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Screen resolution of the Toshiba JournE is 800x480; so even though it supports MPEG 4 as well as H.264, you can't watch HD.
However, it is good for YouTube and similar services. There's an optional cradle with an HDMI port for plugging it into your PC, which will be one of the simplest ways we've seen of getting YouTube and internet content on your big screen.
Coming soon
There's an icon for Toshiba's own content service, which will offer apps and content; this will be free for the first month while Toshiba gets feedback from the first users but this isn't up and running yet, and Toshiba hasn't finalised the payment system.
We don't know how many apps there will be, because although there are thousands of developers with experience on the Win CE platform, Toshiba hasn't decided whether it will be an open marketplace that anyone can offer apps for or whether it will only allow apps it certifies.
The JournE team is working on adding key applications including an e-reader which will rotate the screen into portrait for page layout; it will handle PDF and EPUB but Toshiba can't say if it will work with Adobe Digital Editions.
These will be free updates that Toshiba says will be available over the air, and will be easy to install. When we first turned the JournE on it insisted on an update; this downloaded and installed easily, so that shouldn't be off putting.
Does the web work?
For a web tablet, the JournE has some way to go. Initially it comes with a mobile version of internet Explorer 6 similar to the one in Windows Mobile 6.5, with pan and zoom, and Flash Lite support.
Most web pages will load correctly, but more advanced web apps won't always work (certainly not Google Wave and we couldn't get the Office 2010 web apps to run). Toshiba will offer another browser, which it hasn't named yet (which will also be able to rotate the screen) and it's working with Adobe and Microsoft to put Flash and Silverlight on the JournE which will make it far more capable; CE 6.0 R3 supports Silverlight but Toshiba is still testing the integration.
BBC iPlayer isn't supported; presumably Toshiba is in negotiations because again, there won't be an answer "for a few weeks".
