First off, I am completely in agreement with Johnkzin's previous post. In particular any straightforward method to output to a larger screen would bring my N800 close to perfection.
Having said that, I purchased the N800 instead of a laptop and am very pleased. I did add three additional items: two 4GB sd cards (I swap one with my camera), a bluetooth headset (for skype), and an apple bluetooth keyboard. This small collection of devices handles so many tasks for me both on the road and at home. I find them to offer greater flexibility and far better portability than a laptop. The Itouch as a consideration, largely because of the excellent interface, but the N800 beat that on greater functionality.
First off, I am completely in agreement with Johnkzin's previous post.
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Having said that, I purchased the N800 instead of a laptop and am very pleased.
I hope that doesn't mean you thought I'm not pleased with my N800/N810.
I am _very_ pleased with them. That's why I said those issues are just annoyances. I wouldn't post so much in this community if I didn't love the little thing :-) (nor would I have bought the N810 within the first month if I hadn't loved my N800)
Oh, and, I also purchased my N800 _instead_ of a laptop. I was deciding between: black Macbook, iPhone or iPod-Touch, N800. At the time (early Sept '07), I wanted a device with a physical keyboard, so if I had known the N810 was just a month or two away, I might have waited.
I thought "with a bluetooth keyboard, I could probably do everything I _need_ to on an N800, and not need to lug around a macbook". Plus, the price difference was big enough that I felt I could eat cost of the mistake if I got the N800 and it didn't work out for me (it'd delay the purchase of my macbook by 2ish months).
So it was down to the iPhone, iTouch, or N800. I ruled out the iTouch because it lacked several iPhone apps, and lacked bluetooth. I ruled out the iPhone when I found out its bluetooth didn't support keyboards, and I was worried that going down the unlocking/jailbreaking path (to add an ssh client, not to use it with other carriers) might cause me problems later on.
During the few days between ordering and receiving my N800, the iPhone update that bricked phones that had been unlocked or jailbroken came out ... and I knew I had made the right decision on the iTouch/iPhone vs N800 front. And after a few days of using it, I knew I had made the right choice on laptop vs N800.
Oh, boloney. Can you hook up more than 2 displays to a laptop (I've got 4 right now)? Can you install more than one (fast) GPU on a laptop? Can you install lots of big, fast hard drives in a laptop with big fast RAID arrays? Install a bunch of NICs in your laptop to turn it into a router? Put in more than 8GB of RAM? Have dual 2-core CPUs? Or dual 4-core? Use any of the plethora of PCIe cards that provide you with a nearly infinite combination of inputs, outputs, and co-processing support?
Yeah, thought not.
OK, Maybe my original words were a bit harsh... I'll revise to "A desktop can't do anything that a laptop can't, excluding the server role." But really, no one would ever use an Internet Tablet or personal sized computer to run Google's daily operations. I was thinking typical personal use stuff. Big fast RAIDs and multiple gigabit ethernet cards aren't typically things you would need in a 'personal computing' role.
Upgrading hardware, in my opinion, is almost worthless any more. About the only thing in the box that isn't obsolete in 6 months is the case and power supply anyway. Heck, my $2k laptop from 2 years ago could easily be replaced today with a much more powerful laptop for $600.
I dunno, my whole point was that eventually a small tablet PC could replace a lappy for a person to carry around for personal / office use, but at the moment is very lacking. I don't even consider my 770 to be a good web browsing device compared to a full version of Firefox. Lack of at-the-office usability (MS Office / Exchange / Outlook) hurts too. The one thing I really do love it for is scribbling notes in maemopad+, and keeping my calendar up to date. Having games in meetings @ work doesn't hurt either
OK, Maybe my original words were a bit harsh... I'll revise to "A desktop can't do anything that a laptop can't, excluding the server role."
Still not accurate, as a fairly large amount of what I do with my personal desktop machine I couldn't do with a laptop, and server is at about the bottom of its task list.
RAIDs and such have uses outside of the server arena. Workstations are something a laptop couldn't hope to replace, either.
I just wanted a good portable device which I could take everywhere, thats why I got the N800 and its actually being used a replacement of the laptop now
