OK, all in all, I feel reasonably safe... I'll have the old N800 as an experimental device to toy with Mer and stuff like that. I'll have the N810 to take it where it's too dangerous for my precious new RX-51 (which will most likely stay at home, where the N800 is now most of the time).
And I'll have my 770 which died from a sudden WSOD last year... I cannot use it anymore, but I also can't bear to give it away. As this is the one model in the line that looks pretty, it serves its purpose without being switched on.
Funny, I gave mine away yesterday. But to a hacker who will use it in contrast to me; I've barely used it past months. Nokia got my money for their excellent Nokia E71 which partly replaced my Nokia N810, and I will probably buy the new Maemo 5 device to use as 'nettop'. I'm very excited about Maemo 5 and RX-51, but not about Nokia N8x0 and Maemo 4.x anymore even though there is going to be vibrant community support it just is not practical for me as is.
There are some nice mods for N810 like Mugen 3600 mAh, full SD, accelerometer. Its a fun device to play with, but IMO not for serious usage. Debian and Mer should work on x86 as well, and with SB2 you can easily then use this on the NIT to port software and hack on it. So it can be really a lot of fun, and if you liked the N800 and want more relatively similar experience then N810 is nice. Both have their strong and weak points; therefore I see them as complimenting as well.
If you ordered from Amazon.de you'll also get the correct QWERTZ layout and charger. You'll probably love the included stylus and later enjoy backports from Maemo 5 to this device a lot. All in all, with a price drop of 100 EUR (33%), why not? Just, I think the price will soon fall even more.
Got it yesterday. The one thing I like most about it: It doesn't have a silver front plate that makes it look like a cheap toy. I had almost forgotten about that. The N810 is a real beauty compared to the N800.
Another moment of joy was when I accidentally pressed Ctrl+C to copy a piece of text... and found that it worked. My brain must have been in desktop mode when typing on this keyboard, I hadn't expected this shortcut to be recognized on the tablet but was happy to find it does.
The sound really is wonderful. The moment I tried internet radio I could tell the difference. I was impressed by the sound quality of the N800, but the N810 is even better.
Being used to the N800, I find the N810 a little more difficult to hold. It's too heavy and big for one hand but doesn't feel comfortable when held with both hands, especially the keyboard seems to be the wrong size for my thumbs. They should build these keyboards in M, L, XL, XXL.
I found i really, really miss the D-pad in every day use. I hadn't noticed how often my thumb actually moves over to the left and navigates through lists with this thing. Even worse, the D-pad on the N810 is exceptionally hard to handle. I demand the person who designed it to be punished by having to actually use it.
Both probably are things I'll get used to. Well, not quite, as I plan to use the N800 and the N810 side by side, but still... I'll learn.
So there'll be a lot to do for me this weekend. Installing all the applications I'm used to, getting all my mail accounts to work, bookmark "my internet", re-define the onscreen keyboard (I demand the person who did the German layout to be punished by having to actually use it),.... You almost forget the amount of work you put into your tablet until you get a new one.
