I've used a Dell x51v for a while through work and I've been very happy with its speed in opening programs and its video playback performance. Now, I'm looking at purchasing a Nokia n810 for myself to accompany me on flights and to use around the house for basic web surfing. I'm largely interested in the n810 because of the larger screen. Now, my questions are:

Can I expect the same quality and performance of video playback as the Dell Axim?

Does surfing the web on the n810 resemble the experience on a regular laptop or is it painfully slow?

In general, is the unit fairly responsive? Do programs open quickly? Do games like Quake run well? Etc.

Thanks

I had a Dell x50v and currently own a N560 with Windows Mobile 6 on it along with my N800 and N810. My personal experience is that the NIT software is not nearly as polished and there's much less of it as the stuff you'd find on WM. But the other side is that it's all free except for that terrible gps program that comes preloaded on the NIT's.

The web experience is 1000 times better than anything I've experienced on WM and I've use NetFront, Opera, PIE with all kinds of hacks and other browsers too. The 640x480 resolution of the x51v just can't compare to the 800x480 where most all websites are built for the target audience of 800 width. Also, the display on the x51v isn't that clear and kind of yellow with a low viewing angle (ie. when you rock the screen up and down all of the colors kind of change) while the NIT's are near perfect displays). You wont want to look at the x51v's screen after using the NIT.

When it comes to cpu, the NIT's really are under powered compared to the 624MHz Xscale cpu's in many WM devices. The same 3d graphics chip is in the x51v and the NIT. But on the NIT, there are no drivers to utilize the 3d capabilities of it plus the maximum supported resolution of this chip is 640x480 causing other difficulties when trying to utilize it on the NIT's.

Battery life is about 3 to 7 hours (about 5 average for me) on a NIT while I got 1.5 to 2.5 hours on the Axim. On the x51v battery life just poors out when you turn on wifi which only has 802.11B but the NIT's are much better at handling wifi (B and G).

The built in GPS on the N810 is, personally, useless as it wont get a lock ever. So don't rely on it to save the day and even if it did work, the gps software on the NIT is very poor. Step by step navigation requires so much work to get working on the NIT's that it's a joke. I've tried the pre-installed software and am currently using Roadmap.

As far as programs launching on the WM devices, they are usually pretty fast, popping up in about .5 to 2 seconds while on the NIT's they can take 2 to 5 seconds. It really is frustrating in the beginning, but you get used to it.

If you like to sync your contacts with Outlook you are going to dislike the NIT's. In my opinion there has not been a satisfactory turn-key solution to this yet. I'm still waiting but not holding my breath.

All of this sounds pretty negative but there's just something about the NIT's that I personally believe is much better. It's really much more like having a full PC in your hands. I find that internet browsing is my number 1 usage, followed by email where I use Claws-Mail. I also like chatting and for that I connect to Yahoo through the RTComm beta installation. I make free calls through GrandCentral. I edit complex spreadsheets through Gnumeric. I read eBooks through evince and the built-in PDF viewer. I play a ton of great games all free. I stream audio from the BBC while I'm driving around in my car and conneccted through my t-mobile Edge account. I show pictures and movies off to people all of the time and even try out small amounts of coding in c++ using Geany.

Geesh, sorry this so long. I've skipped a million other things but maybe later it will come up.

No :/

Quake runs perfectly.

Sorry, I didn't answer all of your questions:

1) video playback is sketchy. If you converf a video to the optimum settings for the NIT's it's amazing. But, if you try to play a general MOV or other format it will usually sputter a bit. In the end, it depends on the bit-rate of the movie. Too much and it will be an awful experience but just right, its amazing thanks to the beautiful display.

2) Web surfing is pretty good and close to a PC experience (the closest that I've encountered on a mobile device). But, if the page you are loading has a lot of flash on it, the page might bog down the cpu and your quality of surfing will suffer.

3) The unit is not nearly responsive as the x51v or WM in general. I miss the near instant launching of programs that WM has. Through hacking, you can improve performance but it's complicated too and I'll leave it at that. Doom is full speed on the NIT but I haven't tried Quake which I understand runs pretty good on the NIT despite not having the 3d chip aiding it in rendering.