With the release of the n800, does this spell the death of the 770? I was at Compusa last night playing around with the n800 and honestly i was quite impressed. I love how the new audio player works, and the Internet connection seemed to be faster than on the 770. But i use my 770 primarily as an MP3 player and email checker on the run, and the lack of a slide cover for the n800 i dont think ill be upgrading, anways what would i do with my 770?

Do you guys think that the 770 is dead?

I don't know...
There was an OS upgrade for the 770 just this past month that seemed to provide some boost to the connectivity and such, so as of last month there was still support from nokia...one would hope they are following the comments here from their *customers and rabid fan base* and we will see a few things different with the 900 (bring the cover back please please please...)

It's a shame - everyone I've shown this thing to simply loves it - you'd think they would have done a little more with it, given the timing they had and the jump on all the other devices - now everyone says "oh - is that an iPhone ?"

I don't quite understand... If it works the same way it did when you bought it (and it should work even better now due to the most recent software updates), why would it be "dead"? It does what it used to do. Opera didn't stop working on the 770 only because there's a new version on the N800.

I do believe it was wrong to make OS2007 incompatible with the 770 and I'm sure this will make things harder for Nokia in the future. But this doesn't mean the 770 is dead. No way.

Oh, yes, and: I want the cover back on a future N900.

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Every technology product is obsolete as soon as it's release, welcome to the world of evolving technology. The real question is it obsolete to you? If you still find the product serves a use to you, then the answer is no. So I guess I don't understand the reason you are asking your question?

I couldn't have said it better myself. I work in a retail store that sells electronics and computers and I get people asking all the time when looking at computers and printers if they're good machines and if they're going to last for a while. Technology is obsolete about 45 days after it's released because, as bac said, it's constantly evolving. I didn't buy the tablet pc I'm using now because it was the most top of the line thing at the time or the most expensive thing I could find, but because it did everything I needed it to. I bought it back in June and it was obsolete about a month later when Intel discontinued the Pentium (this one has a Pentium M) series processors in favor of the Centrino Core Duo and Core 2 Duos. Is it dead? Well, Acer's support has always been lacking, but the machine seems to be working fine and I haven't had any major problems with it yet and everything I have had problems with have been things I've done myself since I can't just leave a working device alone.

What's even better with the Nokia 770 is, unlike my mentioned Acer tablet pc, the 770 is all open source and has a huge open source community. Something that's open source will never truely die because there will always be someone who has the same device and doesn't want to upgrade it who will continue to support it. The community is too big to let it die. Now, 10 or 15 years from now, you might want to seriously consider upgrading. For now though, if it's doing what you need it to do and you're content with it, that's good enough. It completely depends on what YOU need it to do and when YOU feel it's become obsolete enough to upgrade. I can't tell you how many people we get calling in weekly wanting to know if things work on Windows 95 so hey, if software and hardware that's 12 years out of date is still working for them, what's something that's what, 2 years old?

I suspect that any "Support" from Nokia will come by way of bug-fixes only. Don't count on any major feature enhancement. I think that application development will be supoprted on the 770 from some time to come as the incompatibilities between OS2006 and OS2007 seem to be greatly exaggerated. After all the doom and gloom that I heard, most of the apps built for the 770 ran just fine on the N800. The problem will start to come up that this process may not be reversible (sw built for N800 may not run on the 770).

I hope some community support starts to develop such that some of the bora desktop features (bug menu buttons, grouped taskbar icons, bora compatibility libraries, etc.) get ported over to OS2006 and maybe extended beyond bora such that you can replace your old Opera with a newer Minimo or alternative and have it work seamlessly.

That may be dreaming though.

You're right, of course, but IMO it's only half of the story.

Licensing issues I understand. I'm not clamoring for a new Opera and/or a new Flash plugin on the 770 if it's something Nokia reckons it can't afford. The subset of sites I routinely use on the tablet are mostly text-based content, and they work just as well as they did a year ago.

Hardware issues I understand. If OS2007 on the N800 takes advantage of more memory, more CPU, and various custom accelerator chips (which it doesn't actually seem to, yet), then that can't be backported, period. These are not the things that make me grumpy.

What galls me most is seeing Nokia and the maemo team jump ship and refocus their effort on a new, rushed-to-market and bug-ridden 2007 platform, leaving 2006 in maintenance mode with some glaring bugs of its own, some of which are known since its very release and will likely never get fixed.

Yes, there was a new release very recently. I installed it last Sunday, having skipped the one before. I left it mostly pristine just to see what would happen... And sure enough, right away it started rebooting itself while idle at least once per 24 hours, just like it's always done. Sheesh, a Linux system that restarts itself at will every day ? My Zaurus NEVER did that, and neither did any of my Psions. You'd think it would be considered a priority, but if you read the developers list they almost make it sound like it's "by design"... and of course the N800 does it, too. So there.

Then there are other things like the brain-dead App manager with its impossible interface, brittle update process, and the Red Pill nonsense. Opera closing all windows when you only ask it to close the current one (the "poof" effect), or deciding it doesn't want to follow any links anymore, or sometimes just the "submit" button on forms... And so on.

Another sore point is all the small or not-so-small "usability" improvements that have appeared on the N800, or rather OS2007, which are not tied to hardware or licensing issues. These are probably not fundamental changes deep down, but can make a huge difference in day-to-day use. The new behaviour of the "Home" button is one example ; official support of Bluetooth keyboards is another. Or the new look of the virtual keyboards, or the improved home applets management, or other such details... There doesn't seem to be any convincing reason why these couldn't benefit the 2006 platform, too.

I'd be quite content with Nokia if they would fix the 770's most obnoxious and long-standing bugs, and grant it some of the eye-candy and usability goodies the N800 has, and leave it at that. But somehow I don't think that is going to happen, and that leads me to wait and see what's going to happen with the N880, too...

fpp, you summed up nicely and precisely many of the points that 770 users made since N800 was announced. Nokia , so far, seems completely lost or reckless with respect to their development plans for Internet Tablet platform and tries to reinvent the wheel every time they introduce a new device (e.g. reintroduction of some bugs in OS2007), which is pretty strange for a company that has been involved in mobile platform development for years, to say the least.

I have to agree with fpp. They moved onto another product before fixing the basic bugs within the 770 that cause user problems on nearly a daily basis. If they would just fix the major well known bugs, as fpp listed, and then just release small maintenance fixes if needed, I would be happy. I just want an Internet Tablet that works for the core features I bought it for. Fix the glaring bugs and I am happy.