Well first off I'd just like to say that the "similar threads" function on this forum is pretty awesome...I can see how that would be incredibly beneficial for other forums to implement to cut down on redundant posts.

Now on to the point

Today I purchased the N810 and am looking forward to playing around with it tonight after work. The community Ive seen thus far seems to be pretty good in size and the available custom apps is MUCH better than I had expected. I am coming from an Archos player which did have its benefits but with picky as all hell wifi, no real 3rd party app support, and a very very bulky unit, I just didn't feel it was right for me. Im pretty much able to do a direct swap from a cost perspective anyway so no skin off my back!

I've got only a couple questions that hopefully will put me down the right track for using this nifty device:

1 - What programs / updates / etc are a MUST for any new N810 user? Whether it be internet radio apps, email apps, chat apps (is there one for AIM?)..whatever. Just a general idea of some top notch progs that you couldn't live without on the 810

2 - I do hope to use this as a fun little GPS unit as well. Now I've been reading the issues people have been having with the GPS built-in unit not obtaining satellite lock in a reasonable amount of time if even at all. I'll have to find out whether or not my unit will be prone to the same issues tonight but a simple thought came to me as a resolution...couldn't you just use a BT gps receiver (i.e. Nokia makes 2 I believe) and sync that up with the 810 and you're problems would be solved? And does the HH-xx car adapter on Nokia's site work with the 810? Do I have to get another adapter to hook the 810 up to the HH window adapter cause the picture doesn't make it seem like it just snaps right in or anything.

Thanks very much for the info guys/gals. Looking forward to getting back into the Nokia world

Top Apps:
Canola - Music and video player with a beautiful UI
MaemoMapper - navigation program
PyGTKEditor - text editor with syntax highlighting for almost all programming languages
NumptyPhysics - Excellent physics/drawing game
Battle For Wesnoth - RTS game
FBreader - eBook reader
eVince - PDF and document reader (not ms word unfortunately)

If you want to spend some time tinkering with it, then I really reccomend you install KDE, it's a different window manager with a bunch of really well-developed bundled apps including a full office and PIM suite

On the GPS issue, the program i mentioned, MaemoMapper does support external bluetooth GPS systems

I use the i-Blue 737 GPS unit and it works great with my N800. It usually locks on to GPS signals in less than a minute...even inside. It's a slick, small little GPS Bluetooth receiver for about $50.

Claws-mail

-T.

Other than the apps mentioned already ...
I am a big fan of Xournal. Its ability to annotate PDFs and then save them back to PDFs is great.
I also use it as a SIP phone often and it works well with either Gizmo or the built-in SIP client.
If you draw, mypaint is pretty useful as a canvas that is quite unlike the other "digital editing" type apps.

You can indeed set it to use an external BT GPS. Just seems a bit wasteful to pay for something and have to pay again for a useable replacement. Having said that, it is not bad for long distance car navigation. Once it is connected, the integration with the rest of the apps is quite good.

Thanks josiah! I do enjoy tinkering so if you have a decent tutorial or post for me to reference on the appropriate way to do such "tinkering" then let me know!

Hmmm... I think I bounced back and forth between two or three good tutorials, but now the whole install has been made much easier thanks to Penguinbait's Boot From MMC Deb

That application copies your operating system to a partition on the N810's internal memory card. This is recommended for several reasons:
- Allows much more space for installing applications (such as KDE which is huge, >300mb)
- Results in faster boot time/faster OS because the filesystem is not compressed/journaled

Once you have that done, you can download and untar the packages from http://penguinbait.com/kde.html
The details on how to do this are here: http://www.thisweekinnuclear.com/KDEonN800.html

If you use the application from the first link then you only need to follow steps 6 and 7, and then 11-13.

I installed KDE before Penguinbait granted us the easy boot-to-MMC, and so I followed the whole tutorial I would actually recommend following the whole thing if you've got some time on your hands, because it really taught me a heck of a lot about the device and unix commands and made me comfortable working in the command-line, which is essential to hacking the device into something that's perfect for you The tutorial is excellent and easy to follow, the only thing I would reccommend is that in Step 1 you allot a slightly smaller space (instead of 480mb more like 280) to the internal memory partition:
This is due to the fact that I never use the internal memory card for storing anything large and so I changed the partitions to give me more room for installing applications

Oh and whichever way you do it you'll need to gain root access first (this is also necessary to do a lot of awesome stuff on the device, for example, I just changed my startup screens, pics here)

The easiest way to gain root access is to download "easyroot" once you've installed that from the application manager, you can drop into a root shell by typing "root" at the command prompt.

