N800 or Palm TX
 

Good afternoon.

I've been reading about the Nokia N800 and it sounds pretty nice. I'm looking for opinions if the Palm TX or N800 would be a better device. Will I get the same "functionality" with the N800? Just looking for pros/cons of each (I guess more for the N800). I know the N800 is $100 more than the TX, but is it "better"?

Thanks for any information/input.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Depends on what you want to do with your device.

If you intend to surf the internet a lot, I'd say the N800 is leaps and bounds better than the Palm - it has a better screen and a better browser. Flash support is also available, although not good enough yet to show youtube videos.

If your interest is more PDA oriented, the Palm is probably a better bet. There are PDA type apps available for the N800 - others will have to comment on their suitability.

For audio and video the N800 has several issues right now, which will hopefully be improved with the next firmware update or by the community who are in the process of porting mplayer. Hopefully Flash video performance will also improve with future updates.

Having owned a Palm Tungsten (long ago!) I'd say the N800 is far more fun to own and use.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

How is it for, say, music playback (can you carry music on the SD card) and/or possible video on the SD?

Thanks.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Also, how would u read ebooks on the 800?

Thanks again

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

FBReader, N800/770 are the best ebook readers I've ever seen, bar none. Not even Sony's e-ink offering competes. Handles pretty much any non-DRMed format, and you can rotate the screen 90° and use the rocker buttons as page-up/page-down.

Yes, you can put music on both of the SD cards and the internal storage, there's a whole bunch of players over at maemo.org I haven't tested any of them personally, though. Video playback isn't great right now (MPEG-4 @ 1000kb/sec 400x240 and 24fps works well for me) with the built-in media player, but the N800 mplayer port is getting better and should be up to speed pretty soon (we may even seen full res, 30fps video at some point with the hardware acceleration.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

MP3 playback is fine - you can get up to 16GB of media on the N800 using 2x8GB SDHC cards (plus SDHC kernel - should be officially supported in a future Nokia update). Other audio formats are a bit lacking, ogg vorbis is not supported officially but there is an open source player available (not sure if this is tuned optimised for the N800 yet though). With the latest Alcatel/mp3 lawsuit it's about time Nokia put it's weight behind ogg vorbis.

Video is a bit hit and miss - the standard Nokia video player is better than that which came with the 770 but could still be better and support more codecs etc. mplayer is coming along nicely though, and if the N800 is anything like the 770, the first firmware is usually a bit ropey but then improve considerably with later updates.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

I have both a Palm T3 and a Zaurus (and considering an N800). They're very different devices.

The PIM part of the Palm is excellent (I use datebook5 which makes it even better), and there's lots of free and cheap 3rd party stuff as well as commercial s/w. eBooks with and w/o DRM work well . TCMP is good media player. The screen is good too. Its big weakness is the quality of the tcp/ip stacks, bluetooth is not totally stable, so although I can use it to surf the net it's not brilliant, and the 480x320 is a bit small for anything except casual surfing. There's no interesting 3rd party tools like network sniffers, and you can't run network listeners like apache or hack up perl and cgi scripts. And the biggest SD card is 2GB.

A handheld linux box like n800 or zaurus is very different.. media players really shine on the higher res screens, you can use larger SD cards, networking is solid, you can get access to huge library of opensource software. However, the PIM side is a bit weak but getting better. And eBooks with DRM aren't possible.

For me, the T3 is thus used as a PIM + eBook reader, and Z as a browser and programming tool. You'll have to decide what your priority is, and where you can compromise if you can only have one.

good luck!

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

I'm also a T3 and Zaurus owner (although the Z is an old SL-5500), in addition to N800. Good writeup from speculatrix. However, there _are_ network sniffers for the T3, although they're not like Kismet - they're more for finding hotspots. I have WiFi-Where installed (an older, free version, the newer one is shareware), and WifFi, both are useful.

The TX has wi-fi built-in while the T3 needs an external SDIO card. Other than that they're relatively similar.

