Hi there...I've been drooling over the features of the n800 and the n770 before that. I'm really very close to purchasing one, but I have had a hard time finding some info and frankly this seems to be just about the best place online for information on the internet tablet and it's obvious that experienced people are on this site ... so I figured you all were the right sort to ask.

I've read that someone was considering starting a newbie blog, which would be great, I might add that a nice FAQ would be invaluable for this forum as well as that blog.

Right, now to my questions...
I expect most if not all of you have read this critic of the n800's GUI. 1. Do you guys agree with his experiences? And more importantly do you expect that Nokia will be updating the GUI?
2. Is this a work in progress that can expect to see a number of updates over the next 2 years? Or will we see one or two updates in that time?
3. Do updates to the UI all come from Nokia? I know its all built on open source software, but how tightly does Nokia control the UI?
4. How often did Nokia update the 770?
5. Along those lines, how difficult are the OS updates to install?

Finally, I'm no Linux geek. I'm a moderately technical capable guy, but I'm time poor and don't want to really spend loads of time trying to update the software. Spend my time using the device. What percentage of 3rd party software is one-click to install?

TIA for your thoughts...

1. I agree with many of Sean's ideas, however in my opinion in practice the N800's GUI is fine. The issues he raises (again, IMO) are valid but it's really not a big deal. I like the GUI and find it easy to use.
2. Nobody knows. There has been 1 update so far on the N800 OS version (but this one came so quickly after the introduction that my unit had it installed already, even though I ordered it the day after I heard about it from the Las Vegas introduction). Nokia has indicated that they have another version upcoming somewhen in the future. I'm not sure, but I think there were two or three updates for the 770 the last 1.5 years - but I didn't own one so I'm not sure.
As for other applications (maemo stuff) you should expect updates and new stuff to appear quite often, there are many people working on things (new, as well as porting 770 packages to N800)
3. As for the UI itself, IMO don't expect changes along what Sean had on his wishlist - for myself I only wish for some updates to how the applets interact (e.g. now that we have _two_ radio applications it would make sense to put the speaker/earbuds selector into the global UI setting instead of keeping it in one of the two applets).
4. See above.. not entirely sure. Others will fill me in here.
5. Not difficult, at least if you have access to a Linux or Windows box. Apparently the Mac OS flasher utility is missing or limited.

Thanks for the response. I'm most likely going to go ahead and get one, but if anyone else has any comments to add I'd appreciate it or baring that, can anyone recommend any other sites/forums where n800/770 users hang out? Besides http://maemo.org/ of course.

Go look here:

http://jaaksi.blogspot.com/2007/02/h...l-roadmap.html

Now isn't that nice?

Nice? NICE? Hell that's darn right spiffy!

THX!

OOOOH, I need to bookmark that guys blog