Since they've been buying pre-assembled computers that came with Windows (including Internet Explorer and Outlook Express) and a trial copy of Microsoft Office already installed.* So that's like ...fifteen years now? Twenty? Computers designed for the consumer market from even futher back than twenty years ago were presented as fully armed and operational devices (ooh, it comes with BASIC!), so I can't see how this attitude would be surprising.

With that said, it sure does seem like the 770 is being evaluated against current day laptops, which is definitely weird considering the price difference. Any laptop even remotely similar in form factor is going to be at least four times the price.

Nokia needs to either start positioning the 770 as a unique device or they'd better be ready to launch a completely distinct Maemo device sometime in the near future -- at this rate no one is going to take the 770 seriously. ...Not that anyone (except us) really seems to be taking it seriously now, of course.

* Note: I'm not advocating any of this software as being "good" by any stretch of the imagination. It's horrible software that was, unfortunately, widely adopted.

Last laptop I bought in 2000, came with windows ME (OS), Microsoft Works Suite (Office like suite with word processor, spread sheet, money, and some other crap), games (solitare and a few others), Internet browser (IE) and mail client (Outlook Express).

Now none of those stayed on there for long, but still, most people don't know better.

I personally think adding MS-Office support to the 770 would be a bad idea, even if it had more memory.

Tech Review in a Newspaper?
 

One of the most useful aspects of the Internet is the availability of reviews. I often enter search terms which include the product I'm researching or considering for purchase and the word review. There's almost always a lot of useful information to be found which makes the decision to buy a lot easier.

The last place I would go to get a review of a product would be to a newspaper that has a tech columnist. A columnist simply doesn't have the means to put together a review for a newspaper that can come anywhere near the quality of a review that can be found at a large number of Internet technology sites. It's hard to even take a newspaper columnist seriously because the limitations of the newspaper format are insurmountable, compared to the rich format of a Web-based technology site.

I'm thinking of sites like The Tech Report, Storage Review, Anandtech, X-bit Labs, Extreme Overclocking and such. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of web sites, each of which publishes product reviews that far outdistance what any newspaper is capable of publishing.

The review (i.e., reviewer) at issue here doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, and neither does the newspaper (The Washington Post) as a source for technology information. For my money the newspaper shouldn't even try to pass off this kind of material as either accurate or useful. The days are over when anybody can take the paper seriously any longer even when it comes to current events and opinion. The paper itself is a dying institution. Stick a fork in it - it's done.

Not everyone realizes that yet, and there are still lots of people out there that only trust mainstream media (news papers, tv, radio). the sites you listed are sites for the more technical inclined. That's their target. The average joe however is going to look at Washington Post, NY-Times, C|Net, etc.

Really? My son took my 770 to school and all the kids he showed it to were just amazed at it. He had no trouble getting on the school's wireless network and since he didn't try to have ten windows open on the browser at one time he had no trouble showing off the 770's tremendous browser experience. He played some tunes for them and parts of a movie - the kids he showed it to were awestruck. He already has a Razr phone and a Sony portable playstation but it is the 770 that he and his friends like the best and use the most - by far. It's kids like mine who are responsible for SONY selling 100 million Playstation consoles, another 100 million Playstation2 consoles and millions and millions of other devices like the Nintendo DS and SONY PSP. The New York Times and Washington Post are NOT where ANYBODY goes to evaluate technology. People buy what they see others enjoying - and the experiences of the young people in many countries will write the story of the 770, not some columnist in any newspaper. That's what I think, based on watching what my kids and their friends do.

... and for the first time kids have the disposable capital to make those purchases. As a kid in the 80's, thinking back, I can't believe all the crap I had. I laid my transformers side by side and they went on for 10 feet. I sold all of them (and G.I. Joes too) and got a Sega Genesis when it first came out.

I think the youth market will be a lot more forgiving. An interest in things socio-political has left me looking for trends. I notice (and this is a huge generalization) that people with a little bit of youth under their belt (whether chronologically or in spirit) are far more willing to adapt to things that are different. I was showing the 770 to a coworker and they kept talking about familiarity, their old Palms. "The Palm did it like this, it should do that the same way". If people like that ran the world we'd be rubbing sticks together before dinner.