The biggest differences between the T3/TX and the N800 goes something like this:

- T3 (and any Palm) has way better PIM apps, even the built-in ones are good.
- T3 and TX come with DocsToGo for word/excel/powerpoint (and now pdf), DTG makes Palm better for those docs than even Windows PDAs. Of course, the N800 has a pdf reader and soon we'll have AbiWord too.. :p And gnumeric can take excel files.
- T3 BT works well as far as it goes, the problem I have is that Palm doesn't update its phonelink package, which means that if your carrier isn't listed your'e toast. N800 had no problems with my carrier.
- T3 wi-fi _sucks_ battery whenever it's used, and the way to use it is to go online, synchronize something, go offline. And when you turn off the screen you turn off the wi-fi. The TX almost certainly works exactly the same, although I'm not sure if they have managed to reduce the battery drain - in any case the on/off thing is the same. The N800, on the other hand, has _amazing_ wi-fi. Leave it on all the time if you want! It doesn't go off when your device turns off its screen. It can receive incoming data while in your pocket.. you can leave it like that, and go on the next day! For a T3 user this is simply incredible. And the N800 also has very sensitive wi-fi, it sees hotspots most of my other gadgets (including a wi-fi router with external antenna) can't see or use.
- Internet: With the N800 I use the browser on mail.google.com, the screen is good enough for that. On the T3 (and any 320x320/320x480 screen), it's better to use an offline mail program and synch with pop. In any case the built-in email app in the N800 isn't good (while the Palm VersaMail is good IMO).
- For the TX you'll find a lot of free software, even more shareware, and also many commercial packages. In total there's something like 20000 Palm programs out there. For the N800 you'll find that most applications are free (as in beer), and will stay free, in fact the only commercial one I'm aware of at the moment is the Navicore car navigation package.

I currently use my T3 for PIM stuff, and AvantGo, plus two more applicatons, and the N800 for everything else. Which reminds me.. AvantGo on the N800 would be ok too! Maybe a little petition would help..

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Can you connect to Vonage through the N800? How would you accomplish something like this?

Thanks again for all the help and input.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Vonage is a closed network. If you want to use home phone, check out open companies like Packet8 that use the SIP standard. There are lots of SIP clients, and I'm sure one could be ported to the n800.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Another question,

What is the main difference between internet browsing on a TX and internet browsing on the N800?
I though the Palm browser had a mobile internet page rendering while the N800 had a normal (ie like on your PC) webpage rendering. Is this true?

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

I thought the 8 gig SD cards didn't work on the N800?

Youtube on the N800 works for me, although it's far from smooth.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

8GB SDHC cards work fine on the N800 with the SDHC kernel.

Up to 4GB SD (not SDHC) cards work fine with the stock Nokia 2.2006.51-6 kernel.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Yes. The opera browser on the N800 is essentially a desktop-class browser; IIRC new Palm OS handhelds ship with Blazer, a very stripped-down "mobile" browser. You can do things on the internet with the N800 that a Palm user wouldn't even dream of.

For example, browse these fora and write posts (as I'm doing now on my N800).

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

Well, the N800 Opera browser has two modes: Normal and Optimized. The "Optimized" mode is essentially the mobile version, it squeezes text into the display whatever way it is formatted and at whatever level you zoom. This works well for some sites and badly for others, so it's nice to have the option to switch.
Other than that, the main difference between browsing on the TX and the N800 is that browsing on the TX will always feel cramped, while browsing on the N800 doesn't. Even though the TX has better screen resolution than most Windows PDAs (480x320 vs 320x240), its 480 pixel wide display (in landscape mode) is only as good as the short side of the N800. Another difference is that the N800 is fully multi-tasking while the TX isn't - the TX is limited to play music in the background (and a very limited number of other things), while the N800 can download web pages while you do something else on it. For offline work the non-multitasking of PalmOS isn't missed at all, with being online on the Internet the situation is different.

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

The Web browsing experience is also way better on the N800 thanks to the full javascript support that Opera brings !
Transfer and rendering speed might as well be better on an N800

Fred

Re: N800 or Palm TX
 

On the other hand the TX should have Java support.. which the N800 doesn't.