Today I had my first chance to test drive MeeGo, the Linux variant designs for use on low-power and embedded devices. I had a play with the OS on both netbook and tablet devices, as well as a very quick look at MeeGo on an in-car system. How’s it stacking up against the Androids and Chromebooks of the world?
The great news: MeeGo on a netbook was excellent. Snappy, slick, and with no prior experience with the OS it only took about 30 seconds to pick up on the metaphor. I tested on an Asus Aspire One Happy netbook.
The bad news: MeeGo on a tablet was horrid. With an entirely different user interface to the lovely netbook option, this felt like a tablet wannabe. I tried three different models after thinking there was maybe a hardware problem, but all were the same. Scrolling felt like a tug-of-war, screen rotation would stick, and launching anything felt like hard labour. Ouch.
The positive news: It’s very early days for the tablet UX for MeeGo, so this was pure preview build. But man was it bad! Not the kind of thing to encourage people to use this platform on their devices. I wonder why they moved so far away from the slick netbook interface.
On that positive light, the car system interface was fairly similar to the tablet option, but this worked much better. Still quite stilted, it was at least functional and definitely suited the large icon interactions you would want from an embedded car device.
Overall I’m a little more confident in MeeGo. I often wondered why we would want ‘yet another’ option in the space, but having had the experience I could easily be convinced to run this on a spare netbook.
maddogeco
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 3:13 PMSome people hate Windows, some people hate Apple some hate Android but nobody hate meego its just too awesome. Expect Mr. Elop. i think it will go a long way
Mark
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 4:02 PM…but it’s easy to hate an OS driven by only one company. Meego is now purely a vehicle to push Intel chips and Intel proprietary nonsense. When Nokia were involved it was interesting. Now it’s an easy pass from me.
maddogeco
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 4:50 PMGive it a go live boot from a cd or usb its bloody quick. and the thought of having a proper Linux build on my phone is awesome. and Yes Nokia is still involved in fact i saw today a job advertised for 2 engineers to work on meego in there US office. and there will be a Meego Phone by Nokia out this year. in 5 years time Nokia will be finished with WP7 (becuase it will have been folded) and Meego will be as big is not bigger than Android.
Pedge
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 7:26 PM*Acer Aspire One Happy netbook
Paul
Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 11:26 PMGood because android is junk