Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I would recommend it to my friends.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Um... no. Not quite.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Every time I read the title of this tread NIT...What are they good for. I think of hte old song War... Good God What is it good for. Absoluty nothing.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I've never cared about that. Just another example of the fact that the experience is largely subjectve and not absolute.

Progress on the platform has been continual, and will be so going forward. Nokia is serious about the platform, snide comments by others notwithstanding. ;)

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Last I heard the BT was on the list of No-Way! items... Makes it a stronger contender, to be sure.

But why "port" Bluez? I'd gotten the impression it was gonna be much closer to Debian than ITOS is; I'd think they could just use Debian builds. (I'd think we could, too... but that's another issue.)

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Okay, prove me wrong. Give me fullscreen, full-resolution, full-framerate video without any stuttering at a bitrate of at least 500 ps.

No rush; tomorrow same time will do.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

This so so funny. Reading all these "What is it good for?"-discussions and then comparing it to my own experience...

I still have my good old 770, mainly because the N800/N810 isn't sturdy and portable enough. I could join in and enumerate what it cannot do, what it does badly, where there's room for improvement... Blah!

Matter of fact is: It changed my life. It changed the way I use the internet.

It's always on, always there to be used for short mail, researches in wikipedia while in an argument, whatever is not important enough to wait for the PC to boot (let alone go to the PC at all). It lets me have a quick look of who of my closest friends is online. Its my multimedia player on the train. Its my blogging device when on holiday.

It doesn't do much I couldn't do before. I had internet on my mobile phone, I can do a lot with my laptop, I can install hundreds of programs on my S60-phone... The 770 did not change what I do. It changed when I do it and how often. It's just sooo much more comfortable than whatever else I have with its form factor, its big screen, its well-designed onscreen keyboard and all that.

So that's what it's for: It changes the way you use the internet. Simple, isn't it?

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

The normal bluez builds compile fine in scratchbox and work fine too :) (well hcid at least)

But I upgraded my .28 in diablo to the latest .32 from https://stage.maemo.org/svn/maemo/pr.../connectivity/

(Debs are in a web folder of mine somewhere...)

(This all came about when I was (and still am) testing lardman's brilliant work on dsp sbc)

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

There's a big leap from "no improvement" to what you're demanding, Karel.

But hey, you stick with your legendary bombastic style. It's what we love about you. :p

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

See, those are the remarks I enjoy: thoughtful, sober, realistic... no trace of exaggeration or emotion at all. It's useful words like those that contribute to significant improvements.

:rolleyes: ;)

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Which ads, exactly?

All the ones I saw talked about accessing the internet, which the tablets do pretty well for something that fits in your pocket. None of the ads sold this as a PDA or laptop replacement, however much some people might want it to be one.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

We don't get enough of these polarizing threads. I blame GeneralAntilles for intimidating the noobs. :p

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I blame the deadly combo of ad agencies and lawyers. And the pharmaceuticals that allow that combo to work so effectively. Where do I get some of that kool aid, I'll check the other iThreads to find out.

:cool:

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I've snipped some of your points to squeeze under the post length limit... and still wound up having to break it in two. Too lazy to put them back, though. :pTwo years? You really thought these machines would be awesome consumer devices in two years from introduction? Seriously, laptops didn't become mainstream-capable in two years from introduction; neither did PCs; neither did cellular telephones; nor yet PDAs... Why should these be different? (I'd give you 3 years or so, as there was some phone work (the 7710) preceding the 770 in the same line; but those things didn't go mainstream in 3 years either...) I think this expectation was bound to leave you disappointed.

Well, up till now, they seem rather reasonable criticisms; but what if they can't release the specs on those, for legal reasons? Should they have crippled the tablets with inferior hardware just so it didn't have these pieces in it? Or paid TI extra (and charged more) to develop a OMAP variant with no 3D and Jazelle? (I'm sure TI would have obliged, and shipped the exact same chips, but without testing the 3d & jazelle, while charging extra.) Unless you can point to an equivalent chip in all respects but the unutilized ones, it's not unreasonable to go with that chip anyway. And nothing prevents them from developing (and licensing) the support for these features later; think of it as a free bonus 5% chance of upgrade, not as a 95% chance of failure to upgrade to something never promised...

