NOVA+5000EX

Fourier Systems Reviewed by M. Gregg - APRIL 2007 NOVA 5000-EX review

__Physical:__
 * Battery life – seems acceptable. With wireless turned on you get less than 4 hours it turned on continuously. If wireless is not turned on it runs much longer. Since one probably would not have it turned on constantly it would probably work fine in a school setting where it be used for several classes per day – as long as it’s charged up. When the battery weakens I have not seen any warning messages. (Maybe there is one?) It just shuts down. A beep or warning might be helpful.
 * Carrying case – I see on the website that there’s a carrying case, but one did not come in the base package.
 * Weight – Seems okay for an adult or teen, but might be too heavy for elementary kids. Might be sort of bulky if one was to fit in a backpack to take home. A separate carrying case with strap would be better for this.
 * Ruggedness – Unit seems really rugged. I would say this is a BIG deal for kids and a good selling point!
 * Stylus – Kind of cheap, but works fine. This would probably be something that gets lost, but it would be inexpensive to replace. Since you can use your finger or anything, a high quality stylus isn’t that big of a deal to me.
 * Power cord – I like that the power-cord doesn’t have a huge transformer on the power plug so it can plug into any two-prong receptacle.
 * Add-ons:
 * Compact card for more “disk” space – looks like you can add a compact card with more memory – what if we could issue cards with eBooks on them?
 * USB Jump-drive – My 2 GB flash drive worked great. I was able to open powerpoint and word documents as long as the file itself wasn’t HUGE.
 * USB Keyboard, mouse – I plugged in a Dell USB mouse and keyboard. Both worked perfectly.

__Operating system__: WIN CE I like everything about it. There’s enough of an operating system that you can do most everything you need. The control panel had plenty of built-in tools to tailor the device to the way I liked it. Perhaps the only limitation I ran into was memory when trying to open a 32 MB word document. (There is even a DOS shell so you can enter a limited set of DOS commands.)

__Networking:__ Wireless – I’ve run it on 802.11b and G networks and they work fine. I ran it with both WEP turned on and off and the set up was super easy. Switching between two different wireless networks (in different locations) was automatic. No switching or anything had to be done. Wired – Running at 100 mbit. Nice and fast. Activesync - didn’t try it.

__Software__
 * Internet Explorer
 * Cookies – no problems at all.
 * Java – There’s no JAVA runtime engine so you can’t run IC Gradebook on it.
 * Websites tried
 * United Streaming – was able to watch streamed file just fine. Very little jerkiness. The sound was good and the video was great.
 * Infininte Campus – Only thing that didn’t work was the gradebook due to no JAVA runtime for the Win CE browser.
 * Outlook LPS email (web) – worked fine. I was able to read and send email.
 * Wikispaces – Had a small problem when I tried to edit a page and enter new text.
 * Developingmindssoftware.com – worked great.
 * Euclid’s site – worked fine
 * HHS’s site – worked fine
 * Windows Explorer
 * Mapping a network drive – I was able to map network drives on various network servers, open word documents and even print them on network printers. The trick was knowing the path. (ex: \\ems-dc1\apps)
 * Local drive (my documents) – I was able to load and open files onto the NOVA’s local “My Documents” and that worked fine.
 * Transcriber
 * CE has the transcriber. It is awesome! It did a great job of translating my atrocious handwriting. I did not do any training of the software and it worked really well. I do not recommend using the transcriber for entering passwords though. Someone could see what you are entering and if there is any misinterpretation you wouldn’t ever see it – best to us the mini-keyboard and a stylus.
 * Office suite: (Textmaker, Presentations, Planmaker) and Powerpoint Viewer, PDF Viewer.
 * It was able to open most of my word documents. I only had a problem when I tried to open a really big one that was 32 MB. The powerpoint viewer worked perfectly with my Powerpoint files from a USB flash drive.
 * Was able to view, but not print pdf files from PocketXpdf viewer (printing was not an option from the file menu).
 * Portrait 4: (Graphing Calculator)
 * Looks like a cool program and easy to use. Perfect for math at all levels.
 * Multi-lab: With sensors this also looks cool for a science lab setting. We didn’t have a chance to use with sensors so I don’t know how it works in practice. The demos of using Multi-lab they had included in Windows Media player were cool.
 * Inspiration: I was surprised to find this on there. It seems to work just like the desktop version. No surprises.

__Conclusion:__ The design and ruggedness is one of the best features of the NOVA 5000. It was designed with kids in mind and that sets it apart from a laptop or UMPC. With WinCE built-in to the flash memory there’s no moving parts and no //easy// way to mess up the OS or browser with viruses and adware/spyware – just reboot and it’s just like new. Boot-time is super fast compared to a laptop and there’s no logging in which makes it nice to be able to use almost immediately. It seems to take a moment longer after it’s booted to actually have the network connection become active. (Still no passwords, usernames, etc just to browse the internet quickly).

The web-browser was fantastic. To get it to work on our network I had to add our proxy server and then restart the browser. The screen is big enough to view pages and read text. With a wireless connection one could surf the web while participating in an in-class lecture and quickly explore a relevant topic in class.

The NOVA 5000 would be outstanding devices for math and science too. The bundled //Portrait4// graphing-calculator would be powerful for an entire classroom. //Multi-lab// looked cool too, but I didn’t have any sensors to play around with to really test it out.

Combined with electronic books the NOVA would be an awesome tool for reading. This might be a situation where a student carries the NOVA back and forth from home. It might be good to have a carrying case for it like the ones shown on their web page. If one was to use them in class for note-taking, a USB keyboard would probably be a good idea. I think they would have enough file space to hold a year’s worth of notes and documents unless they had large images in them. One could always use jump drives or emailed attachments for offline storage too.

I was able to map network drives, retrieve documents and print to network printers. There’s no login or login script that runs so I had to know the path for drive/printer mapping to use network services. I could not get Win CE to //browse// our network or my local LAN at home – thus one must know the path beforehand to map a network service.

Lastly the NOVA’s WinCE has a terminal server client built-in so that most any application like MAPS’ Testtaker.exe could be run via a Terminal Server. I believe one can run the Citrix client for WinCE so it would also be possible to connect to a Citrix server. Either platform would be an awesome addition if we ever decide to go either route at LPS.