Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

N900 - Unlearn what you have learned

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

An OQO with a paltry 3 hours of battery life - and this will blow the doors off the 900 ?

Do you realize its usability that matters - not just specs.

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

Actually I'd kill for three hours of battery life. It's sufficient for most meetings, for most airline flights, and for lunch or for smoking a cigar in the evening on the back porch. It's not an all day computer. It's a trade off like any other computer. The iPhone actually underclocks their processor to increase battery life at the expense of processing speed. It's a different answer to the trade off.

My point was that for those times when I need to do computing tasks (like annotating PDF documents) as opposed to smartphone tasks (like browsing the Internet) my computer is better than an N900. If, OTOH, I had to use my computer with Skype as my primary phone, it would fail miserably.

It's all about competing priorities. The ultimate device does not exist and I will predict that it still will not exist in step 5.

My ultimate computer/phone is about the size of the Nokia 2630. Runs a quad core 64 bit CPU at 5GHz or more. Doesn't have a keyboard because it uses voice recognition, eyetracking, and in air gestures for input. Has a flexible, full color, HDMI roll-out display. Is constantly connected via 4G. Runs for a week without a charge. And is free from any phone company. Until then, trade offs are a fact of life.

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

Yep. Mine is the desire to have a device. I want to run with it to work on the trails around here, take notes in meetings and on the plane (and my plane trips are usually several hours long), review papers and write reviews, write and give presentations, play on it when bored (not often), call home (Skype for preference) when away, and get where i"m going in a different country or part of my country. It should cost less than a grand and fit in my pocket cos I don't want to lug a big box around, and it should weigh no more than 1/2 pound or so (remember, I want to run with it - stopwatch, gps, HRM potentially). Would be great if I could use it for paying for stuff at POS too...

Don't much care for air gestures. I see them every day :p

Above all: 1 device.

Anyone got any suggestions? :D

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

Still cant see what Average Joe needs to be able to do that the N900 cant do?

Mike C

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

I don't think Joe Average is supposed to understand the N900. From a publisher perspective, N900 feels like the "public beta" for Nokia to build a software library and work out the UX kinks.

As a publisher on OVI, we've been told we can't start submitting Maemo apps until *after* the N900 is released. If this device was really for Joe Average, it would be suicide to release it to a store of empty shelves. I also hear it's a little on the large side.

If Nokia's plan is to grab the attention of developers/publishers and early-adopters/trend-setters though, I think they're accomplishing their goal. I'm thrilled to have a Linux-based device with a Linux-based official SDK. I'm already porting our S60 app to Maemo (which isn't much work, because I did the prototype using SDL+ALSA and I'd made a version for Motorola's Linux phones.)

I think the N900 mini or N901 or N970 or whatever they call it will be the device for Joe Average. They'll have a library of software on OVI and tons of feedback from early adopters.


....now i have to get back to work on moFlashlite and moFart. :p


-Pat

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

I think your particular trade off will be between the "write and give presentations" and the "no more than 1/2 pound". The Viliv S5 is around 400 gms but it will handle everything else if you can accept the on screen keyboard. The UMID M1 adds back in the keyboard and gets down to almost 300 gms but I understand there are problems hooking it up to an external display.

I can't speak for the N900. I understand it is handling Office files with Documents to Go. Unfortunately, Dataviz has not announced this and while they support editing presentations on some hardware they don't on others. It's also possible OpenOffice or one of its variants will work. Once you've got the presentation, the question would be could the N900 output it to a VGA/DVI/HDMI cable for projection.

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

I find it amazing that Nokia doesn't want its store stocked and ready to open on day one of the release of this unit!!! They are really telling developers not to release anything till after the unit is out there? Good Grief, Charlie Brown!

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

There's another thread on "is the N900 yet another user acceptance test device?" I personally, based on absolutely no internal knowledge, suspect that the N910 will be a touch screen only device and that the next device after that will be their real attempt to win over Joe.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=32487

Re: Will Joe Average understand why the N900 is special?
 

There is an implication that the iphone is for average Joe, but I didnt see no app store when the iphone came out

Mike C