
User interface(s):
Overall, the user interface is kind of a collection of buttons, icons,
menus, pen gestures -- a user interface purist would undoubtably puke --
but it seems to hang together OK. Still, the lack of UI coherence was
a little disappointing, and the fact that Zoomer software came together
from several companies is kind of evident. On the other hand, it might
be a blessing not to be stuck with any particular One True Interface :-).
Screen use:
Most of the applications take over the whole screen and have buttons or
other controls to navigate within the application. Some of them can use
the menu bar, mentioned above. The menu bar appears in its own window
and so it can be moved around on the screen, or put away, or grafted
onto the top of the application screen (kind of an interesting and useful
feature, I thought).
A couple of applications -- help and the calculator -- don't take the whole
screen, but appear in windows. The calculator can be moved about the screen,
but isn't resizable (because if its fixed keypad layout I suppose). Help
is resizable, which could be handy given the nature of this particular
application. I was even able to resize the Help window to be wider than
the physical screen, which isn't terribly handy but was kind of fun...
Data entry:
There appears to be two kinds of data entry -- one for "sketch pages",
which are blank, free-form pages on which you can draw or write (with or
without recognition), and one for fielded data entry, which pop up
field edit dialog boxes. You can edit any or all of the fields on a
fielded page using a single pop-up dialog, rather than having to pop-up
a dialog for each field (which would be pretty tedious).
I'll talk about data entry modes (ink, pen-recognition, on-screen keyboards,
after-the-fact recognition) in some future part of the review.
Communications:
I'd love to talk about the communications features, but alas, neither
the serial cable nor the IR interface are available yet. If someone
out there has a Zoomer in the Silicon Valley area and would like to
try exchanging some files via the IR link, let me know.
What I can say, without having tried any of the stuff out, is that:
- The file manager has a "connect" option which appears to perform a
LapLink-ish connection to a PC running Geoworks 2.0. I'm not sure
if that feature is in the base Geoworks 2.0 package (shame on me) or
if it's an option.
- As mentioned in the part 1 of the review, Pocket Quicken has some kind
of data transfer and synchronization software available for exchanging
data with Quicken for Windows.
- America Online has a nice off-line e-mail composition feature (integrated
with the Address Book application) which queues up outbound e-mail to
be sent whenever you connect up with AOL.
That's all for now...
--
-Brian Smithson
brian@grot.starconn.com