seoul_suicide | # 1 | 2007-01-14, 00:36 | Report

Ok I'm looking at buying one of these systems and help from anyone (esp. someone with both tablets) would be appreciated as I have never actually seen the tablets in real.

So far the only differences besides the obvious physical look that i have noticed are: stereo speakers and camera in n800 EDIT: forgot about the SD support. Enlighten me if I'm wrong please .

Cnet suggests the hardware sucks on the 770, PCWorld says its the software.. So I want the opinion of a real consumer- is the 770 really that slow and does having open-source software degrade it? I'd expect it to be much better as open-source. If the 770 is really slow how slow would you be talking about in seconds? I would also like to request the help of anyone who has a 770 to run a few sites for me and tell me how long it takes to load them and perform basic tasks such as copy+paste, add to favorites (by the way is there a favorites?) etc..

Due to the fact that I am in Toronto, Canada, the 770 is going to cost me $406 after taxes and the n800 $504 BEFORE taxes (both of TigerDirect). If anyone knows where i can get them for a lot cheaper (esp. the n800) then please share~

In the end if you can't help me out in most of my questions atleast answer the following: Which one is better, 770 or n800, and why?

Thanks in advance! Sorry for the long post.

EDIT: its CAN$418 for 770 or CAN$588 for n800 - Damn i need some sort of discount.. no rebates right now on tiger direct

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Last edited by seoul_suicide; 2007-01-14 at 01:25.

Milhouse | # 2 | 2007-01-14, 01:52 | Report

N800 Pros - improved screen (same 800x480 resolution though - just looks/feels better), double the RAM (now 128Mb), double the Flash (now 256Mb), improved CPU (ARM11 @ 330Mhz instead of ARM9 @ 220Mhz), built in stand, Bluetooth 2.0 (770 had BT1.1).

N800 Cons - doesn't have the 770s slide on protective case, doesn't support the 770s "standy" (case on) mode (this is because Nokia believe we should have our devices connected 24x7 - no idea what focus group told them that)

CNet/PCWorld - they're both right, to an extent. The hardware may have been a little underpowered, and the initial software (Nov 2005 and early 2006) was sub optimal in performance but the last couple of firmware releases (OS2006) improved performance a lot, and stability too (although there are ongoing concerns).

The 770 with the latest firmware is *very* useable for it's primary purpose - internet access. It isn't perfect, but it is definately usable. It's not possible to give timings in seconds, but viewing full web sites such takes only a few seconds, for example the BBC News home page takes only 5 or 6 seconds to display when using an 11g WiFi connection on a 2Mb UK ADSL connection.

Flash isn't so great on the 770 - it's only Flash 6, and can cause pages to chug.

Which is better? The N800, without a doubt. However the 770 should still have some mileage in it yet and depending on what you want to do (or if you really need the protective case) it should serve you well, particularly if you get it at a good price (for the prices you quoted I'd hold out for the N800).

benny1967 | # 3 | 2007-01-14, 09:38 | Report

seoul_suicide, I can support Milhouse's answer. I own a 770 running the latest OS-release and I am very content with it. Content, of course, is a highly subjective thing. I simply do not compare it to high-end desktop PCs but think of it as the display my internet-enabled phone should have had. Further, my personal surfing habits lead me to sites that carry textual information; I even disabled flash completely in the browser because where I go, flash is always used for advertising only. I'm not the YouTube-kind of person.

The thing you should consider is that from a lot of posts by N800-owners it seems the manufacturing quality of the 770 was better. It seems Nokia very much improved the technical aspects of the N800 and therefore needed to reduce costs somewhere else - which means the outside of the device.
Common complaints concern the hardware buttons (too small, "cheap" feeling), the lack of a screen protection and standby-mode, the battery cover and the overall looks.

My personal opinion is that you should definitely go for the N800 if you plan to use it at home most of the time. With the build-in stand it's made for this use case better than the 770, while on the other hand you won't miss the screen protection. OTOH, if you want a truly mobily device you can carry with you in your pocket all the time, the 770 is yours.

KjM | # 4 | 2007-01-14, 09:51 | Report

As above, the 770 with the latest firmware is very usable. Browsing sites, the RSS newsreader, internet radio - all work very well out of the box.

The email package is less unstable than it was under IT2005. Gizmo project works great - and the mic on the 770 is surprisingly good.

FBreader, Gaim - two apps I used all the time on the 770 - good, stable, they do their job. With a swap file on my 2GB RS-MMC the device was very stable.

The N800 is faster but I worked with my 770 for more than a year and I was (and would have remained so only I got an N800) very happy with it.

You might look at eBay - I suspect there are a number of used 770s being sold - simply because users moved to the N800 and not because there is anything wrong with the 770.

uczmeg | # 5 | 2007-01-14, 11:59 | Report

Agreed. The 770 is great, but the N800 wins hands down for me.

Pros:

Apart from the hardware improvements, the main pros for me using the device after the switch:

Using it just feels much better/responsive/stable.

Screen requires much less pressure to use than my 770 adding to the joy of using it more and making the thumb touchscreen keyboard a viable option.

The browser will now load a page full of large pictures and not choke. (probably due to more memory and browser tweaks)

Negatives:

The headphone socket seems to have added a mic to it, so my normal headphones now only come out of one ear. Headphones are supplied, but they aren't as good as my usual music headphones.

