pre-800 owner skeered away
 

after learning of the 800, i was excited; came here to learn how to get the most from it. instead i see so many probs, im totally intimidated. i dont need another hobby. i wanted a tool. the list of probs seems huge. the price is rite and features seem better than the 810. fixes and topics all seem so fragmented, patchy, and incomplete..linux on ipod is just a novel hobby; its player cant compare w/apple player, and the things it does is still really clunky..maybe not accurate comparison. delete this if you want..i might get it for the things advertised.. hate carryin laptop for simple surfing, etc..itouch or anymore apple is outta the question

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Follow the postings of the senior members and you'll get plenty of usage from an N800.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

You are going to find that no matter what it is, there will be some kind of problems associated with it. For me, the N800 has been great and done everything it is supposed to have done. I was just overseas for a week and instead of carting around my laptop I had it and it worked beautifully.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

amkaos.. sorry, but imho, your post is unclear. at the end, you seemed to say you're gonna get one of the Nokia tablets anyways.. and that apple stuff is out of the question..

Its a very very simple thing.. the Nokia Tablets are a much more open platform, as such there's development efforts on it from a variety of individuals and organizations.. as with any development effort there's gonna be some quirks..

However, with the base software, you get what is advertised, a top notch portable internet surfing tool.. and very capable media player. The fact that the tablets are an open platform means there's a chance for it to improve and be more intuitive as a personal / local media player.. however, they're hands down the most flexible hardware / tool for the price point..

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Okay, obviously some of the junior member posts can't hurt. :p

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

i said i might get it.. and apple HW is outta the question..i might just wait. i would be disappointed if app developement trails off w/more incompletes than finished--big concern..i am exactly unclear .. if there was one place i could find a list of apps that are finished (or at least that everyone is satisfied with), that would make decisions waaay easier.. im sure such a list is not available.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Although I don't like class distinctions, I will post as a junior member.

The whole problem with the wait and see what happens mentality is, anything that is powered by a microprocessor is running some kind of operating system plus software to accomplish it's task. That means that problems or improvements will take place at sometime or another and probably break something else, which will get fixed sooner or later, so if your going to wait for perfection you will never buy anything because it is always in a constant state of improvement. This applies to the iTouch and everything else out there, so you might as well jump in with both feet and enjoy the things that work very well on the N800. Another thing is, that I would rather own a device that has an open source OS than something closed like the Touch that you have ask god, (Steve Jobs) whether you can install something on it.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

i aint sure why you brought up the word perfect.. wait and see is valid since i dont expect perfect. since "jailbreak" itouch is better, the nexgen touch might put me there..but again, i dont know when or what it will look like.. one major thing i keep going back to :: 800 HW features and current pricepoint.
athxn for the replies

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

My friend Texrat: Don't forget you can become a senior member just for the number of posts...like my personal case :D

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

There was no offense meant. :D It's just that we had another big wave of new members join recently and I can see why the OP would be scared off by the resulting "noise". Posts by seniors such as Milhouse, fanoush, GeneralAntilles, zerojay, penguinbait and others can lead newcomers or potential buyers directly to useful info.

In fact, maybe the admin should add a sticky post listing the experts, for search purposes...

Yeah, just ignore that guy. :p

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

The thing about jailbreaking is you have to keep doing it with each firmware update. Until they decide to let the homebrew community play without disturbance (pretty rare). And sure you can keep doing it after a firmware update. Heck on the Sony PSP they've created ways to upgrade and downgrade your firmware just to play those games that do firmware checks. It's just, are you really up to the task. At the end it just seems the same amount of work as learning whatever OS and the software that goes with it on another device to me.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

amkaos, if reading the various posts on the forum is too tedious then just dont buy one.

My response and posts from others are quite clear. I read over the contributions on this site and other sites, and bought 4 N800s... I'm very happy.. only wish they had tv out.. but nothing else comparable does.

Asking for a list of "completed apps" is both impractical and unreasonable.

1. Everything including apps are subject to improvement
2. The only thing I would define as "completed apps" are the ones shipped with the OS 2007 or OS 2008. But even those are subject to change / improvement.
3. Lastly, how would one individual know / track development efforts of all maemo developers?