You couldn't have known it, I think, at the beginning, but for some time it's been known we're on 3 of 5 steps to mainstream; to say that because it's been 3 years and 3 steps, and we're not there yet, that they will never be ready, seems flat-out ridiculous.

Well, the competition is also about three years in; the iPhone moves up from the phone segment, and the Eee down from the notebook, but they're both spotting the same general market region that Nokia started going for with the 7710. They've not had much time, so they're not really awesome either; and the whole segment is just plain sparse. There are people who would kill for an iPhone the size of the Eee's display (what would they call it, an iNewton?), but there's nothing close. With more experience from the handful of players here now, and with more competition, we'll wind up with a complete spectrum of offerings, and they'll be better than what we've got now even at the same points. Just give it some time...

You'll get it; remember that Apple had Newtons out since '93, and the direct ancestors of that m105 go back to the Pilot 1000, from '96; in 5 years, there'll be mobile internet/computer devices that will compare quite well to that.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

You know Ubuntu mobile is not Ubuntu, hence not a "standard mainstream distro", and uses Hildon, right? This can't coexist with the previous point in any meaningful way, until there's more devices on the market for some tablet-specific distro to become standard and mainstream.
Well, the N8x0 have a proper USB host port; we can do all those things....
Well, I hope you saw the noBounds video, right? That's going to be killer on the N900 (step 4/5); you're on the money with what needs to happen, but Nokia's working on it already.
It's unimaginable that the N900 won't have at least twice the RAM; I'd guess 4x; we've already got dynamic CPU frequency, to a max of 400 MHZ; OOo is still slow... But the N900 will get around double the maximum performance, so yes, that'll work. But remember, OOo will violate the "should focus on how one interacts with a handheld device, not how to cut pixels to fit a desktop environment on a handheld device."; that's always a tradeoff, and OOo won't (IMHO) be possible to convert to a nice hand-held app. Still, once the performance is there, I'm sure it'll be available for all who want it, regardless of the OS.
Mainstream webbrowser, and mainstream extensions, again, aren't tablet-friendly; but they'll be options for those who want them. IMHO, Java is more important than better Flash; we've got good enough flash to get through most sites that require it for navigation, now let's get what the real apps get written in! (By now, you should know I really fancy Java; I support Flash support as a necessity to get around some sites, but feel Java's useful in its own right.) But by all means, if Adobe wants to trounce Java, they should get in the fight on all platforms.

Yeah, and you'll get it back; they've heard, and they're working. Just don't write it off for good, because the best is yet to come. :)Totally; I do use it for that (and I that far more than I should), but it's also essential for my work and studies, when it's not distracting me from them with cool new things to try. I take notes all the time with Xournal, I use it for over 30% of my web browsing, including some when sitting at my desk with a PC in front of me, and I use it always for playing music. It's used for casual calculations, and 90% of IM/VoIP; for navigating in the car, and most everything else... It's got limitations, but none of them really get in my way that much.
Well, in classic backwards fashion, I spent most of the first 80% of these comments answering your last question... Enjoy!

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I'm gonna press the thanks button for sheer length.

/me blinks.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

aint skeered:)
however i kinda agree with benson...and my itt has become my mainstream away from the office communicator device...yes theres room for improvement...however that being said...its pretty gorram handy

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I'm not "demanding" anything, but I cannot say I wasn't expecting this answer.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I'll throw my 2 cents in... My 770 sucks at most everything I try to do with it.... Ironically web browsing is what it does the worst. It is slow. Doesn't load anything but the most basic of sights... Frequently crashes. This is all with the default setup, straight out of the box. If I buy something I guess I might have to tweak it a bit, but I would expect the Nokia INTERNET Tablet, do at least do a fair job of browsing without tweaks.

Maybe it is just that I have the 770 and not the 800 or 810, but my experience with the 770 has not enticed me to spend more money on another NIT. Don't get me wrong... I WANT to love the NIT. I pick it up and use it for a week or two, then get disgusted and put it away... Then I'll pick it back up and use it some more, and so on and so on. I just can't make myself love it, or even like it for that matter....

CB

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Yep, that's what all the reviews of the 770 said, "a bit slow for web browsing." I wanted to buy one; I really did. I had a lovely photo of one hanging above my desk at work, and I gazed upon it longingly, but I knew from researching it that I would be disappointed by its speed.

