So... I got my N810 around xmas time and I love the thing for web browsing, playing with apps, and all that jazz, but I've had a decent amount of experience using the iPod Touch and its not arguable that its a great piece of hardware running great software. I'm in the market for a new music player, and for some reason... the N810 doesn't really appeal to me for music. I know we have wonderful apps like Canola, but I don't know... I just don't really look at it like a music player.

When I bought the N810, I chose it over the iPod Touch for several reasons, and I'm pleased with my purchase, however I never really considered having them both... but I have a friend who may sell his 8GB iPod Touch for $200 and its quite tempting.... am I crazy?

Edit: I think I've come to my senses and realized that I'm just trying to satisfy my gadget urges, and it would be best not to waste my gadget fund on something that is very similar to the N810. What I need is a real DAP if anything, not an iPod Touch.

I would stick with the N810 if I were you, unless you just have money to burn. I got mine about the same time as you, and I think it works great for music. Yes, it's certainly true that the touch has a much more refined interface for music, no question. But remember, this is a SOFTWARE thing, meaning that potentially the tablets could (in the future, with new third-party software) far surpass the touch in terms of interface, also the memory is expandable in the tablets, which is nice. I definitely would agree that Canola2 is no iPod touch replacement, but it is free (when you have a tablet that is) so I'd say that's pretty sweet everything considered. After all, considering that the touch is a *dedicated* music/video play I would SURE HOPE it would be a lot better in that respect than the tablets which aren't even really advertised as media players! Yet they do the job just fine, I personally use my N810 as a music and internet radio player everyday and I definitely can't complain, it's a great little portable music player.

But again, seeing as you've had a good month of experience with the N810, and it sounds like you've had a decent amount of first-hand use with the touch, if you truely think you'd be happier using the touch, I would certainly say go for it, $200 isn't a bad deal for 8GB.

I'm considering a large MicroSD card instead and using Canola with my media library. Does Canola handle large libraries well? I haven't had experience with it use more than a few files. The inertia scroll seems to be pretty inconsistent graphically and I feel like that could become annoying when scrolling through long lists of songs or artists. How is your 8GB card working out, is it fast enough to support video?

Oh yeah, I've got maybe 500 or so songs in my library currently (I like to fill up my card with movies too ) Canola handles it no problem. It does take a few minutes the first time you add your music directory since it has to catalog all the tracks for you but after that it's quick.

The scrolling works fine for me, but if you had a lot of files (say a few thousand+) and you were viewing them all (all songs), yeah that would be a pain to scroll though. My biggest complaint with the scrolling is that even though there's a scroll bar in Canola, you can't use it! It's apparently just so you can get a visual idea of how many tracks there are in the list, but you can't actually scroll with it. Definitely poor design in my opinion.

The memory is plenty fast. I've got my videos encoded in MPEG4 400x272 1mbps 24fps, quality is excellent and full frame rate. The 8GB is enough space for about 8-9 feature-length movies with these settings, lower bitrate a bit and you can get more if you want. Also remember we'll have the 16GB microSDHC cards in just a few months and 32GB microSDHC by the end of the year. So by then we'll actually have more space than the new 32GB iPod touch.

Do you mind if I ask how much your 8GB card was?

Yeah, I paid about $150 (USD) in late January when it was newer on Amazon.com (wasn't available on newegg.com at the time). It's WAYYY cheaper now, around $75 on either amazon or newegg. That's roughly half what I paid after only about a month and a couple weeks, not a bad deal at all if you ask me. (although I'm kinda kicking myself for not waiting a few more weeks, hehe )

The card, by the way, works great with the N810, just plug it in and you're good to go. Only thing you need is a MicroSDHC->MiniSD converter, those are cheap though, maybe $15 or so.

Hi.

I am faced with a similar predicament of thinking about an iPOD touch. No one can deny the fact the interface is nothing short of perfect and it does what it is supposed to do very well! Add that to the fact the soon to be released sdk, the touch will be very serious contender for tablets. I agree that potentially there could be many applications developed around maemo, but will it have the same energy and momentum and excitement that Apple SDK will have? Moot point. But personally I would still keep the 800 as it has skype and Gizmo, which is awesome.
Cheers
Anand

I would wait until the SDK is released for the iP/iPT. One thing I do often is listen to podcasts. One thing you can't do on the IPT is download music (maybe iTMS, but not any web page with mp3 or other links).

I have three iPods (I gave away my original). The last few audiobooks and music were put on the n810, not the iPod Video. To do ANYTHING with the library on an iPod, you need to attach to an external computer.

It would probably be easier to create a link to my MacBookPro (I have EVDO and a portable router) to my n810 to my music and audiobook collection than to do it via an iPod - and until I can edit the library on the device, OR access the library on my laptop via some link via Wifi, I won't consider the iPod.

Meanwhile, the n810 often sits atop my dashboard and shows the map scrolling by (my zmapper program which is fully GPL and uses US Census maps - it was a complete rewrite of Roadmap for the Zaurus designed to be fast), I'm also listening to the audiobook, podcast, or music. Sometimes the next podcast is downloading at the same time.

Will the iPod Touch platform ever allow the apps to be integrated? Maybe. And will there be a charge? Maybe. And prices are likely to come down, not up in a few months. What will they let the SDK do? I've no idea. They've already BRICKED unlocked iPhones with updates. Somehow I don't think they are going to allow applications to do anything they want. It may be a very good closed platform, but it still will be closed. Or maybe not. My idea is to wait and see.

(I saw one similarly priced as a return at Target, but for the above reason passed on it).

Hi,

I own an n800. Although I don't like apple at all (they never had a product that cought my attention and I can't stand their marketing campaigns), I feel that with the iPod Touch thay finally came out with a good product. So I did buy the touch even if I don't listen to music. So I can give you my thoughts:

Interface: The Touch's interface is amazing for what it is. Very good for browsing music, not good at all for any serious work.

Browser: The safari implementation is wicked and it does work well with the small screen and multitouch, but it's no match for the n800.

Applications: Here I face one of the problems that make me hate apple.
- You can't run 3rd party apps (unless you jailbreak it as I did, but then you'll loose everything if you upgrade and you don't know when apple will stop jailbreaking).
- Everything must be done through iTunes and that sucks. If it freezes (as it does) you have to restore the touch and loose everything. Apple controls what you do because it always goes thru their program (unless you ssh).
- Apps are very simple compared to the n800.

Portability: The main plus. It's really small and easy to carry if all you need is a music/video player and a browser. The fact that it doesn't support 802.1x limits it a lot as you cannot use it in university networks in Europe (eduroam) and several companies.

Linux/Apple: Linux=almost everithing free. Apple=everything has a huge cost, including upgrades (mail/weather, etc), tv-out (not backwards compatible, must by apple cables), etc. Plus, everything apple is expensive.

Having said this, I don't think the iPod touch and the n800 are competitors. The n800 (and n810) is a working machine in which you can play, while de iPod touch is a toy and nothing more, although it is a great toy.

As always, if you want beautiful toys with lots of eye candy, go with apple. If you want to get the work done, go with something else.

I quite like having both.

Apple has stated that it intends the iPod Touch to be a mobile internet platform so it does in fact compete with the Nokia N 800/810. It may not currently have the expandability of the N800/810 terms of software but when the dev kit arrives it will and at that point it may well come to rival the N800/810 the question I have is whether Gnuite would port Maemomapper to the IPhone (assuming some GPS over bluetooth is feasble there) since that is the only app currently that would tie me to the N800/810.