OK... I am going to nitpick and make a list of things I think could be improved in the 2006 release. But before I do that, let me heap some praise!

1. It LOOKS great. I am not even an interface guy, but this software really looks nice. Simple, but elegant. I am a minimalist UI guy, and would like something even thinner for an overall interface, but I realize most want slick looking stuff (The opinion on Vista seems positive...). This looks slick.

2. It SOUNDS even better. I am an audio engineer by trade. I know audio. Nokia is one of the few cellphone/gizmo companies that makes products that don't sound like the offspring of a 198X C=64 video game and a vegas slot machine. They have outdone themselves with 2006 on the 770. The sounds are smart and nice. The alarms are especially good. Once again, a minimalist, I usually have sound OFF. But the niceness of the stock sounds makes me think twice.

3. REAL PACKAGE MANAGER!!!! REAL PACKAGE MANAGER!!!! REAL PACKAGE MANAGER!!!! I don't think I need to say more than this. Now lets see some great packages.

4. ALARM! Very nice. Good sounds. Seems to work. Works when unit is OFF. Workds when cover is on. Even works when audio is muted.

5. Swap space. Nice and easy to set up. Very nice. Kind of makes up for a little machine that tries to do too much with the tiny amount of memory it has.

6. VOIP. I have not tried it yet, but I believe all the reports that it works well. Good.

7. Contact Manager. Woo hoo! Look... there is no reason that this device should not be a full fledged PDA. Nokia has taken the right first step in making it one. (there is going to be a big complain about this one too though...)

8. Thumb-board. This is a great idea and a decent first try. I think it can be better, but I like the option. I used to just not type on the 770. Now maybe I might.

9. File extension associations. This is good mostly. (But also bad... see below)

10. Customizable applets on desktop. YAY! Keep going!

11. Customizable menus! YAY! YAY!

Overall I think there must be someone in the design team that understands the idea 'Human Factors'. The interface, sounds and general usability were high in the 2005 release. 2006 has brought us a higher level.

OK... now for the constructive critique. I realize that many of these issues/suggestions may be covered AFTER the beta. But I will say them in case the Nokia/Maemo folks havent thought of them.

1. Why are so many of the sucky aspects of Opera still there. Why can I not DEFAULT it to use 'optimmized view'? Why can I not default the view to 1xx%?

1A. Why is there still no current-ish Flash? I know this is a biggie and like 1B I think it could be an optional package. But I think it needs to be at least an optional package. Like it or hate it, flash is a big part of the web, and more and more sites are moving to 7.

1B. Java. I know this is lower on the list, and could be a huge memory and resource hog. But I think it should at least me an optional package for the 770. In fact I think it SHOULD be OPTIONAL. But I think Nokia/Maemo needs to get with Sun and make it happen. This would likely be at least as good a business partner as the Discovery Channel.

2. Contacts are nice... but the app falls WAY SHORT of the minimum requirement. I personally don't need 5 phone numbers and a contact history... but at least a couple more numbers, address, notes, and a few user fields would be the minimum before this is really worth using for ANYTHING besides VOIP. The supported import/export formats like VCard can handle these things. I think the contact app just needs a slightly larger database footprint when it comes to fields to be useful. Hopefully this is in the plan.

While I am here I would also like to mention, although I like the idea of a google based contact manager (I assume one is coming) I would also like to sync this to my local unit so I can look up a phone number when I am out of a WiFi area. The same goes for the calendar and other PDA type functions.

2. Local Calendar. Needs to sync with the google calendar which I assume they plan to use. Needs to be useful OFFLINE.

3. Transparant Thumb-board. This great idea could be made really wonderful if when it was active it let you see the document you are typing into. It could be the same thing, just with adjustable transparancy and a TAB key. This way you can type on the form/note/whatever you are using and see the result as you go. Also this would allow you to tab through fields in Opera while using the big keyboard to enter the data. Users that don't want this could leave it at 0% transparant. I bet lots of users want it.

4. Real file manager. Or at least a power user mode. Let's face it. A large portion of the user base are geeks. We want to be able to see the filesystem from root up. We want to be able to change permissions, perform usefaul tasks like archiving, and PLEASE PLEASE READ NUMBER 5!

5. Extension based associations are nice, but PLEASE DON'T HIDE THE FILE NAME FROM US. Let us turn OFF 'extension hiding'. Even Windows allows you to turn this foolishness off. It took me a while to figure out that a hidden file extension was stopping me from importing VCard contacts into the contact manager. I had to move the file to the RSMMC card, plug the unit into my USB port, and rename it to the right extension with my desktop computer. (of course when the new shell app hits a repository... ahh....)

I am sure I will think of more praise/suggestions as I go along. Until then, Kudos Nokia, and Maemo team!!! You have done a great job.

cAPS

Kind of a drag that since I posted this in the right forum it will not show up on the main page!

An awful lot of typing wasted.

Admin?

(I believe you meant version 8)
. . . well that's the problem with proprietary "standards". If Macromedia doesn't want to make a linux client for version 8, there's not much Nokia or Opera can do. Ungodly amounts of money would of course help, but personally I'd be mad if something like that that was raising the price of my 770.

Amen on file name hiding. I'm not even sure that extension association is a good idea, but hiding extensions is just broken -- it's part of the filename, goddamit! A 3rd party file manager is of course a possibility, but in that case I hope I can remove the Nokia version (not probable, I guess).

Yeah... I am thinking this much about flash. Maybe the rant is misplaced on Nokia. I do, however, find it strange that Macromedia is giving the finger to Linux users.

I begin to test this release.
- I don't find a file manager like in OS-2005 release !
- Import function in contacts task runs but the result gives just the name of the contact and often nothing inside.
- I put the swap on:
I don't know if there a link with this, but after five internet windows open, system crash. I must try again and so, without swap.

I'm wrong. I wrote too quick: There is a file manager

On Flash: I definitely'd like a newest version of Flash embedded into the Opera browser, for the purpose of watching live TV streams; or, at least, the possibility to apt-get it later.
On Swap: It'd be nice if the size of the swap wasn't a constant so the user could chose the amount of space that should be taken up (I'm thinking about those 2GB cards I heard of...)
Nice job!

I recently crashed my Virtual Memory and now it's corrupted and my system keeps crashing upon bootup the moment the system tries to access the Virtual Memory. Taking the card out doesn't help, it's the check mark in the Virtual Memory tab that seems to be the problem. If I could uncheck the Virtual Memory, I'd have my system back.

Because there is the possibility of having system reboots due to the Virtual Memory corruption, Nokia needs to create a way for us to be able to clean up the Virtual Memory before we ever get the OS boot up.

Like a Maemo version of a PC's "F2" or "CTRL-D" upon bootup. Let us uncheck the Virtual Memory tab, or reformat it, or resize it, BEFORE bootup. So if it gets locked up, we can just uncheck it or fix it. As it is now, it just reboots every 7 seconds and I can't get to the Virtual Memory Tab in the Memory portion of the Control Panel in time to turn it off before it reboots.

Lame.

You might want to use a swap partition on the mmc instead of a swap file.

Connecting the 770 to a PC with the USB cable unmounts the mmc1 partition along with your swap file.

Also, your argument seems a bit iffy to me. What exactly makes you think it's the virtual memory that is the problem? Sounds like wild guesswork to me.

If it only crashes once you get into the graphical user interface etc the virtual memory should have long since been accessed. All Linux variants start up file systems etc much earlier than they do the graphical interface, and I'm sure Maemo is no different.

Just get the device reflashed and next time don't use a beta release if you can't easily reflash the system back to a stable OS... :P