The cost difference between a new 770 and a new N800 is definitely worth it in my mind.

However, if cost is an issue, then the cost difference between a used 770 and a new N800 makes it a much closer thing. I'm sure picking up a used 770 will be easy to do at around $200 soon and at that price it is a steal.

The N800 has removed quelled of my lust for a UMPC!

pycage | # 6 | 2007-01-14, 13:40 | Report

As of now I can only speak for the 770. First of all after 14 months on the market, the firmware reached a state where it's really mature now. Truly, the 770 doesn't have a fast processor or much RAM, but it does its job quite well. Since most system crashes are caused by running out of memory, it helps a lot to enable virtual memory on the device.
I wouldn't say that the 770 already reached its end of life. Certainly there won't come many updates from Nokia but the opensource community is quite active. Applications such as the media center Canola show, that you can do impressive stuff with the 770.

Also the 770 surely has more of this geek-factor. The 800 is a mainstream device and looks like such. But the 770 looks really cool, especially in a nice black leather case.
And I'm sure nothing beats the 770 as an eBook reader at the moment.

Of course the 800 is a lot faster, got a webcam, and has twice the RAM, but I still love my trusty old 770.

By the way, this post was written with the thumbboard on a 770.

Milhouse | # 7 | 2007-01-14, 17:08 | Report

This has been mentioned a couple of times already - the headphone socket is most definately stereo, you're most likely not pushing your headphone jack in far enough and consequently get mono output. A standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack fits the N800 just fine, and outputs in stereo - try pushing a bit harder!

seoul_suicide | # 8 | 2007-01-15, 00:21 | Report

770 sounds pretty nice all of a sudden esp. since you wrote that long as message using the virtual keyboard on it.

1 thing nobody has answered (or have I not asked?) is can the 770 highlight text? Sounds stupid but in the online manual there was no gesture listed for doing this...

convulted | # 9 | 2007-01-15, 00:58 | Report

Interesting post... I have only used the 770 up till now (I live in a tiny country where Nokia tech hasn't ever heard of the 770 ) and am very happy with it. A few quibbles (I will answer your question at the end):
- The screen going dead (just Google +"nokia 770" +wsod) during bootup for _some_ tablets. Right now I am waiting to ship my 770 to the UK for replacement (more on this later) after flasher crashed in Ubuntu on vmWare.

- Crashes (or rather, Opera). My tablet never gave consistent results with Opera. Sometimes it would gobble up too much memory. Sometimes closing one window closed them all. Sometimes Opera just decided to switch off displaying the images (weird). Other crashes were very few and far between, especially after enabling virtual memory. However, mplayer always managed to screw up in the middle of a South Park episode

- Memory card: RS-MMC is not that widely available, but this comment is not really valid, I guess.

Overall, though, I can only complain about Opera. I never got the screen going limp on bootup thing (and, yes, I booted up quite a lot of times), so I guess it was the flasher that killed it. (I just remembered: I never got the USB host mode working on my tablet, but that's just my experience.)

Pros of the 770 over the N800 (IMO):
- Hard case. This is the big one. I am careless. I sometimes drop things on my tablet, expecting the hard case to protect it. And that's the way it should be. If I'm carrying it in my pocket along with my car stereo, mobile phone and keys (big pockets), I wouldn't want to worry about something happening to the screen. There is some post in the "Troubleshooting" forum where a lamp fell on an unprotected 770 cracking its LCD screen. I wouldn't want that to happen to a N800.

- Coolness factor. I personally think the 770 looks cooler (in a geeky sense) Well OK, maybe not cooler. But I am given to think that it is more ruggedly built (especially with its hard case...).

Pros of the N800 over the 770 (IMO):
- Processing speed. 320 MHz vs 220 MHz...

- Webcam. Useful, although not necessary.

- Stereo sound. Same here.

So, what if Nokia offers me my money back instead of sending me a fixed/new 770 (I hope I'm not too optimistic about expecting Nokia to go for one of these options )? The price difference on nokia.co.uk is minimal, so I might just go for the N800 if (and only if...) I manage to find a good and solid case to go with it, and if someone confirms that it is in some way possible to quickly put the N800 into some form of standby mode of the sort the 770 goes into when you put the cover on. Otherwise, I will most definitely go for the 770.

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Finally, to answer your question: When a text box is clicked upon, the keyboard (or handwriting recognition thing - which I found quite adequate, although this may be because I have a _terrible_ handwriting) pops up. After selecting text using the stylus, you can copy it into the clipboard (much like Windows) using the bottom-left button if I'm not mistaken (tablet not working), which button acts much like right-clicking a text box in good ol' Windoze. Pasting is very much the same, just hit "Paste" instead of "Copy" (or "Cut") in the popup menu that comes up when clicking this button. This same button is also present in the thumb keyboard.

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In summation, for its price I would most definitely go for the 770, especially if you are not thinking of using it for tasks that are too processor intensive (Doom works very well though ). Either of the two would make a very nice addition to any geek's repertoir. Heck, even my girlfriend likes fooling around with it .

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Last edited by convulted; 2007-01-15 at 01:18.

hobbes | # 10 | 2007-01-15, 01:08 | Report

Yes. Click (press and hold stylus momentarily) & drag.