Yeah, isn't it amazing how much UMPCs let us down?

I'm hoping there'll be some netbook-ification of the HTC Shift at some point. Cut some hw corners, put Ubuntu on it, something. It's my fave industrial design of the UMPCs, but for ~1400? No freakin' way.

What the heck is a CD doing sticking out of that tablet? You realize that even with dual layer blu-ray you're only talking about 50GB, and you've gotta power the laser and a motor, right?

Even the N810, with the elegant craves1 hack, now has up to 32GB of relatively inexpensive removable storage on it, without the hassle of motors or lasers or anything.

If we're going retro, why not have a VHS tape pop out instead?

This d-pad thing is quite interesting to me. Probably the best touch mobile UI's right now in the market (or at least launched), the iPhone and the Palm Pre, neither has a d-pad in the device. ... Why would you really need the d-pad?

I think Peter replied to this very well:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...6&postcount=44

The answers are all there. Nokia is a huge company. If Maemo would be Maemo Inc., a separate company with no other devices coming up, any plans for publicity might be different. It's a bit like Apple with the iPhone 2G and the iPhone 3G - once the public is told of the next version, many stop on their tracks and start waiting for it. Of course in this case the products that Maemo make are different than Symbian products, but still there are analogies.

One more thing about community: many of active members are coming from open source crowd with its mantra "release early, release often". With long gap in releases - and even without any substantial info - we are losing interest.

From marketing point of view look for KDE4 - it was delayed for *2* years if I remember initial projects correctly. Plus for one year more it is barely usable for regular user (although 4.2 is really, really good). In total: 3 years behind the schedule. But with good campaign, blogs, screencasts really showing what is happening behind the curtains they managed to keep interest - even hype beyond common sense. Technical advantage? Well, everything I see today in mobile world looks like some variation of Plasma...

Think WASD+mouse: two-handed control with e.g. scrolling, page-turning with d-pad; selecting, drawing with the touchscreen. Especially in Xournal.

Also as a gaming input. Using an accelerometer as a tilt joystick is the most natural replacement, but even that doesn't work so well when I'm lying on my side in a beanbag chair playing Tyrian, a use-case the d-pad was designed around.

Not having a d-pad on the RX-51 will be a big blow for me. Playing Quake 3 in bed with only a stylus and d-pad was high on my list of desired features.

This is simple. Because of it's clear, fast & simple feedback, or in layman's terms - it clicks The d-pad may not be sexy, but it's really fast to use because it's located conveniently under the thumb (N800). It's easy and quick tool for navigating in menus. It also works well together with the touch screen, for example I might open a menu with right thumb, and then browse and select items with the d-pad.

The usability is emphasized when using the tablet on the move like walking. It's a lot easier to navigate with the d-pad, because I don't need two hands and I don't need to look where I touch and I don't need to verify visually on the screen that the touch is interpreted correctly.

Even though palm's latest doesn't have a d-pad, their earlier PDA line and OS made the usage of d-pad an art. You could do pretty much anything with it. The fact that the latest competitors don't have it doesn't mean that it's become obsolete. It just means that the UI people don't know how to utilise it. D-pads might also be seen as too old and boring technology for a hype product - a bit like our old fashioned keyboards, but they aren't going anywhere.

The way I see this is that the challenge for Nokia is to make a d-pad that is useable, but still sleek looking to please the modern consumers aesthetics. (For example the Motorola Razr's d-pad failed terribly on the usability part.)

For goodness sakes - you have d-pads on all your mobile phones as the main navigation tool. Do I really need to point this out?!

I've only started one thread here and it was all about this, and there were plenty explaining why they wanted a d - pad, and the consistent nokia answers that it was not needed in the next generation.

gaming, two handed operation, one handed operation!, but mostly OPTIONS - it gives more choice on how to use and set up your own tablet, but the nokia side seemed to be all about the fact that it made the software proramming more difficult because it had to take into account GIVING people more options.

The overall outcome of the thread was that nokia had fallen for the iphone design and it was a done deal. I would have thought the actual question that should be above is not "why would you need one" but "if you don't need one why are you here instead of off playing with your iphones?"

look at the n97... it have a d-pad.. why the n900 shouldn't have a d-pad, too??