I don't know how much linux/unix background you have, but if you don't then here's a quickie on what it means to "be root": http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/what-is...-or-superuser/

And here's a decent overview of unix command line commands: http://support.digitaldaze.com/quickstart/unix.html

If you're really serious about learning UNIX commands then I suggest you check out your local library They usually have some good manuals on UNIX commands

And if you're already a *NIX-poweruser then my humble apologies

If you have any problems feel free to send me an email or a PM or post in this thread again Hope this helps and happy tinkering!

Really appreciate it Josiah. Extreeeemly helpful and a great project for this weekend. I only know UNIX security at a beginning/intermediate level so knowing UNIX commands is going to be a new one for me...looking forward to it tho. So my only question is does changing the partitioning simply create two different logical drives within the device? So for instance in windows its common to have the default C: drive on a much smaller partition which is ONLY for the OS and then have a D: drive or something for all INSTALLED apps. Same situation?

And what about the preinstalled items like the Maps and such...are those affected by this partitioning change? Or is not a noticeable difference for the end user.

Lots of questions

Another quick clarification...assuming I dont utilize the DEB provided in the first link, I can simply follow ALL instructions as posted in http://www.thisweekinnuclear.com/KDEonN800.html and get KDE installed that way correct?

Yes to the last question My apologies for not making this clearer. The DEB does the same thing as the instructions on the thisweekinnuclear page, with the exception of the steps 6,7,11-13 so if you don't use it, then you can go ahead and follow all the instructions on the page Millhouse also wrote a script that automates part of the process. If you're interested, details are here

*NIX systems are a little different in that they don't allow you to run programs off of a drive that is NOT the boot drive :/ So any programs that you wish to install must be installed in the boot drive which is the reason for enlarging the boot drive by setting up the Boot from MMC.

Hmm... I'm not being very clear am i? :P Let's start over:

The N810 has 3 internal memory sections. A 128mb RAM chip, a 256mb flash chip, and a 2gb flash chip. The 256mb flash is where the original OS is located. This process outlined in the tutorial page copies the OS onto a partition on the 2gb card. The 2gb card gets partitioned into two sections. the FAT32 section is what shows up in the File Manager as "Internal Memory Card" and is what is utilized for swap memory (you should almost always use a full 128mb swap, IMHO) the Linux-83 partition is where your OS and all your installed applications are located, including KDE.

The reason this is lumped with the KDE install instructions is KDE is >300mb in size and so will obviously not fit in the standard 256mb flash chip.

Once this is all completed, when you turn on your tablet you'll get a "Select Boot Device" screen similar to the one you encounter when booting windows while pressing F12. If you want to boot to the 2gb card, then select "Boot from Internal MMC P2" or something similar. The "Boot From Internal Flash" option boots from the original 256mb card. One advantage of this is that the internal flash (the original OS) doesn't get touched on a day-to-day basis and so if you somehow brick your MMC-installed OS (like I did a few days back :/) You can boot into the flash partition and try and fix it

So... in a very long answer to your question, Yes this is similar to creating a D:\ drive but not entirely the same. It's more equivalent to taking everything on your C:\ drive and moving it to a larger hard drive that you've installed in your computer's second slot

And finally, when you clone your OS to the partition on the 2gb card, EVERYTHING you have installed on your OS so far gets copied over, so maps and all the other installed applications are automagically available. One side note on the maps. Obviously partitioning the Internal Memory Card erases everything on it so the maps that come pre-loaded with the device are erased. This isn't a big deal however because most people use MaemoMapper instead of the pre-loaded Map program. MaemoMapper has the ability to get maps from Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, OpenStreet maps and a few other map sites I've never even heard of :P

Anyway, I hope this helps and good luck!!

> *NIX systems are a little different in that they don't allow you to run programs off of a
> drive that is NOT the boot drive

Not true! Programs can run off any volume that is not mounted "noexec". They also need the execute bit set in the file attributes. However, the default filesystem on the tablet SD
cards is VFAT, for ease of access from Windows over USB. VFAT does not support the full
Unix ownership and file attributes. The SD cards may be reformatted as ext2 and then will support symbolic links, executables etc.