Someone *really* needs to make a soap-on-a-rope USB power injector, and sell it in a nice package, a la:



Unfortunately the after-sales accessories market for the 770 doesn't really seem to have taken off.

Maybe because there isn't much need and/or not much money to be made by this ?

Your picture isn't much different from this one :



This setup is easy, simple, light and works well. Both accessories are standard and available for about 5 euro each. So why bother ?

I'd like to see Nokia-specific accessories for other needs such as keyboards, stands and cases, but the power injector is so easy... Furthermore, as long as Nokia doesn't officially support powered USB host on the tablet and there is a risk of voiding warranties by doing this, I very much doubt any third party is going to market something for this very purpose.

True.

I'd not seen that image before, is there anywhere online selling the requisite parts, and more info on the battery?

It's not really a battery, just a small case for 4 AAA cells or rechargeables, with a convenient USB connector for output. The cable is a regular USB cable with a second plug for more power, for those external disks that require more than the standard 500 mW. You can use the set as pictured for one peripheral, or to power an unmodified USB hub for more.

I (and the guy who posted this picture, and some others around here) got these parts from a German mail-order store that specializes in gadgets and accessories, generally cheap, mostly tacky but sometimes useful and/or hard to find : http://www.pearl.de

There is also a French site (http://www.pearl.fr), but AFAIK nothing in English.

This is interesting, because I find I already have all the components lying around, save the "double" USB cable, although I find the converter plugged into your 770 so much smarter looking. I wonder how hard to find they would be.

Addendum: I just went to the Pearl site, but I'm rather a n00b when it comes to USB designations: which version of the "USB 3D adapter" is actually needed for the 770?

http://www.pearl.de/product.jsp?pdid=PE4476 seems to be the battery box.
http://www.pearl.de/product.jsp?pdid=PE5619 seems to be the cable.

A better cable would seem to be:

http://www.usbtech.co.uk/catalog/pro...roducts_id/215

This should mean fewer adapters, but 1m long is a bit hefty.

http://www.revealcable.co.uk/acatalog/USB_Couplers.html is a female-to-female coupler.

The first two links are right, those are what I got. The picture for the cable is misleading, the one we all actually received was the (much nicer) one above.

And yes, at first I was a bit miffed not to find a "Y-cable" already fitted with a mini-B USB plug, as they do exist. OTOH, this one is very short, which is a quality for use with the 770, and harder to come across. Moreover, those Pearl USB adapters that bend every which way are actually more practical than a cable that sticks straight out of the tablet's bottom connector, especially when sitting in the desk stand...

Karel, this is the one you need (male A to male mini-B) :
http://www.pearl.de/product.jsp?pdid=PE3324

Andrew, I don't think female-to-female couplers will do in this case.

A bit off-topic, but another fun "solve-all-your-USB-problems" gizmo at Pearl's (they do have a wealth of connectivity stuff) :
http://www.pearl.de/product.jsp?pdid=PE1386

Haven't you got an F-to-F coupler at the end of the 'Y' which is floating, to give you a socket into which you can plug stuff?

Edit: My German's pretty bad - do they ship within the EU, i.e. to the UK?

This is a short reviewlet I'm only adding because it's my pet psychosis:

Handwriting recognition. (everybody duck now)

Well, it's official: both Archie and Nokillo suck at it big time.

Both use that dark-age HWR paradigm of a seperate input box (which is sooo Palm-nineties, BTW). Nokillo's implementation is marginally better, as its box pops up on its own, while Archie expects the user to click on an icon to make it appear and go away again.

Both have character recognition rather than full handwriting recognition (although both try to hide it with mentally deficient word recognition algorythms). I found that Nokillo's "system" easily drops the odd entered letter or, if I space the letters more, will insert random spaces; a fine line indeed. Archie is better in this respect in that it won't even try to recognize spaces (a good idea in a character recognizer IMO), but relies on the user to insert the desired space manually. As a result, Archie at least doesn't drop letters.

Archie's virtual keyboard is somewhat braindead: if you want a different key layout, you need to change the entire desktop language. (in fairness, this is QTopia's stupidity).

Almost forgot: Archie has a third input option: T9 predictive text. I really don't know who thought of adding that option, but I'm sure they belong in the high security ward of a mental institution. T9 must be the universe's worst option to enter text; it's only marginally suicide-inducing when used on a phone with a tiny screen and only nine keys to tap on, but who in their right minds would prefer it to even a virtual full keyboard is beyond me. Still, if you're masochistic and you know it, it's all there...

Thanks for the research and review. Is the PMA430 unable to retrieve images from a Windows PC via Wifi? This was touted as one of the advantages (and distinction over the 770) of the next-gen Archos I posted here, but maybe that feature was only for the 604?