I'm very happy with my N800.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I can walk across the office and get a cup of coffee or go outside and work on my fence with my internet radio in my pocket. My home computer would need two hands to lift, and the power cord isn't very long ;)

And you shouldn't sit in front of your computer too much, it isn't good for your health ;) :D

Really? I must disagree. Take some time to actually try reading with it. Mess about with font size and stuff. I found that once I got the settings right, I could read huge Neil Stephenson novels without any eye strain. I'd say reading from the tablet's screen is actually easier than from a book (except when outside in bright light). The crisp text, high contrast and back lighting really make reading enjoyable. And I can read in bed with the lights out without disturbing my wife!

I've been looking for a good e-book reader for a long time, and I've been very disappointed by the other options I've seen. Either the text is chunky, the screen is low contrast, the form factor is unwieldy, or there's something else wrong.

The tablets are great for reading e-books. I feel I've got some authority here; I'm a lifelong book reader. I've been tearing through stacks of novels for at least 30 years.

No Exchange support is a dealbreaker? That's like saying no MS Office document support is a dealbreaker. Perhaps Exchange support would be nice if you work in an office that has been lured away from standards-compliance by Microsoft, but there are workarounds even for those sad situations (eg. Texrat's web-based solution).

As for GMail access, I'd say Modest, while still beta, is close enough for most geeky types to live with. It does a fine job of GMail IMAP.

Not sure what add-ins you're looking for, and what coffin you're talking about, but some of the most popular ones have been ported over here. This being an open software platform, I'm sure others would appreciate it if you ported the ones you need and made them available for us.

Dude. What consumer level? There's no such thing as a consumer level for these things. This is cutting edge technology. I'm glad Nokia released the tablets before achieving this mythical consumer level. Why? Because getting to consumer level always involves a lot of paid developer time that drives the price up (for the iConsumer) and a lot of closed, secret beta testing that I can't be a part of. This way, I get to geek out on the coolest device that I've ever owned, and I paid half of what an iConsumer would have paid.


If you're bringing Windows vs Linux into the conversation (are you the same guy who said MS Exchange support was essential?), then NITs are exactly like desktop Linux. If you roll up your sleeves, pop open the hood and do some tinkering, you can get your tablet purring beautifully. But even desktop-centered Linux distributions like Ubuntu don't have the polish and ease-of-use that Mac or Windows has. The tablets are the same way, you sacrifice some polish for a whole lot more control and flexibility. Sure, no multitouch. But no jailbreaking required, either.

I love these threads; it always gets me worked up when people tell me my baby is ugly.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

My bad. Looked like a demand from where I sit... especially the "give me" and "some time tomorrow" parts.

But I'm glad I didn't disappoint you with my response. Can I get you to fill out a Curmudgeon's Satisfation card?

Oh wait-- there is something truly wrong with that... :p

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

good ones to add to my regional vocabulary for the next time I'm in NC (Mt Mitchell area is lovely) :)

as for the rest of the iBoreThreads.......
"deila um keisarans skegg"






Jæja, en áfram med sm jörid

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Quite right. It took 3 years for PDAs to become awesome,from 94 to 97.
:D

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

As do I...I think. I'm not really sure what's behind that curtain. Maybe Exchange and Outlook can go away now.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

actually i got gorram from watchin firefly...the regional dialect took me some time to get used to skreet instead of street...skrimp instead of shrimp...etc...

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Isn't it cool: I think my n800 is currently the greatest thing since sliced time and you think your tablet is crap. I think that's cool. Just sayin'.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I stopped for fuel at a country station in NC and a sign on the pump read "No Cridit". so I paid in cash...... But they wouldn't take my dollar coin (bad luck apparently) and was forced to use another $20 bill. grrr.

I can't get used to what they say up here at the coffee shops: "double double please". still gives me shivers.

I like accents and idioms. Isn't this more fun than arguing over imaginary shortcomings of the N8* (or promised pluses of the iSaviour)?

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Well, the OMP came out in 1993, for 3.5-4 years, actually.

Which '97 release are you discussing?
A kilobuck for a PDA (a brief Google says $950 original price, anyway) isn't necessarily mainstream ready, but the MP 1000 would certainly qualify as awesome.
The PalmPilots (Personal and Professional), OTOH, might make the mainstream-ready cut, but don't fit your word "awesome"...

