CQC meet Borg Displays, Borg meet CQC...

AnthonyZ

Active Member
The following is taken almost verbatim from a quick write up I posted at the Charmed Quark forums...

My initial impression is that it considerably quicker and more responsive than the HP T5700 (my only other experience with XPe) and that's to be expected. Accessing my cameras (analog feeding Axis 240Q) is very quick and they look great. Only one camera works on the HP and the buttons that should bring up the others have no effect (rendering cameras useless on a touch screen driven by it). Control of devices via the MS is quick and fast enough that you'd guess the touch screen is controlling them directly (which is very important to me). Text and images are crisp and well rendered (I have it running at 800x600). Also, if you do much browsing, the screen responds to a stylus very well.

The bezel is gorgeous. It's made of a gloss plastic (that readily picks up greasy, Italian fingerprints) with nicely beveled edges that lead to the touch screen and the middle of the bezel (on the vertical plane) is slightly deeper than at the right and left edges. With a slight "bow" to it, it has a subtle curve that's very well done. There are two speakers and a single hole in the lower center section for the electret mic located behind the bezel (I'm imaging the possibility of a native intercom here). There are four capacitive buttons on the bottom of the bezel, flanking the mic, that have icons silk screened over them. The icons appear to have been applied prior to a protective finish, so they are essentially permanent. One is a light bulb icon that toggles the back light. The second is a keyboard that opens a small, but effective, on screen keyboard. The third is a "Home" icon that brings up the home URL in IE and the fourth is a power icon that brings up the options for Lock Computer, Log Off, Shut Down, Change Password, Task Manager and Cancel. Pretty cool but the power button operated a bit sporadically. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. That may just be the demo unit I'm testing, though. The buttons do emit a hell of a squawk when pressed but I would imagine that the associated button press could be turned down (or off?).

The hardware could (IMHO) use more USB ports (there's only two) but, that's not a deal breaker. There are two physical DB9 ports but, only one appears to be active (and shows up in the device mngr. as a printer port). I don't think many of us would drive many devices with an in wall mounted touch screen but, I could be wrong. The power connection is really cool. It's a DC device (it runs at a somewhat odd 19 volts) and the touch screen's side of the wire coming off the transformer (AC "brick" style) has an ingenious connector. It's a polarized plug that, once inserted, has a round screw style shroud that screws onto the back of the machine. It's very secure and much easier than screw, push or snap style terminal connectors. Well done there, Borg!

Power consumption is low at a mere 12 watts on startup and once settled on the IV runs at between 11 and 12 watts. Performance shows it chugs along with basic commands, page flips and what not running between 3% and 30% of CPU usage. No bogging down despite the fact that I didn't turn off any services whatsoever to "optimize" the machine.

The long and the short of it? I like it. A lot. I will regretfully return the demo but I do have three kids I'm willing to sell if anyone's interested. They all come slightly used and free of warranty but, they're good kids and listen reasonably well. Any takers?

Borg_CQC_Test.jpg
 
Crap, if three kids is the requirement to get this I only have two kids....and a dog. They are all house broke. I should be able to get extra for that.
 
Crap, if three kids is the requirement to get this I only have two kids....and a dog. They are all house broke. I should be able to get extra for that.
Three kids isn't a requirement (both the kids and the touch screens are quite reasonably priced). I'm just willing to sell ONE kid to get ONE of the touch screens (I make my living in AV and HA, so with the economy, I'm dead broke).
 
Great pic. Thanks for the review.


fyi the terrible squawk made when pressing one of the capacitive buttons can in fact be disabled. Also, the bezel comes in a sexy apple-like white as shown here:
 

Attachments

  • screen1.jpg
    screen1.jpg
    14.2 KB · Views: 38
  • screen2.jpg
    screen2.jpg
    15.1 KB · Views: 30
  • screen3.jpg
    screen3.jpg
    10.8 KB · Views: 23
Back
Top