Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Its more than enough power for me to be happy with it. Also, I'm not talking about Pidgin. MSN, AIM and the others work well enough through Jabber.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Most of your comments are highly subjective, but it takes a certain amount of rank chutzpah to slam "hand made" Linux apps for the burgeoning open source mobile landscape.

Personally I have the utmost respect for those who have freely ported and coded apps for the N800 or any other environ or device for that matter. As zerojay said, as long as it works, I'm happy. No-cost, ad-free Pidgin certainly does exactly what I need.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

With the bantering, bashing, pissing and moaning that goes on here, to me it's like a ray of sunshine when someone like Ragnar steps in with these tidbits.
Also highly appreciated are Texrat's "vapid" updates and explanations of Nokia's game plan. Maybe some of Nokia's corporate policies and procedures might not be understood by us, the IT project may not be getting enough internal attention, etc. etc., but I at least find it somewhat reassuring to hear a bit about their stratigies, plans and commitments for this neat little device.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Thanks Kenny.

Ragnar is correct in that (*cough*) certain posters (*cough*) need to be careful with what they say and even don't say :rolleyes:. Hopefully I've managed that. And the jibes about cheerleading and teasing are all forgotten when I see the bursts of posts around some new development. I'm still excited about these products and I hope they have a long and full future.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Yeah, you've really got something special when you have so many people talking about it, arguing about it, developing for it, using it, creating with it, helping people with it, connecting to people with it, teaching with it, learning with it, sharing, caring, even daring people with it. I could go on, but we all know by now that there's just no limit to what we can come up with for market changers/makers/shakers like these.

It's still early in the game for this great idea, and I hope it becomes a major success for not only Nokia, but the Linux and Open Source communities too. Some will say it already is a success, and some will say it's far far from it, but only time will tell the truth. One thing is for certain, it will have a rich history to look back on in the future.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Texrat. I love your posts. They give me a lot of hope we're going to see something very special.

I bought a 770 but didn't use it much. I found it far too slow. My N800 however (Coupled with a good data plan) sees almost daily use and I find it indispensable. The only thing I miss is a physical keyboard so imagine my joy when I find out that it looks like we're getting one :) GFrotz is going to be so much fun on the train to work.

Even if the new device was just a N800 with a slide keyboard I'd be the first in the queue with my credit card. I'm constantly amazed by what I can do with my N800. Totally love it to bits and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Nokia come up with next.

What I would like to see is more use of the excellent apps the OSS community here have developed. Imagine a new tablet that used mplayer as the video player backend instead of the rather pitiful player that comes built in now. Perhaps even flash websites that run at a decent speed ;)

Do we have any suspicions for a time frame yet? I'm drooling already.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

For horsepower, I'd just like to see the OS itself perform a little better when scrolling, zooming, popping up menus, keypads, etc.

You can't do much to keep third-party software in line, but you can certainly polish the bundled apps and system UI.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

You do know, though, that this was the original approach of bringing the internet to mobile devices and failed miserably? People don't want 2nd class mobile versions. Companies don't want to duplicate their efforts for a mobile audience. The only way that proved successful so far was to bring "the real thing" to mobile devices - the way Nokias IT series does.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Sometimes I really wonder what you people talk about. I went to see a friend this weekend whose desktop PC is actually less responsive than my 770... It's a Pentium MMX with 120MB RAM and a hard drive that makes you jump to the next room when in spins up. My fathers PC is not much faster - a bit faster than my 770, but it might not beat an N800.

You should accept the fact that people don't always upgrade their hardware to the latest model available. Some just keep it as long as it works. The average PC, the average laptop in use today might be faster than an internet tablet, but maybe not a lot faster.
So if you say that a 770/N800 is too slow for site A or application B, then the truth is that site A and application B, in fact, cannot be used by a large number of "normal" PC users, either. So blame the site and the application for being too heavy, not the device.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Yup. Until last year my dad was using a 10-year old 200 Mhz Pentium Classic with 8 MB RAM and was quite content with it. Actually it still works but what retired it was the lack of USB ports for a digital camera and LAN to hook up a DSL router. I bought the cheapest refurbished PC I could find and it's still way overkill for him.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

This is what bothers me about Nokia's 1.5 year product cycle.

I have been looking at the N800 since around April 2007 and have been waiting for my end of year vacation payout (free money) to buy. It sounds great - but now here is the next one. I've heard the horror stories of the 770 and I dont want a paperweight.

Why should I buy the N800 and not wait for this next incarnation?

(please be specific if you are going to answer the question, having been a salesman for computer products, Ive been through all of the "if you wait for the next product ....")

Here is what I think my gripes with the N800 are going to be:

1. Slow processor. It may be built for web apps - but given the community uproar about it's potential - it seems to be just a step shy of crossing that bridge to evolved PDA like status.

