Re: First N900 Review
 

The touchpad on my budget / performance Asus notebook does that just fine. Actually, MANY Synaptic touchpads support multi finger gestures; it's just that their Windows drivers are useless. In Linux, I have had two fingers to right click for ages. In the last year the driver has supported two-finger scrolling for my model, too. It now does this out of the box.
In addition, the previous Macbook also supported this except for the useless pinching and rotating gestures. (Which never seem to work anyway).
Oh, and my driver offers circular scrolling (iPod style), which is kind of cool but means sacrificing a corner of precious touchpad to become a scrolling hotspot.

The Synaptic driver for Windows purportedly supports gestures now (finally), but I could never get it to work. Probably involves opening the terminal (oops - sorry, the Run dialog) and typing in some incomprehensible commands :P

Thus, Apple, again did not invent "multitouch".


As for a small tablet like the N900, I also would prefer a sensitive resistive screen to a capacitive screen. By sensitive, I also happen to mean really pressure sensitive. This would allow for better web browser controls, for example. (An extremely light tap could be used to select stuff). You don't need multi-fingered gestures to improve usability. Just lots of user testing and focussed design with a reliable input mechanism.

Re: First N900 Review
 

No, that's quite reasonable, but I'd like to see the small print and the baseline you'd have to add-on to.

Here in Spain the lowest rate you can get is a data only sim for 29€ limited to 5GB (after that the speed is reduced to 128Kbps).
The same company also offers a voice+data sim, but with that you'll pay 5.8€ up to 500Mb, then it's 10cents for each megabyte.
You can get apparently lower rates from other companies, but they're very limited (like, 100MB or so).
And none of the above works if you travel abroad (it'll actually works if you're willing to pay your entire wage in roaming charges).

Re: First N900 Review
 

Yeah mobile data costs still suck - but the technology is here to stay and prices will fall. I can't imagine a life without unlimited 3G/HSPA for web surfing, file transfers, internet radio, real time maps, podcasts, YouTube, etc. The N900 will just make it all even sweeter :)

Also, the lack of multi-tasking on the iPhone really starts to show up when you have access to always on high bandwidth data services - try listening to internet radio whilst using the GPS in your car on an iPhone...not possible. Or if you stop at a gas station and want to check your email or surf the net you have to shut down your GPS route mapping software and start all over again when you're ready to set off. Form over function I say!

Re: First N900 Review
 

Aren't there any new technologies we should keep an eye on, to replace today's GSM?... I've heard some rumors. What communications technology will Nokia's 2011 phoneblet/tablone carry?

Is there a wimax somewhere in the future?

Re: First N900 Review
 

/me likes that names: phoneblet/tablone... tablone reminds me of that :D

i think at least here in germany HSDPA and its successors are the future... not WIMAX.

Re: First N900 Review
 

WiMAX was in the tablet family's recent past. :D

But there's always LTE...

Re: First N900 Review
 

Imagine multi touch on this photo intead of the current interface. http://www.aguntherphotography.com/m...chu_222mp.html

Re: First N900 Review
 

I cannot find this offer on t-mobile uk website.
The most similar one is this one (that's 5 pounds more than the plan without internet) and this is the small print:

And they call it unlimited.....

Re: First N900 Review
 

1) Price (pre-paid or contract)
2) Performance (bandwidth, latency, availability of network, overbooking)
3) Always-on not needed nor part of user experience (for whatever reason).
4) Privacy (e.g. N800 is harder to track)
5) Roaming costs (yours truelly burned 400 EUR for 30 MB in Serbia, Europe :o )

Overbooking requires special mention. You say 'unlimited data plans'. There is no such thing as unlimited data, let alone unlimited data plans. There is always overbooking and some kind of FUP. Just, 'unlimited data' means either 1) vague FUP 2) very high price, targetted at corporate users.

Re: First N900 Review
 

Yeah I know - mobile data is still quite expensive - my point is that the technology rocks and the trends are all broadly but strongly moving in the right direction

- network coverage, capacities and bandwidth are increasing

- 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA chipsets are being integrated into an increasing percentage of devices and at lower price points

- data prices are coming down and will fall significantly in the next 5-10 years

I know that I'm really lucky - I have one of those all you can eat corporate plans in Finland and they actually have good networks with enough capacity here - I regularly clock 750Kb/s whilst out and about with my E71 :cool:

But this is the future - one day, not so long from now, having a MID without 3G/HSPA connectivity will feel like having a PC with a 56K modem ;)

And anyway, even if your data plan sucks its still good to have the option to use a fast data connection if you really need it.