Not "Internet Tablet". "Online Document Viewer"

[gisborne]

If Nokia really intended this thing to be an "Internet Tablet", they should have got on board with the Internet being a two-way medium. ie they should have put a keyboard (or decent HWR; ideally both) on this thing.

Watch someone with a Sidekick typing stuff on it at 40wpm and then tell me a keyboard wouldn't be an improvement.

At least put hooks on this thing so you can attach a keyboard to it. A separate, folding BT keyboard doesn't work when you're walking around.

Don't get me wrong; my N800 is awesome. But if it had a keyboard, I would use it for all my IMing and much of my emailing. Right now, I just read stuff on it. It could have been so much more, for maybe another $5 in parts.

Such a missed opportunity.

That is all.

[Karel Jansens]

You wouldn't be asking for a thumbboard if the HWR worked half-way decently.

[phi]

I'd still want a thumb-board. i need some tactile feedback!

[Karel Jansens]

I'd still want a thumb-board. i need some tactile feedback!

"HWR" stands for "handwriting recognition"; that's about as tactile as you can get. :rolleyes:

[phi]

yeah, but i can type faster than i can write.

[artkavanagh]

yeah, but i can type faster than i can write.

On a thumbboard? Do you mind if I ask what species you are? ;)

[luketoh]

A thumbosapien?

[Johnx]

Hmm. I can't help but add my 2 cents here. I was able to type much faster on the thumboard of my Zaurus C1000 than I could use Grafiti on my Handspring Visor Prism. Real HWR that could actually make heads or tails of my (half-way decent) handwriting would be nice but if I had to choose I'd still take a hardware keyboard for one reason: It's kind of a PITA (for me at least) to use a stylus-based interface while walking or on the train, two situations where I frequently find myself wanting to use my N800. Ah well, I guess I can't have everything I want.

-John X

[Karel Jansens]

Hmm. I can't help but add my 2 cents here. I was able to type much faster on the thumboard of my Zaurus C1000 than I could use Grafiti on my Handspring Visor Prism. Real HWR that could actually make heads or tails of my (half-way decent) handwriting would be nice but if I had to choose I'd still take a hardware keyboard for one reason: It's kind of a PITA (for me at least) to use a stylus-based interface while walking or on the train, two situations where I frequently find myself wanting to use my N800. Ah well, I guess I can't have everything I want.

-John X

I'm a touch-typist, so I'll gladly concede that I can type much faster than I can write -- on a normally-sized keyboard, that is. Even on my Psion 5mx I couldn't type all that fast and on that keyboard it was actually marginally possible to touch-type (but never for long, because the key placement was just that bit off to what I was used to, that I couldn't help myself from peeking).

I have used lots of thumbboards, most extensively the ones on my Treo 270 and subsequently my SE P910. The biggest problem with thumbboards is that it is impossible to type blindly: You always have to keep your eyes on the thumbboard to see what you are tapping at, and in doing so you lose contact with your text. The virtual thumbboard on the 770/N800 is actually rather good in that respect, but only because it leaves just a tiny amount of screen realestate, which is easy to find. Still, try to tap and look at your text at the same time. I dare you...

I consider that the biggest advantage of full-screen handwriting recognition: You keep eye contact with your text at all times, just as you would with real, oldfashioned pen-and-paper handwriting. For me, the trade-off in speed is more than made up by the inherent focus this input method offers. That is why your comparison to the Grafitti-like character recognition is flawed: Grafitti (and its likes) are basically thumbboards without keys.

I've said here before (ad nauseam, to some) that I'm a Newton user of old. In fact, for almost five years, a MessagePad 2100 was more or less my main computer for on the road. I own a keyboard for the Newton (and with the carrying case it actually almost resembled a mini-laptop), but I've used it only a handful of times. For an entire year, I brought my MessagePad to weekly (often dayly) meetings in a major restauration project and took minutes for those meetings. I was faster in handwriting than the guy with the laptop and usually more accurate, mainly because the Newton has such an amazing handwriting recognition system.

The really sad thing is that the Newtons HWR still exists: PhatWare sells it as Calligrapher and PenOffice -- for f**king Windows only!! All they have to do is port it to Linux (and Maemo, obviously) and noone will ever ask for a thumbboard again (not entirely true: even on the Newton boards there is the occasional deluded individual who wants a thumbboard. They are usually properly chastised for doing so :rolleyes: )

Oh, BTW, I also used my Newton on the train, without keyboard. I actually wrote entire articles on the train.

[sondjata]

Long live the newton. I almost bought one off ebay. I was sad when they were discontinued.

