Hello,

I guess I'm in somewhat of a different position than many of the people here but I thought I would ask anyway.

Two years ago I lost my job and have a disability that have made it very hard for me to get back into the workforce.

I lost pretty much everything over these two years - girlfriend, apartment, possessions. Having said that I don't seek sympathy hey, I got a full set of hair at least :-)

Anyway, my 'needs' or situation is like this:

I couch-surf a lot and don't have my own address at this time. My laptop (that was my 'prized possession') recently died. I used this laptop for a) finding short-term jobs (sometimes I can get $50+ per week) and I take part in any medical research program that is willing to shoot weird stuff into me - and also as a 'phone' as I used VoiP (Skype) on it (had to cancel the cellphone due to its cost).

I used the WiFi at coffee shops to connect.

What I need is: a solution that will allow me to, when connected to a wifi spot, receive and make calls, browse craigslist, check and reply to emails and is portable.

What made me think of a tablet is that it could potentially be a quicker/easier way to get to making a VoiP call. In the past I had to pay $2 for some coffee so that I could set up my laptop, boot up and make the call...with a tablet maybe I could just stand outside the coffee shop and make the call?

I also like to watch youtube and downloaded videos (yes, I use torrentz ) so that's a plus as well. I don't really share my viewing with other people as it's really just me so the screen size is not a big issue.

Please, not looking for comments on my situation - I just included it so that you can assess if a tablet like Nokia's would be a solution for me.

I've been looking at eBay for N800's and it's a bit of a surprise that this device is still selling for over 120-150 dollars used. I assume eBay would be the cheapest way to try to get one though?

If anyone got a scratched up, missing non-essential parts, etc and would be willing to sell it do let me know though

Thanks!
Bum(mer)

The tablet would be suitable for every single thing you mentioned. Also, it's quite good at connecting by wifi, so the outside-the-coffee-shop scenario ought to work, too.

Gerald, thanks!
I've read up a little bit on the battery life of the N800 and from what I've gathered it seems like;
. continous wifi use: about 2 hours
. off-line use (documents, etc) = 5-6 hours
= Mixed use: About 4 hours.

Does that sound about right?
How long to actually charge the device (from empty to full)?

Thanks again!

though it doesnt have the cpu to play the high resolution stuff people put in torrents..

Thanks shadow, I looked up video viewing on the N800 and it seems many people are disappointed in it (choppy, out of sync, etc). That is a bummer indeed.

Is the MP4 viewing any improved on the latest OS?

Well, MPlayer should play most things fine, provided the files are around 352x240 or so in size. Bigger and you risk getting choppiness.

If you get videos designed for the iPod, they work pretty well with mplayer and they seem plentiful enough.

qole, what do you mean by "videos designed for the iPod"?

I have an N810 with the latest (and presumably last) release of OS2008, and streaming video (aside from youtube) is pretty much non-existent.

Unless there is a major Hulu-like site that I am unaware of, you won't have much luck viewing streaming content (choppy or otherwise) unless somebody knows how to bypass the 'latest flash version' check...

as for mp4's, sorry, I haven't gotten to that point yet.

While in-browser video playback is not really useful, most non-flash streaming video is quite watchable, using either the built-in media player or mplayer. And if you are interested in watching youtube, your best bet by far is to use the "mytube" application in Extras.

If you are downloading torrents of videos, and I would never do such a thing, search for videos with "ipod" in their name. A guy I know who downloads video torrents told me that those work pretty well with the tablets.