The Siemens SIMPad...

Here's a review from back in the days when animals still spoke:

http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_archives/May02/SIMpad.asp

Just as with the Newton, I got an immediate feeling of "this thing was ahead of its time", but -- again, just as with the Newton -- SIMPads remained excessively expensive, even after the platform was -- Newton-like senitments again, I'm afraid -- brutally cancelled by Siemens.

I bought one today, for almost a tenth of the price the thing went when it was new. There are obviously differences with the 770: the SIMPad doesn't have WiFi or BT on board, its USB controller is strictly slave-only and it relies on an ancient 16-bit PCCard slot.

Oh, and it runs WinCE. Yikes.

But... the Zaurus OpenLinux/OPIE distribution runs on it without any alterations (and, regrettably, with the same clunky, Palm-like character recognizer), people have found a way to -- with some opening of the device and soldering involved -- add an internal BT-controller and even an internal MMC/SD reader, it runs for seven hours on a battery (WiFi would reduce that time significantly, of course), it has a big, 8" transflective screen with a resolution of 800x600 and, most of all, it was cheap!

So is it a competitor? Well, yes and no: it certainly is a Web tablet (it was even advertized as such!) but, like the Newton, Nokia should not be too afraid from it.

Because noone makes it anymore.