Bottom line is you should know exactly what it is you want, first check the manufacturer's product / support pages, and then search this forum or the web for the specific requirements and features you want.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

as i understand it, the jailbreak is now painless; once you learn it, there is no more curve.. you dont have to do it until and unless you see a FW you want.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

If a friend or family member was looking for a cool portable music/media player with WiFi internet access, I would probably tell them to get the iPod Touch instead of the N800.

If a business collegue was looking for a pocket internet connectivity tool, I would probably tell him to get the N800. It's more functional, and I don't think it's at all difficult to understand or use for non-Linux people, as long as you don't go too far beyond the basics that Nokia is supporting.

Personally I also find my N800 to be very useful as a music/media player because of some specific capabilities that it has that the iPod doesn't (e.g., Rhapsody, FM radio, access to my UPNP media server at home etc.), but that would depend on your style of use.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Agree 100%; as for me, also, the external speakers are a big plus, and btw they sound great for the size!

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

thanx for the reply. i did say that i dont need another hobby--to hunt down apps, try sev installations, hunt for a fix only to find that the app never worked right to begin with etc
..#1) non-buggy apps is not the same as functional apps that can be improved
#2 is only half of what i said; the other half == or at least that everyone is satisfied with (not buggy).
#3) a current non-buggy list doesnt seem outta line to me..
thanx again

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

I think a lot of this boils down to the tablets hosting a Linux platform... and much like I tell people who are making the switch from Windows to Linux, mindset is key.

Since the tablets are a near complete deviation of the pay software model, a lot of hiccups ought to be expected. Most of these neat apps are done by people on their spare time for the love of programming or the satisfaction of being able to say something like "awe cool, I paired my Wii remote with my Internet Tablet!". Unfortunately in a lot of cases you get the support / adherence to development timelines that you pay for.

Conversely, a lot of this stuff wouldn't exist if you had to pay for it. You'd also... well... have to pay for it. The niche is probably too small at current for people to dump a tonne of money into developing apps and start marketing them.

I'd actually offer you the opposite advice of TexRat. (Hah! :) ) Look at the posts of junior members (and try to filter through the rage and bitterness, hehehe) and see what the tablet can do. Most of it isn't too difficult and there have been problems as of late, but remember people are more prone to spout negativity and disappear than say positive things. (When's the last time you called up your TV manufacturer and told them 5 years on it's working great?)

All that said, tablets aren't for everyone. See if you can get some hands on time.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

If you take the n800 for what it is, out of the box, it's great. Few people buy an iPod to do things other than play music and videos. If you're going to buy an n800 to surf the net, play music and videos, along with a couple other fairly robust applications (i.e. maemo mapper), it will be great for that.

If you want to stay on the bleeding edge of everything, you're going to have to go hunting for things. This forum is a great resource for things of that nature.

Despite all the "noise" from new users, most people generally don't have problems with their tablets. Those that do, generally either have a hardware problem (either related to the tablet, SD cards, home network misconfiguration etc.), or an inability to use google.

I view iPods and their ilk sort of like a guy who rides public transport and can only move on established routes. Sure its usually quite easy getting from point A to point B, or to point C, and it's nearly impossible to get lost, once you get the hang of it.

The n800 is like a car you can drive. The major highways are fairly well established and easy to find. The side streets might be in ill repair, but generally get you where you need to go as well, and sometimes you can go places that public transit can't take you. And sometimes you get lost. However, you can go pretty much wherever you want, any time you want.

Both are reasonable transportation, one is sometimes more hassle than the other, depending on where you want to go, and what you want to do.

I chose to drive.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

amkaos, you did not say non-buggy, you said "finished apps" see below quote. as you arent fully responding to the responses of others.. YOU HAVE NOT INDICATED WHAT FEATURES YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.. thus generic and vague responses from some folks.

IMHO, the N800 is not for you, as it is a constantly improving device, and the only thing you've said is you want something "finished" and had no bugs.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Nokia Marketing had this clever ad bite, "Drivers Wanted", but damned if some silly little car company didn't snag it first.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

lemme ask this :: can i make "restore point like" backup in case i screw somethin up or just want go back ?

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Yes, included with OS2008, and probably with older Tablet OSes, is backup software that will allow you to backup selectable components (documents, apps, etc) and back them up to a desired location such as a memory card.

Alternately, with a little effort, you can set your tablet to boot off the memory card, thus you can backup the card on your computer, etc. The N800 is ideal for this as it has two full size SDHC card slots, you can use either one for the OS, and the other for expansion.