Oh well, two device families, one for low-end, one for high-end... Yep, awesome it was. If only I'd had any money back then. :(

Re: War - what is it good for... ???
 

Make it stop...... The title says "NITs - what are they good for... ???" but all I hear in my head is:::

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y'all

War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

Ohhh, war, I despise
Because it means destruction
Of innocent lives

War means tears
To thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives

I said, war, huh
Good God, y'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again

War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, it ain't nothing
But a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Ooooh, war
It's an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die
Aaaaah, war-huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it, say it, say it
War, huh
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again y'all
War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
War, it's got one friend
That's the undertaker
Ooooh, war, has shattered
Many a young mans dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious
To spend fighting wars these days
War can't give life
It can only take it away

Ooooh, war, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again

War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Peace, love and understanding
Tell me, is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there's got to be a better way

Ooooooh, war, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
You tell me
Say it, say it, say it, say it

War, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
Stand up and shout it
Nothing

Re: War - what is it good for... ???
 

ok...now my kids are crying...why...cause im crankin that song....thanks..i love it...

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I hot Icelanddreams copy and pasted that. Because I know the song but not that good. It was an oldie when I was born.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

welll i remember hearing it as a kid...in the 70s....i like oldies

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Good points.... I have to stress out that I'm describing my _subjective_ experience. I'm not saying that others don't find these devices useful beside being lovely (and yes, I'm very proud of my toys :)). But my point is that we should focus on how to improve the experience of using this device, and pass to Nokia these desires. This sounds a lot like market-droid-speak, but it isn't.

So allow me to quote you in trying to make a constructive approach here (even if it may sound like bashing, and blame-throwing, it isn't; all of you guys, think of this as a post-mortem on the current status of NITs, and a discussion on where we want to take them).

Good point. But NIT's are not the ground-breaking devices they want to be, user experince-wise. We've had time to form an idea about what a PDA does, what a PMP does, what do you expect from a low-end and from a high-end laptop since years ago. In this case, it's not about reinventing the wheel from scratch, it's about taking all the wheel designs made so far and figure out how to make a new better wheel. I'd expect incremental inovation from a known base, not starting from 0 like Newton and Palm did. But it seems that the tablets do not capitalize on that knowledge.

So you say that two years and three iterations is too short to make a new device for a new market out of thin air. I say it's about enough, and the next iteration should be consumer-level. iPods went from nothing to millions sold in less than 2 years.

I'm not complaining that the tablets are not at consumer-level so far; but I hope that the next iteration will be at true consumer level; I invested too much passion, energy and interest in these specific devices to watch light-heartadly how it is gonna be surpased and killed by iThings that will lock devs (and myself) out of it. So what I'm trying to do is make Nokia listen to my and my fellow NIT users requests for improvement, and take action on them, so in the next iteration we will get a consumer-level tablet that is still very friendly to developers and OSS crowd.

I'm well aware of those pesky lawyers and their legal implications. My point is that the worst position to be in is half-closed and half-OSS. You'll annoy everybody and you'll be in no side. In my country we call this "haveing your *** in two boats will only get you drawned".

Two years, three iterations later, I think that this product line should take momentum. If not now, then when ?. NITs already competitors that are on more-or-less equal terms now, and which hadn't the two year advantage. I strongly suspect that if this line doesn't take off now, it will never get the chance again, even if this happens for simple economic reasons.

[/QUOTE]
The guys and girls who built that did it good starting from nothing. It took them 5 years, yes. But we (read IT community and designers) already have good ideas on how to proceed - why throw away and re-learning everything from scratch how to make mobile computing ? And spending another 5 years on that ? Maemo as platform is already 3 years old, and it's getting dated by the minute now. The moment Android comes alive on a HTC device, doing everything NIT does, but with better capabilites, NITs and Nokia will be in big trouble. I'll repet myself, I belive that this is the latest critical point to change the mission of NIT and make it into a mainstream platform. So think about what should be next in NIT line and voice your thoughts.

Damn, running into limitations. Will follow up on next post.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

oh the wonders of technology.... I don't know it *that* well either.
But when it was popular I wasn't too young to understand it. Compare then with now (that war in Iraq) and I am thoroughly confused by what is happening regarding war. That change in thinking seems to bleed over to the insanity that is the iThread.

Please don't. Or as they say in Georgia "let's not and say we did" :cool:

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

georgia...fun place to pass thru...hitchiked from new york to florida stoped there a few times...fun place...

