Yes! That is one-half the battle.

Here's the other half.

<rant>Eleven years ago I bought an early Palm Pilot. Like the N810, it was a full-blown useful computer with free support tools for application development. Like the N810, it attracted a supportive volunteer community, and many useful apps were developed (including this one of mine).

The difference, so far, is that both Palm apps and third-party apps had a consistent, friendly user interface and user experience. (To be fair, it's not clear whether that was because of the example of the Palm apps and the discipline imposed by the Palm OS, or because the platform just didn't support apps large enough to be confusing.)

Be that as it may, the Nokia IT line does not pay enough attention to the details of the user experience. Who hasn't accidentally dragged a home screen widget out of position? That gives as bad an impression as a flimsy build (not a problem here) or including a soft-sided case with a touch screen device (did the person who made that decision ever pocket an N810?).

The N810 is a great little computer. I have owned four Palms since my original Palm Pilot, and the N810 is the first non-Palm I've bought.

If it is going to be around in some incarnation ten years from now, it will need a base of less sophisticated users to keep buying it. So far it is not quite ready to attract those users, and will not do that until Nokia makes the user experience a development and support priority.</rant>

Agree, people don't even know about this product, if seen it might be mistaken for a fake-product from Chinese. N800 can rival OLPC or such if it has video-out (good price and capable for most stuffs) but Nokia decided to not think about this at all which is a shame.

Anyway back to the point, I don't think 10" laptop is a good idea. IT as it is, is already a good product, they just have to fix some minor issues. As penguinbat said, CD/DVD-rom support and external HD working (by some) this is what protable must be. At home I can have a nice Desktop PC for heavy prosesses and on the road a device like this is perfect. And with Nokia's punchline "This is what computer has become", IT could be the closest we can get from Nokia.


P.S My English tend so get confusing when I write more than one line, I hope it's still understandable.

You could not be more correct! Most of my friends have never even heard of the n810, and we are talking about pretty tech geek guys. I even have a coworker that owns the n770 and did not know about the newer tablets. I don't know about europe, but in America the ITs are like some kind of secret.

If Nokia had as many slick ads as Apple, they would blow the iPhone away. Granted the iPhone is very slick, but I think people would be very split between the iPhone and the n810. Big screen, keyboard, works with any cell carrier (via tether), GPS. These are really great features the iPhone lacks.

Not doing too bad if the N800 managed to rank so well at Amazon.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/28/a...few-surprises/

I work with the two guys who won the prize. They each run Mac OS on mac hardware (one also runs Debian). What they wanted was the prize money and the challenge of doing it. Neither one of them will come near a win box. But you are right they wanted Nice software on nice hardware. Hopefully the updates of Leopard will go smooth.

Advertise? By the time I wanted one every mail order place was out of stock, and I was lucky that the CompUSA brick and mortar 3 hours south had several left (in the wrong place! - but since they were going out of business, it was $407 with tax).

My laptop which is out for repair was my previous "portable" platform. I also have an EVDO usb modem connected to a Cradlepoint router (until I can get cdc_acm.ko working - detail on this combo are at evdoinfo.com, but those and a USB power pack stays in my case so I'm a walking AP). The laptop was cumbersome. And EEE or the OLPC/XO would be just less so. Note the OLPC/XO has a transflective screen like the n810.

But I keep the n810 in my pocket. And I just signed up with callcentric.com so, well, yes it is a phone!. My bluetooth headset works perfectly. So does the iGo BT Keyboard for longer messages or when I have to enter the full range of ASCII. The built-in GPS isn't great, more like the keyboard - useful for limited purposes, so I also have a BT GPS.

I'm utterly amazed at how easily it stays connected or relinks with my BT stuff. I always have to fidget with Windows (and have two bluetooth stacks on it since each will only work with one brand of dongle although they have the same chipset). Ubuntu still needed some work. But the n810 just works.

And here is where it kills the iP*o*. Try going to a website and add a podcast MP3 to the iPod section. I couldn't find a way. You could play it in Safari, but if I wanted to save for later? I've got RSS feeds where I just select things, download them to the miniSD, and play later. Internet radio works. The only thing that doesn't are a few sites which use a windows media speech codec (note there are windows mobile DLLs for ARM, so it might be made to work if enough WINE glue could be ported like mplayer uses).

The iPhonde is DRMed - you get the experience Steve Jobs wants you to have and he will destroy your device if you try to break out. The Nokia has a few propietary pieces, but is generally open, and is a full Linux system in a tiny package. So everything can work together, new things added, etc.

I've already used a half-dozen USB perhipherals in host mode - including an ethernet controller, my camera, and USB flash drive which I use to transfer files (it is much less cumbersome than moving miniSDs around). I don't think I'll ever do that on an iPhone. This was probably not intended by Nokia, but it also was not blocked (the earlier and maybe current iPod has a fairly lame camera adapter).

Video out? Is there a USB Video out card available with Linux source?

The EEE needs an external dongle for bluetooth. It won't fit into any pocket (and I am not of small girth). I will say that it is usable, but it doesn't compete really with the nSeries in the sense that pick-up trucks generally don't compete with sedans.

The closest PC might be the OQO2, which is full speed x86, or Sony's umpc. Both are far more expensive and still bigger, but they are real PCs which run XP (or vista).

I agree, windows is pretty rough. What I really meant was that people want choices. (and sometimes prize money)

I don't know if one is actually available as open source or not, but there IS something already working under Linux on the PepperPad 3: it's a composite video out port (looks like a headphone jack).

If the source is available for that, presumably it shouldn't be that hard to get a USB video out driver working.

R.
==

That is not fault of device. This site is f*cked up. Authors/admins did something wonderful to alienate users. Not only it is broken with OS2007 default browser but also in IE6 - browser with biggest marketshare.

Are you sure that the video out port on the Pad is USB based? Not wired directly to the CPU?