Sorry, I disagree.

The Newton was a complete disaster. It had a great concept, but was poorly designed and totally unreliable. The critical reviews were dead-on accurate. The Newton was the worst chapter in Apple's history and set back the PDA industry back years. Kudos to Palm/USR/3Com for overcoming the bad example that the Newton was.

It is still VERY true that, by and large, tech reviews are not to be trusted. Too many of these writers fancy themselves as king-makers. I don't understand why they just don't all become sports writers, where this type of attitude is accepted and to be expected.

Case in point - the 770. Go to the various websites (Cnet included) where you can read user reports. Seems to me that users are singing a different tune from most reviews.

This, of course, is just my opinion. :)

This, of course, is just my opinion.

Which Newtons have you used? I've used every one of them, from the first (when they got cheap) to the last, the MP2100, with a 160Mhz StrongARM CPU.

The Newton was, and still is, the most innovative PDA on the market. The UI is far superior to the Palm, with many widgets that have been carefully optimized for pen-based usage. Most PDAs now use widgets that look remarkably like those on desktops - ignoring the fact that they are designed for mice, not pens.

The first Newton's handwriting recognition was not that good, unfortunately. However, the Newton OS was about a lot more than that. The apps are tightly integrated with each other. If you want to send a document by e-mail, or by any other means (FTP, IRC, infrared, and any other protocol somebody implements a transport for) you do it from within the app, rather than having to go, find it in your file system, and tell your e-mail system to add it as an enclosure.

Global preferences are implemented very nicely - there is an extensible framework allowing applications to change their settings based on the work site you are at. I can specify that, at home, I use a particular modem or wifi AP, a specific printer, and that I want my e-mails to be sent out immediately. On the road, I can specify that my outgoing mail is stored in my outbox till I get online, etc. etc.

When you use the built-in Notes program to create a document, it formats it for your screen. It can automagically reflow it to fit an A4 or US Letter page when you want to print it. It can actually print from any app directly to a printer - something that doesn't seem to be possible from most PDAs out there now.

Applications can be easily installed on your built-in storage device, or on a card, and moved back and forth. They can even be sent to other people! This is something that I haven't actually seen any other PDA do.

The Newton uses a persistent object store rather than a file system. This means that storing your documents doesn't require first selecting a name and storage location. You can add metadata later for filing purposes, but you don't need to do it before your data is saved.

"Find" is global - you can look for particular information in _all_ applications, get a summary list, and then go to that particular data within the app that created it. If you can't remember where you wrote about a particular topic, this is extremely convenient. It's very similar to Spotlight on OS X.

Really, though, you have to play with one to really understand. Apple elegantly solved problems that most people didn't realize existed. If they'd kept up with the Newton, I think it would easily blow away everything else out there now.

This is a joke, right? The Newton MessagePad was a disaster, I grant you that. But it was a marketing disaster and not a technical one. I have two Newton 2100 MPs; they are the most reliable handheld computers ever made. People report "finding" their old Newtons in a closet after years, charging up the batteries and, save updating the date and recalibrating the screen, can just pick up where they left off years ago. Newtons don't lose anything. Ever.

On top of that, the Newton has, as far as I can see, the only operating system that is truly taylored for stylus input, a really amazing handwriting recognition (or do you know any other HWR system that can recognize cursive Dutch with over 99% accuracy) and a bunch of ridiculously intuitive applications, as anyone who has ever used the Newton Notes program will acknowledge.

The only thing the Newton had working against it, was Steve Jobs.

A review is usually just a review. I would love to see Walter Mossberg
review this device.

Nokia should expend some energy influencing the development "roadmap" so that the features offered in the next software release (5 months since the last one) are stable.

That includes demonstrable compatibility with a variety of wireless access points, automatic proxy setup for public access points, etc. Joe Average isn't going to put up with the 770 in its current state.

I think the review cited points out some of the issues that could be addressed.