Osso x-term has been updated to correct that malfunction, and now works fine (at least for me).

Has anyone tried the handwriting recognition? Is it truly that much better?

-F

I noticed that too, although I was starting to doubt myself. Set all my calender events forward 5 hours, couldn't figure it out at first!


Yes, handwriting recognition is *much* better. I hope to be able to go back to the latest version soon because of that as well as the stability. Which is also much improved.

Peter

you just can't have perfectly QA'ed stability at the cutting edge. Resources are ALWAYS limited (no matter what the price of the product is: 25.-, 250, 2500.-, that's only a factor of 100)), and then it's the question if you (or Nokia, or whoever) invests in improving quality from 99.9 to 99.99 %, or rather extends by adding something new.
And when you buy a 770, you can't expect it to be as robust as a 1950 analog telephone. But you can expect it to be more versatile.
Btw: I did not upgrade. I looked at the features, and decided I would not need them.

And this for me is one of the issues, the clarification/notes surrounding what has been fixed is poor. (Although certainly better than no information )

My particular interest is in AV playback locally/remotely by either built in or third party software and Opera browser, RSS feed capability etc.

Why do we as users need to individually test the built in Audio/Video players etc, when time allows to understand what improvements have actually been made as an example...

MikeL, christianhauck said it perfectly.

I bit the bullet last night and installed the .39-14 firmware. I had backed everything up first, except my /etc/apt/sources file (damn it!). I was running the version just prior to this.

The first thing I notices is that EVERYTHING is faster. Connecting to my home wifi net (G-only, WPA-SPK) used to take 5-6 seconds, now it takes 3-4. Start up time of all the built-in applications was cut in about half for me. The unit just feels snappier.

For example, in the prior version, if I went to the Control Panel and chose Memory, I'd sit and watch while it counted up everything in use. It would probably take 3-4 seconds to get a full tally. Now it is just BOOM, right there. No watching the progress bar.

Yes, it recognized my 2 Gb Kingston right off the bat. It remembered my pairing with my BT keyboard, after I reinstalled the BT app.

I didn't have a lot of crashes before -- maybe one every couple of days, not counting Opera taking a nose dive. Opera seems faster in both startup and rendering pages. The Application Wiki on maemo.org used to be intolerable on my N770, hitting the CPU hard and just being very slow to load and react. Now it is 10x better and usable without having to chant "serenity now!".

There are still a few bugs in the system, though. Opera has crashed for me a couple times when telling it to remember a password for a site. It DID remember it, but tanked none-the-less.

And there is a new development -- when sending Opera to full screen view, it hesitates for a second or two in sort of a half-state, where the screen isn't properly rendered where the toolbars were. My best analogy would probably be an automobile that used to smoothly shift gears now has a noticeable hitch when doing it. It does it, but you get a "WTF was that?" thought each time.

It used to be when I clicked the power button and chose "shut down", it shut down fully. Starting it back up would mean a full boot and take 20-30 seconds. Now, a "shut down" seems to be more of a deep sleep that only take 3-4 seconds to come out of. It restarts X, which was my intent, but it is so much faster. Before, I had to keep telling myself "It's a handheld, you don't really shut it down, you just pop the cover on and let it sleep. That long start-up time may be embarrassing, but you never really start it, do you?" Well, no more rationalizing for me!

Finally, I took the opportunity to install and configure Privoxy, tweaking it to start when the unit boots. OH MY GOD! The Internet is back to a way I can use it! I was so used to Adblock on Firefox that I had forgotten what an ad-laden cesspool the Internet had degenerated into. Privoxy, even without downloading custom rulesets, brings all the ad-free goodness back, unclutters my screen and speeds up page load times. If you use the N770 to browse the web, do yourself a favor and install Privoxy.

I didn't expect major changes in this update. I don't think we'll see things like Java, Flash >6 or native Ogg-Vorbis support until the next major update.

For me, this was a very nice update -- a must have. Thank you, Nokia.

Chill: Awesome review, nice to see you balanced the good with the bad (purely negative reviews leave me suspect, as do purely positive ones). I'll definately throw Privoxy on though I haven't upgraded yet. Given all the hacks I've put on (and the fact I can't remember half of them), I want to ensure the general release to nokia.com is the same as the maemo.org release.

I second that good review, sounds like it's worth the upgrade although I'm surprised at some of the changes in terms of speeds, almost qualifies as major upgrade.

Actually, this behavior depends on whether or not the device is plugged in to AC power. This is the same in any of the recent versions. I'm not an expert on the subject, but the following are my observations.

If plugged in, then holding the power button for 2-3 seconds (or choosing "Switch Off!" from the power button menu) will not really shut down the device - it goes into sleep mode, as you described. This mode of operation uses a little bit of power (in fact, if the cover is off, it will actually leave the screen on, with the "Charging" animated icon), but since you're plugged in, it's not a big deal.

When the device is not plugged, it will do an actual shutdown, so that it doesn't use any power at all.

If you shutdown when plugged in (and it goes into "Charging" mode) and then you unplug the device, it will do an automatic "full" shutdown (as though you had pressed "shutdown" when the device were not plugged in), thus reducing power usage to zero. Pressing the power button in this state causes the device to do a full boot.

However, if instead of pressing the power button, you plug the device back in (or, actually, any time you plug in the device after doing a "full" shutdown), it will start the boot process for you automatically, in the background, without showing the progress bar (instead, a non-animated "charging" icon will appear while booting). When the boot completes, the animated "Charging" icon appears. And if you press the power button, you get the quick-resume.

I don't know if this means that the device has to actually be booted in order to charge the battery (seems unlikely - more likely it needs to be booted to show the animated "Charging" icon, which seems like a waste, but whatever), but it does mean that if you leave the device plugged in and shut it down every night, then every morning when you "boot it up", it will be a quick-boot (because it never actually did a "full" shutdown).

If you're one of those guys that likes to start every morning with a fresh boot (?), it's better, then, to shut it down before plugging it in for the night, since the plug-in will initiate the fresh boot, and it will be ready and re-booted for you in the morning when you pick it up (just remember to push the power button before you unplug it, otherwise it will automatically shut down).