http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041500125.html

My sole comment: I think if the reviewer had spent more than a few minutes with the out-of-the-box apps they might discover it did a lot more... kind of like saying the Washington Post has no content because you never looked past the front cover.

- Handwriting recognition is passable if you teach it

- Handwriting recognition being 'ploddingly slow' can be adjusted in the control panel

- Only Wifi will work given how often carriers disable DUN on their phones? I can't think of many phones that allow DUN over BlueTooth without a data plan. And if you're paying for a data plan, why would they disable it?

- Hard to configure a data connection over bluetooth? There's a button called [Connect]. Is it the "Are you sure" prompt causing the confusion, or entering the PIN on both devices?

- The 770 didn't connect to his home network. Concrete walls? Does his laptop connect in the same places? Is his home network sound? This has left me 'guessing at the cause'.

- Opera crashed when too many pages were opened... on a 64MB tablet... and?

- Page zooming - - howabout "optimized view". 5 seconds of poking around would've revealed that.

- No comment on the mail app - - I use web based email. Previous commentary on it sound like the reviewer's dead on though.

- Stuck if someone emails you a Word or Excel file. These are common tasks that I perform when browsing the internet. Honestly. (Ok, I lied.)

- RS-MMC cards being hard to find: Have you tried any cellular stores? You know, thouse phone outlets that are more populous than the computer/electronic stores which seem to be involved in the conspiracy to not stock RS-MMC cards? Howabout that interweb thing. I heard you can buy things there.

- 4.5 hours of battery life while browsing. Finally a review that compares to my experiences.

In summary, yet another case of someone expecting a laptop in the palm (no pun intended) of their hand. I find it interesting that Nokia has done nothing but niche it as an "internet tablet", market it for typical "internet" use, but people have had conniption fits over the fact that it's not a cell phone, they can't open MSOffice files, and that they have to *gasp* go online to find more software. Did they forget where half the junk installed on their XP boxes came from?

Given the incredibly few good points mentioned, something was up. I don't think it was an objective review at all. Apologies for my growing sarcasm as this post evolved, I was rolling my eyes so many times during reading the review that I couldn't help but get it out of my system.

Well. I'm off to make a phone call on my copy of the Washington Post. (It can't load MS Office files though.)

Was also Slashdotted

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardwar.../1221247.shtml

I read it too. I thought about emailing the droid to refute what he had to say, but hought better of it.

I really suspect that the person got a review copy, let it sit on his desk until 2 days before it was due back to Noka. Then he scrambled to write a review. He probably read the cnet one too.

I wonder how many of them actaully have tried it.

I think it's rather sad all around. The bulk of people will read reviews with an element of trust and pay no mind to the background politics or torrent of personal opinion that fueled them. I don't understand how, after reading that review and the CNET one, that my end-user experience could be as different as night and day. I think in any balanced review of the 770, the author should mention that it isn't a cell-phone (apparently a common misconception given the manufacturer), won't perform many PIM tasks *out of the box*, and crashes unexplicably sometime. I also think they should review the device against the manufacturer's claims and liberally use language reminding the reader of that. If you're too busy to spend an hour or two with a device, you're too busy to write meaningful reviews.

Yeah, I almost didn't buy mine because of all the bad reviews I saw kicking around. But then I found ThoughtFix's page, it pointed here, and after some reading, went out and got it after all.

I think the 770 will continue to be a gadget primarily enjoyed by technically savvy users until the 2006 OS is out. I love my 770, and use it for hours every day, but it took too much tweaking to make it stable.

Nokia: get 2006 OS out the door soon....before the momentum is lost.

The palm pilot was almost universally slammed by reviewers when if first came out. It was compared with <gasp> the Apple Newton.

Nokia just has to learn to kiss some reviewers butts. They probably made the mistake of not sending a free unit for evaluations.

Yeah, those were really unfair reviews to Newtons. There was no need to insult the Newton like that.

I have found that, by going on user reviews esclusively, you can't go far wrong. Putting too much weight on "professional" reviewers is generally a very big mistake.

The problem is people expect this to be fully read out of the box. If they are expecting a "laptop", since when did they get all their software pre-installed? The only thing I agree with the reviewer is the obsolete Flash Player/No MSOffice Compatibility. But honestly, I believe Nokia will solve this problem in the OS2006...