[wodin]

I carry a PDA phone (Samsung SCH i730 (the beloved beastie)) and an N800 (Marvin). My goal would be to not have to carry the beastie and have a more phonecentric phone like perhaps a RAZR and Marvin tetherd with Bluetooth. Needless to say, Marvin is not yet up to the task, but I keep hoping.

But to get back on topic; the thumb board on the beastie is very much more usable than any of the input methods on Marvin, and I am more than twice as fast with the thumb board. And it's a relatively small one.

The downside of a thumb board for Marvin would be it necessarily would make him thicker and heavier and more expensive. Probably not on par with an OQO, but close. I'm thinking that now that the OQO model 02 is out, the Model 01 plus might just be approaching the price of an N800 soon. And there's a whole forum over at oqotalk.com about running Linux on it. Hmmmm ...

[gisborne]

I own two Newtons, and they are awesome. But HWR sucks for trying to use a terminal. And a keyboard like the Sidekick has is about the same speed as handwriting. So although I'm dying for Einstein to wind up running at a decent speed on this thing, I'd still like a keyboard.

[Karel Jansens]

I own two Newtons, and they are awesome. But HWR sucks for trying to use a terminal. And a keyboard like the Sidekick has is about the same speed as handwriting. So although I'm dying for Einstein to wind up running at a decent speed on this thing, I'd still like a keyboard.

It is indeed true that connectivity was (and is) the Newton's achilles heel. And the terminal program is about as much removed from the Newton "philosophy" as you can get.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying the entire Newton is groovy and the best there is, not by a long shot. Newtons user interface is IMO the best yet developed for pen-centric computing and its HWR (both Rosetta and ParaGraph) still kick major butt.

But!! Newtons connected to Macs poorly and to the rest even worse; they were conceived before the Internet became more than a curiosity; their file system (if you can call it that) was as arcane as -- as a very arcane thing; Newtons often suffered from Apple's "dumb it down to a politician's level" principle. And there's probably other stuff I forget...

[Johnx]

I'm a touch-typist, so I'll gladly concede that I can type much faster than I can write -- on a normally-sized keyboard, that is. Even on my Psion 5mx I couldn't type all that fast and on that keyboard it was actually marginally possible to touch-type (but never for long, because the key placement was just that bit off to what I was used to, that I couldn't help myself from peeking).

I used my C1000's keyboard for long enough (it was my handheld computer / laptop for more than a year) that toward the end I rarely needed to look at it while typing. I didn't even realize that I'd gotten that comfortable using it until I tried thumb typing on it in the dark once...and didn't really have a problem.

I have used lots of thumbboards, most extensively the ones on my Treo 270 and subsequently my SE P910. The biggest problem with thumbboards is that it is impossible to type blindly: You always have to keep your eyes on the thumbboard to see what you are tapping at, and in doing so you lose contact with your text. The virtual thumbboard on the 770/N800 is actually rather good in that respect, but only because it leaves just a tiny amount of screen realestate, which is easy to find. Still, try to tap and look at your text at the same time. I dare you...

I haven't managed to wrap my mits around a P910 yet, but I've played with a coworker's Treo for a while and a T-Mobile Dash / HTC Excalibur, and found both to be a painful experience as far as typing is concerned. I actually liked the Zaurus SL-5500's little slide-out thumboard better. I also really liked the form factor of that thing as a PDA.

I consider that the biggest advantage of full-screen handwriting recognition: You keep eye contact with your text at all times, just as you would with real, oldfashioned pen-and-paper handwriting. For me, the trade-off in speed is more than made up by the inherent focus this input method offers. That is why your comparison to the Grafitti-like character recognition is flawed: Grafitti (and its likes) are basically thumbboards without keys.

I've said here before (ad nauseam, to some) that I'm a Newton user of old. In fact, for almost five years, a MessagePad 2100 was more or less my main computer for on the road. I own a keyboard for the Newton (and with the carrying case it actually almost resembled a mini-laptop), but I've used it only a handful of times. For an entire year, I brought my MessagePad to weekly (often dayly) meetings in a major restauration project and took minutes for those meetings. I was faster in handwriting than the guy with the laptop and usually more accurate, mainly because the Newton has such an amazing handwriting recognition system.

I really should try and get my hands on a Newton one day. Truth be told, I haven't actually used anything with decent fullscreen HWR. I was mainly just adding the experience I had with other devices to the thread.