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

Me goes again... Is there, anywhere, a prize for the thread with the longest series of lenghtly posts ? :D

No, actually I wasn't aware that Ubuntu mobile uses Hildon for its UI. That it supports it, like in a lib, yeah, but having it be THE UI, no, I didn't know. I admit, I never did look in depth at Ubuntu mobile distribution, and I don't even know if it can be downloaded and tested from somewhere, but I was using that more like a generic example, and I think that my point, that it is a bad idea having Hildon break perfectly good GTK applications, was well understood :).

I've seen that. A video, and nothing in the wild. I got better hopes on this:USB video. But I wouldn't call a mini-B female with autosensing for which you can't get cables "proper USB host port". Your point of OOo is quite valid :). But I belive that you got my point: that we should take active steps in driving what's becoming of N900, and how one expects to interact with it, instead of passively wait for another "developer" device that Nokia will throw at us. ITT crowd is the driving force of the NIT extra-value, which is considerable, and I think Nokia will actually listen to our requests of having on the 4th iteration a finished and polished device that wouldn't stand in shame next to 2nd generation iPhone when trying to open a page to let me see what movies are on tonite.

I'm not writing it off. Like I said, I invested too much in it (even if my work is not visible in the community, I know, I know). What I want is to MAKE SURE that what comes is the best of all possible outcomes, and from my point of view, it doesn't seem that NIT/Maemo Next Generation is ready to become that... it can be so much more !

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

It's déjà vu all over again, but here goes:

Had Nokia locked and limited the range of functionality the Internet Tablets offer as much as Apple did with the iPods, particularly those early models, I expect we'd have seen much more refinement of, and polish on, the product. However, the devices would have attracted much less attention, as their potential would have been greatly diminished.

Instead, Nokia invested their development time in going broad, rather than deep, and offered a flexible, open platform. As Nokia and maemo add a bit more depth with each release of the hardware and software, the openness encourages others to step in and contribute to the platform. Additionally, maemo is able build upon, and share back with, other open source projects, which strengthens all involved. Obviously, the process of improvement isn't as rapid as many would like, but its momentum is growing.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I'd rather lazy on a Barcelona beach,
With Margueritas in hand,
But life being what it is - a *****,
I'll never make it to wonderland. :D

This is what I want too. Even if I actually prefer real paper for the books :). I'll give it another try.

It's quite surprising how inflexible big companies are, even if they are declared enemies of M$. So Exchange support is a must have to make it in the corporate world. iPhone 2.0 does it, no ?

Never tried modesto, looks like I missed something.

Well, I'm asking for a consumer-level device.... Make the ports yourself and share, that's a great philosophy for OSS-tinkerers, but since most addins are anyhow platform-agnostic, why should I have to tweak them instead of having the mozilla-based browser accept them as they are, .xpi packets ? This is what I understand by consumer-level device :D.


Cutting edge ? Maybe 2 years ago. It's not anymore cutting edge. iPhone has better hardware, with really working software. It's time to open the eyes, and see that while we love our tablets, in short term, if the platform will not evolve into something usable, and economically succesfull, it will be probably killed off by Nokia, or kept as an interesting side experiment.

While I can do, and actually do the tinkering, not everyone is ready to make this invesment in learning the inner workings. I have Linux with Evolution on desktop precisely because this is what works for me. Better yet, I can drop a 8.04 Ubuntu on any computer and have any neofite browse the web and edit documents in no time (it's that polished, yes).

But I can't drop a tablet in the same way on someone and ask them to see what's on tonite on the tele, because in 5 minutes they will scream in frustration. Still, I have yet to see someone unhappy with the way their iPhone works. eeePc is a NIT-like story, nobody that isn't a geek is using it.

Why do they have to be separate ? I want both the polish and the openness.

And what do you prefer ? Somebody telling you that your baby is desfigured by a disease, hurt your feelings, but actually having time and work on a solution before it's too late, or you'd rather be told by everybody how nice and beautiful your baby is, feel all nice, cozy and warm inside, and end up with a prematurely dead baby? Maybe a harsh comparation, but I think we're moving to a turning point here, and NITs must not miss the consumer boat.

Re: NITs - what are they good for... ???
 

I try, oh how I try, but there's always some that seep through the cracks. :D