I dont personally have any experience with the OS from card booting but forum posts indicate its relatively painless.

Why I bought four (for myself and relatives):

Two full size SDHC slots, 802.11a/g, bluetooth, touch screen, pop out rotating vga webcam, removable battery, usb (with host mode or seen as two removable drives).. web browser with flash 9, mp3, divx (without conversion), upnp, rdp, telnet/ssh.. and all for often under $250 (I actually paid $215 after taxes each - Christmas sale price).

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

well, how bout backing the the "reg" to preserve settings etc, in case i try something that fubars everything.. docs, and files i aint worried about..

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

He answered the settings question with "etc". ;) Short answer: yes, you can backup settings.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Eh, I don't see what the big deal about 'hunting down apps' is. I think that they've done a really good job with the maemo site, and with the package manager to put everything in a central place (Install things from the site, opens up package manager). It's dirt easy to find what you're looking for and install it. In fact, I'd say that it's just about the easiest system that I've seen for finding new apps and getting them installed, especially for a mobile device.

maemo.org/downloads - official site where you can search for almost any maemo app available
gronmayer.com/it/index.php?lang=en - site that allows you to install all of the available repositories at once

As far as the quality of the apps, as has been said before, the apps that ship with OS2007/2008 all pretty much work the way they are supposed to. OS2008 has come leaps and bounds over OS2007, as far as integration between all of the communication apps. I haven't had to spend any time since flashing to OS2008 fixing anything.

If you just toss a couple of 16GB SDHC cards in there, you can get twice the capacity of apple's current iPod Touch. There are some really good third party apps for playback, like canola2 and kagu. AND, you can use your bluetooth headphones to listen to your music.

Plus, the n800 plays flash videos natively, ie you can watch _anything_ on youtube.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

ok, that does it.. screw it.. gonna get it.. i just hope i didnt buy a non-paying part-time job... thanx
one more thing,,, i want to play online poker. several dayz ago, i saw about someone who managed that networking to his home pc.. anyone know what im talkin about?
sadly, they aint givin away 16gb sd's.. they about 100+- each. too much
thanx again

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Not giving away, but not that bad any more. Yes, 100+ is too much... How's about $70 + shipping? :D
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...44&postcount=3

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

i saw this on another forum the other day.. iirc, reviews on these arent real good,, slow etc.. anyone confirm/rebuke this?
price is rite if its a good product
thanx

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Allow me to throw in my humble 2 cents

I'm no Linux novice, and have no idea how to get command line working. It's been years since I coded anything, and I've since moved on to other priorities in my life.

As a result, I've learned to be clear about what I want my device to do. I bought an N800 for media playback (music and videos), VoIP (Skype, Gizmo and SIP), IM, and most importantly, a good web browser.

With Canola2, I have a great user experience for my media needs

With microB/Mozilla, I have a great user experience for my web needs, and since it does Gmail in all it's AJAX glory, YouTube

With Orb, I use uPNP to gain access to my primary 500GB media hard drive at home, allowing me to locate and playback/view and song/image anywhere in the house

With Skype and Gizmo, I have a choice of using either service provider across 2.75G/3G/3.5G and Wifi networks, and with this, anyone can call/IM me, anytime, anywhere.

I have a Transcend 16GB SDHC card in my N800, and plan to get another 16GB SDHC card when I return to Singapore in a couple of weeks. Combined, this gives me 32GB of space, which Vista/XP automatically recognize as flash storage -- No need for any fancy sync software to sync my music and videos, although I do re-encode my videos to optimize for size. My N800 has more storage compared to my iPod photo, and if it wasn't for the limited battery life of the N800, I'd have long retired my 30GB iPod Photo

My N800 connects to my Nokia E51, which also gives me VoIP, IM and a semi-decent web browing experience, and is a killer device in its own right.

The only real downside I have experienced so far is related to battery life, and i have solved that by toting a small Nokia charger and kept a Nokia car charger in my car. The iPod Touch and iPhones are not exempt from this problem as I understand that prolonged web browsing could limit battery life considerably.