The really sad thing is that the Newtons HWR still exists: PhatWare sells it as Calligrapher and PenOffice -- for f**king Windows only!! All they have to do is port it to Linux (and Maemo, obviously) and noone will ever ask for a thumbboard again (not entirely true: even on the Newton boards there is the occasional deluded individual who wants a thumbboard. They are usually properly chastised for doing so :rolleyes: )

Oh, BTW, I also used my Newton on the train, without keyboard. I actually wrote entire articles on the train.

Maybe they make the train tracks bumpier here? All I know is that I was more comfortable typing on my Zaurus than writing in a notebook. And that's doubly true when there's standing room only.

-John

[mobiledivide]

I have a XP tablet and the HWR is actually really good, my handwriting is pretty decent. I haven't tried to train the handwriting on N800 but I don't really want to. HWR tech needs to recognize whole words, not just letters. If you could do whole words, inline Newton style this device would just rock even harder than it does already.

[gisborne]

I guess I'm imagining something that looks, say, a lot like a Sidekick. Would that not rock? A full keyboard! BASH as it was meant to be. Find someone who has one and watch them operate it. Hard to deny the practicality of the keyboard when they're rocking 40wpm on it. Faster than I could write flat out, let alone writing clearly enough for my Newton's HWR.

The Sidekick is a great form factor as anything but a phone. :-)

While I'm on the subject, the BT keyboard support would be five times more useful if it had BT mouse support. The reason we use a mouse and not a pen with our computers is that switching between a keyboard and a pen is a frustrating and time consuming operation. No different with the N800.

[mobiledivide]

BT mouse support would be really nice. It would transform the "desktop" experience.
I have a full qwerty on my E70, its a really comfortable pad and coming from years (02-07) of using the "gullwing" form factor (Nokia 6800, 6820) I am very proficient with it, that said, I still don't really like it for typing out longer than 30 words or so. Thumbpads just aren't that useful, the thumbsize on screen keyboard of the n800 is pretty much all I need.

The best case scenario would be a hard case with a keyboard that you could lock into your lap to use. That way you could go slate only mode or minilaptop if necessary.

[artkavanagh]

I'm a touch-typist, so I'll gladly concede that I can type much faster than I can write -- on a normally-sized keyboard, that is.

I completely agree. There's a world of difference between a normally-sized keyboard and the kind of thing you get with Sidekicks, Treos, Sony Mylos and so on. I don't want to become proficient with a thumbboard because I'm afraid that, as a trade-off, my ability to use a proper keyboard might suffer. One of the main things that attracted me to the N800 was its ability to work with bluetooth keyboards.

I'm afraid I missed out on the Newton. I was on the point of buying an eMate at one stage but it would have stretched my budget just a little too far at the time. Then Steve Jobs returned to save his old company and decreed that they needed to simplify their product line. Encore raté, as my nephew says.

[Karel Jansens]

I have a XP tablet and the HWR is actually really good, my handwriting is pretty decent. I haven't tried to train the handwriting on N800 but I don't really want to. HWR tech needs to recognize whole words, not just letters. If you could do whole words, inline Newton style this device would just rock even harder than it does already.

The reason the HWR on XP is that good, is that you are almost certainly using ParaGraph's HWR engine, licensed to Microsoft.

[Karel Jansens]

I'm afraid I missed out on the Newton. I was on the point of buying an eMate at one stage but it would have stretched my budget just a little too far at the time. Then Steve Jobs returned to save his old company and decreed that they needed to simplify their product line. Encore raté, as my nephew says.

EMates go for almost nothing on eBay; MessagePads (2000, 2000upgraded and 2100) are more expensive, up to USD 200 for complete kits.

I wouldn't buy any of the earlier models if your plan is to try out the cursive HWR: the 1*0 models are the "Doonesbury" models, with not enough CPU horsepower to do decent ParaGraph cursive HWR. Rosetta (Apple's "intelligent" printed HWR) is fine, though.

[geneven]

I enjoyed printing fast on a Palm. It just doesn't work for me on the N800. I have dreamed about dropping in Graffiti so I could use its shapes on the N800.

Eventually, text-to-speech will be workable and fast on these things. Writers sitting on the beach in the moonlight and telling their stories to a small computer will become a cliche.

[Karel Jansens]

I enjoyed printing fast on a Palm. It just doesn't work for me on the N800. I have dreamed about dropping in Graffiti so I could use its shapes on the N800.

Eventually, text-to-speech will be workable and fast on these things. Writers sitting on the beach in the moonlight and telling their stories to a small computer will become a cliche.

