I read an interesting article today (I think on Slashdot) that said the reason why privacy is a lost battle is because the government determines it based on the over populace. Because people willingly share so much private information about themselves nowadays privacy advocates are being ruined by their fellow man.

I totally agree with your point. Google went too far already in 2007, but some of their services are simply brilliant. For example, what do you recommend to use instead of Google Translate?

Sooner or later your house will be powered by Google's Energy!

I don't know if this has been said before on this thread since I am kinda lazy reading every post, but the Flash 10 is also coming to N900.. So I think the Web browsing part is still and will be better than the Nexus One IMO..

Also the Nexus one only support (b/g) and does not support n

Go to this page and you'll see by yourself:

http://www.google.com/phone/static/e...ech_specs.html (But this has been said before )

Nice comparison.

But...

Wait...

WHAT????

EVERY Android phone has multitasking.

Someone hasn't learned what Home long press does

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I'd be interested in seeing a browser speed test on video. Can anyone do something like the following video, but with a Nexus One and an N900 at the same time?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blr7OtefrHM

So true, but there's a huge difference between lots of data collected overall, and lots of data being held by a single company, especially one which is a world leader in cross referencing to extract meaning.

By cross-referencing between, say, the contents of your text messages and your approximate location, they can deduce a lot more then either alone.

That's just two things. Now expand to include all your work and friend IM message contents, search terms, chosen results, referrer links, GPS, photos, emails, how long you spend reading some things compared with others, even voice call contents... When lots of people use all of Google's services, that's a lot of incredibly detailed personal data they have all at once. Much more than the police have!

I like Google, I really do, and use some of their services. I just thing it's a serious human security vulnerability to have so much cross-referencable detailed activity and communications data funelled through one data system.

I wonder if people would feel differently if the Google/Android phones were called Doubleclick.net phones or some other seedier sounding behaviour tracking company.

Which is best for reading pdfs?
n800 is better than the android htc magic my wife has, but my buddy showed me some software on the iphone 3gs which was much better that anything Ive seen (much better than evince on n800).

Fbreader
is available for both android and n900 - tie

Which can run divx avis (no conversion)?
I believe only the n900 has mplayer and can play them, android/iphone can't

Which has the best vnc/rdesktop?
Again I am afraid it might be the iphone 3gs - the vnc software is excellent, Is the VNC app ported to n900 any good?

Best text editor?
n900?

Best voip/skype?
Android implementation of skype is awful.

What do you expect in a VNC client, I mean, what makes one VNC client better than another? The N900 VNC client let me control the downstairs computer...

Theres simply zero competition when it comes to VNC on iphone (and to some extend, other handsets) vs n900. Here's why:

Resolution: on IPhone you are forever pinching pinching pinching.. to zoom. The IPhone tries to be smart to recognize a pinch or a swipe not as a click through to the VNC server. N900 with 800x480 involves a lot less scrolling, and does away entirely with zoom. If you touch the screen, the click instantly goes through to the vnc server, as you would expect.

Right and middle click: on n900, hold "plus zoom key" on the top of the device then click the screen for a right-click, or hold "minus zoom key" for middle mouse click. Fast and usable. On the IPhone.. ?? i still haven't worked out how to right-click. I'm sure there's a way, but with no hardware buttons to act as a right-click modifier, its sure to be annoying.

Hardware keyboard. Type away on the keyboard of the n900, and you can still see all 800x480 pixels of whats going on, in the VNC session. This just aint possible on an IPhone.

Multitasking: want to switch between browser, IM chats and VNC sessions? (a very common scenario for someone using a VNC client). Want to have multiple VNC sessions to different PCs? not possible (or very difficult) on IPhone.

Ive used an IPhone for a while as a VNC client. When you need to VNC into something, after a while you subconsciously start looking around for a spare PC with mouse and keyboard. There's the feeling of "i could use my IPhone, to VNC into the remote computer, but its just too frustrating.." There is no such feeling with the N900. You log in, quickly perform the required task, and disconnect within seconds.

There's no way someone could claim that VNC on IPhone presents any competition here. Did i mention you can VNC into your N900 from a PC? (see x11vnc app)

Hey did you happen to test the differences in GPS capabilities between both devices?

So this is actually my first post on the forum. Been lurking for a while reading info and convincing myself to splurge on a N900.

I had been using a G1 for ~1 year, but it died last week. Anyway, Android does multitasking, but not as completely as the N900 does. In Android, lets say you open up the browser and then hit the home key to open up The Weather Channel app. Hitting the home key actually puts the Browser into a sort of sleep mode, not completely exiting out like the iPhone would do but not fully running in the background like the N900 would do either. You can switch back to the browser and it appears to return back to where it was, however it was not actively running in the background and was possibly even paged off in order to regain the memory (especially in the case of the memory-lacking G1).

That said, the press-and-hold home key is actually kind of deceiving. Doing this shows you a list of recent apps, not a list of the currently running apps. You can use various task managers to completely kill off all the processes running, but if you press-and-hold the home key it will still show you some of the last apps you used.