All in all, I spend more time USING the N800 than FIXING it. Aside from the few foolish moments experimenting with beta software such as the Instant Messaging upgrade (I have since realised that Pidgin gets the job done for me), I have had few problems, and nothing that could not be resolved by a quick reflash. This is where I have learned that it is a good idea to backup your bookmarks, contacts and settings)

Would I be happier off with an N810? Certainly, but I also understand that it only had ONE SD slot, and until 32GB SDHC cards appear in the market, it means that I can 'only' have a max of 18GB on the N810. The N810, however, has two features that I would like -- a physical keyboard, and GPS, and I will probably pick one up as soon as I can get my hands on one back in Singapore or from Amazon.

The way I see it, A2DP is not an IF, but a WHEN, and in the meantime, I have no issues using a wired headset, which is not a bad idea since a BT stereo headset would impose more drain on the battery life.

Hope this helps your decision making, from a newbie's perspective. :)

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

I haven't tried online poker, but I haven't really run into any web stuff that doesn't work, including Google Docs.

I just bought the 16GB SDHC card for $80 (free shipping); the 8GB cards are down to around $35. I don't have it yet, so I don't know how the quality is. Of course, for that price, instead of getting two 8GB cards, you might as well get one 16GB card, then another when you feel like it's worth it. Again, depending on the quality (I'm hoping it's ok).

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Hello amkaos.. trying my best to help out fellow Maemo newbies.. but some things you just gotta give it a hack yourself.

1. Online Poker? You're on your own with that.. not gonna help someones gambling habits :)

Hint .. Maemo.org offers software to try a virtualized version of its environment on the Windows.

2. remote access? that's something that's well answered in other posts.. use the forums search tool.. some terms:

remote access, rdesktop, rdp,

Now, when you start using the N800 for things like remote access, and other extra functionality not marketed by Nokia, you will need to invest some of your own time.. as you call it.. part time job..

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

not sure what the microB part of the app is--whatever , if that is what it takes to get firefox goin..
im not sure why you need Orb unless thats what it takes to gain access to drives on network..
how in the damm does vista recognize sd on linux 800?
thanx

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

@ghoonk: A2DP can be done now. It was possible before, with a little more effort, but now it looks quite easy. I had used my bluetooth headphones with the n800 all summer. I haven't had a chance to pair up my headphones yet, but as soon as that SDHC card comes in, that'll be the second thing I do (after transferring music). Also, the n810 has a micro SDHC slot, not a full-sized SDHC.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

microB is the name of the webbrowser on the n800. It's based on the gecko engine which is the same engine that firefox uses. There's also a port in progress of the "full" firefox web browser at the moment, but it has a long ways to go.

You can use just the regular n800 file manager to copy files from smb (i.e. windows) shares, or any upnp devices on the network. The quicker way to do it is to plug the n800 into the PC using the USB cable and copy the files over.

When you plug your n800 into your PC, the n800 becomes nothing more than an over-glorified card reader, and you can just drag and drop files via windows explorer like you could to any other SD card.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

k, gotcha.. so what about the Orb thing.. thats the only way you access from home network?

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Well it's probably the easiest, all things considered.

You can copy things via (unprotected) windows shares, and that's quite handy. You can also install ssh-server and use a program called winscp to copy files that way.

It kinda depends on what files you want to copy. The easiest way for many things is just via USB.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

amkaos - I was quite happy to be plucking around the other night at home, wireless to my home network. Was in the File Manager, found my laptop, and started pulling and playing music files from the File Manager. Easy as pie.

I believe Orb is an on-the-fly video converter to convert and play anything on your home network. Not necessary.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Correction of the correction :)

The N810 has one MiniSDHC slot. It will of course support a MicroSDHC card inserted in a MicroSD to MiniSD adapter. That said, I highly recommend N810 owners stick with MicroSDHC as they're usually comparable in price to MiniSDHC.. who knows.. the next tablet might drop MiniSDHC support in favour of one or more MicroSDHC slots.

I own the N800, and buy full size SDHC cards only because the larger size cards are on the market first for full size SDHC and are usually half the costs of Mini/MicroSDHC cards.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

Another tip - for Calendaring, I use the double whammy of GPE Calendar and Erminig. GPE Calendar is a pretty simple calendar app that gets the job done, and it can sync to Google Calendar with Erminig.

I believe I had some problems with Erminig in OS2007. It's not quite as easy as "Bob's your uncle" - there is no app manager package - but the directions are straightforward and work if you follow them.

Re: pre-800 owner skeered away
 

wait, right now from laptop, i can access any drive on network and stream to play on laptop w/o copying files.. so Orb does that, correct?
i d rather not copy files just so play them..
tahnx