TTS is one of those things almost everybody thinks will be the future of computer input -- until you actually try it and discover how counter-intuitive it really is with today's user interfaces. E.g.: Try to formulate a well-structured document on voice only. You'd need to pre-compose about a gazillion voice macros to get everything done.

What would really rock however, is a NLUI, a Natural Language User Interface, where you could interact with a computer basically the same way you interact with other human beings, using normal, everyday language and fuzzy logic. Like telling the computer: "Find me a song I ripped to ogg about a week ago. It's by Led Zeppelin", rather than typing, scribbling or wording a list of arcane command sequences or spending hours mousing through directories.

Such a user interface would always work, regardless of the input method used. We've still got a long way to go though...

[luketoh]

Have you guys watched Wild Hogs? There's a funny part in the movie that deals with NLUI. :)

[sdrman]

Anyone notice that the handwriting input changes colors in the new firmware?
I think it works better now, as long as I space letters far enouqh apart.

EDIT: Color change happens only with vista theme.

[Karel Jansens]

Have you guys watched Wild Hogs? There's a funny part in the movie that deals with NLUI. :)

A swine movie?

[Karel Jansens]

Anyone notice that the handwriting input changes colors in the new firmware?
I think it works better now, as long as I space letters far enouqh apart.

I did notice a small recognition improvement.The problem with my "r"s deleting previous letters persists though.

And I see it hasn't grasped your "g"s yet either. :rolleyes:

[azule]

Having something like grafiti for the N800 would be ideal.. back in the day i was crazy fast on my palm.

[ArnimS]

If Nokia really intended this thing to be an "Internet Tablet", they should have got on board with the Internet being a two-way medium. ie they should have put a keyboard (or decent HWR; ideally both) on this thing.

I really shouldn't reply to a 'they didn't build what i wanted!' rant, but anwyay...

They put bluetooth in it, so you can purchase the keyboard of your choice, rather than being locked into whatever hardware is built-in. Thus, rather than having *a* hardware keyboard, which 30% will like and 70% will hate - the 770/800 have *many* keyboard options, including none.

That's not to say that something like a treo or an old-style zaurus form-factor wouldn't be a nice addition. It'd be really nice to see more hardware options that run the same apps and maemo OS.

How about a maemo-based phone, even smaller-than 770, with a front that's only the 800x480 screen (like the iPhone) but oriented in portrait mode (vertically), including side mounted buttons placed directly under natural finger placement.

Nokia is now in a position where it can leverage their investement in maemo, and the contributions of the maemo community, to power a variety of future devices and form factors. Maemo+770/800 is a great start, but to get better, it needs more users, more developers, more mind and market share.

... I seem to have strayed from my original brief, but in summary: Sex is more fun than Logic...

[gisborne]

You can't use a BT keyboard standing up. But I already mentioned that.

[phi]

i'd be all for a attachable thumbboard that used bluetooth to connect. would've worked better with the 770 form factor.

[geneven]

I read the fiirst five chapters of Martin Cruse Smith's Red Square into text using Dragon NaturallySpeaking in XP. One of the main characters was named Jak. Dragon NaturallySpeaking picked up that unusual spelling and many others in just a few pages --- it was amazing. I didn't have to train, it just learned. I did the same thing with Guns, Germs and Steel and something I think was called The Columbia Encyclopedia of World History. In all cases speech to text was much easier than typing, especially since my computer is a better speller than I am.

Yes, you would do much of the formatting later. But getting the text input is a huge step.

I want my N800 to do that! Or, more likely, some future small computer.

[TA-t3]

FWIW, as far as the hardware is concerned Nokia built the N800 exactly to my specs.. it's almost scary!
About input methods: For voice input etc. I refer to Karel's posting, it summarized the reality pretty well. When it comes to hardware thumb keyboards, I have one of those on my Zaurus and I never use it. The on-screen keyboard is faster, the hw keyboards never have the keys I want quickly available. Handwriting: I can't do it. I'm way faster with a stylus than with graffiti-like input -- on my Palm I use it only for up to max. 3 letters and only in 'write anywhere' mode and when the on-screen keyboard isn't on screen at the time.

It would of course be completely fine with me if there was a write-anywhere accept-any-handwriting system available, even though I myself would probably stick to the keyboard anyway. Options are good, if for no other reason that it could sell more units, which would again be good for customers, i.e. me. For HW thumb keyboards though I have problems seeing the light. It increases HW costs for sure.

All in all: For me, the N800 as it is is good. Just as I want it. I'll be adding a foldable BT keyboard at some stage, but I have trouble finding one with my national letter layout.