2. Real photo management software that will work with my WinXP home PC and Flickr. My #1 goal for the N800 is to take it with me into the field and shoot photography. I plan to swap my SD card from my digital camera and use the N800's (acclaimed) screen to view my results. When re-entering a wifi hotspot I plan to upload my acceptable results to Flickr - and wipe my SD card to refill it. (Question for current N800 owners: if you use Mozilla - have you tried fotofox? Does it work on the N800?)

The one thing I really like about the N800 is of course, the Linux side. While I've never been a Debian user - I still use a fedora distro and long ago I used a less cluttered distro but I forget the name. That said .. am I reading too much into the Linux side? Does it really *matter* to me that it's linux compatible? Because - just how many Linux apps will I use on the device anyway? Probably a music app, maybe a (few) photo apps if I can find them, certainly not Gimp, probably a video player, maybe Skype... once.. or twice.

Sorry for the rambling post - this has just kind of turned out to be a bump in the road for my N800 dream :P

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

If the N800 would have more power it would be more expensive. The battery wouldn't hold that long. It would be thicker. The N800 isn't short of power. But optimizing the software to the platform the N800 uses would bring more. Just look at video playing. I think mplayer could be much faster on the N800 if it'd use all the processor specific capabilities.

I hope Nokia improves performance with the next big firmware release (Especially with video performance). Just putting in more isn't always the best way...

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

no offense to you good sir, but if those are the system specs you are quoting off to me, you shouldnt be buying internet tablets, as it seems your funds would be better spent on a decent desktop. a 1ghz desktop, case, hard drive, 512 memory would cost you under $100, let alone just picking up a used computer.

my $65 Compaq Armada M300 laptop (PIII 600mhz, 384 ram) can run circles around the n800. sorry, but your defensive position is incorrect.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

dont get me wrong sweety, id absoultely love to spin through google maps, youtube, engadget, etc. The reality is, those sites arent made for 800x480, they arent made for little processors, small memory, and lack of video performance chipsets.

what im saying is very simple. if you are a company, and want to make a product, look at your competitors. i dont own an iPhone, but I respect to hell what Apple has done to put the world in our hands, and useable by our fingers. they looked at the problems, and for some of them, created elegant solutions. nokia, being the powerhouse it is, would benefit greately by one upping them, or at minimum, at least copying them.

even the concept tablet devices that Intel is working on understand that if you want to touch something, well, it should be designed to be touched. we cant covert the whole web to our format, but, the important sites/programs we want to use daily should be.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

nokia last little tidbit from their N series event, thoughtfix asked the question about the new tablet. the response was that the new tablet would be even more 'mainstream'. relying on the community to develop important, useful applications is not a step towards making something more 'mainstream'. that needs the help of software developers, R&D teams, etc.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I surf Facebook, Google Reader and sites such as ESPN.com on my N800 every night with a Macbook 2Ghz and a Core Duo convertible tablet 10 feet away from me. I NEVER miss using them I guess if I was hitting tons of multimedia sites I would probably complain more but for quick starting and simple surfing there is really no mobile device out there sub $400 that can come close to the N800 for replicating a full web experience (yes including the iPhone). I really wish there was less bleating and moaning on this forum and more focusing on the real world. The N800 is actually a pretty good device with limited appeal to the mainstream right now but with all of the stuff you hear in this place you would think Nokia had taken a **** in the hands of some of these users. Its not perfect, but as a small part of a huge multinational company working with it seems limited resources, in just over 2 years this platform has come a long way and proven itself viable.

With the added utility of the GPS and WiMAX and a software update that targets the mainstream I think Nokia is headed in the right direction.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

This may happen. It was mentioned in maemo-developers that N800 contains 'speed sorted' OMAP that can go up to 400MHz (perhaps similar to that 252MHz OMAP 1710 in N770) . With newer linux kernel in major FW release we may get on-demand CPU frequency and voltage scaling which may boost CPU speed when needed.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I'd wait and see what the new one brings, or is the N800 significantly cheaper now than we expect the new one to be?

I don't think there are major issues with the processor speed, it's not as fast as some high end iPaqs, but it seems to work fine.

No idea about the software (what is photo management all about? Create directory, copy image files? Use filemanager...?), is there anything open source you could port/adapt? One thing that does bug me is that large digital photos take a while to open - this could probably be improved by optimising libjpeg for ARM (or using the DSP). The use of hardware acceleration could also speed this up (we'll see whether the new tablet uses this).


Simon

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Agreed. Too many app and website designers adopt the philosophy of "wow I have all this storage, processing power and bandwidth-- LET'S USE IT ALL!!!" Fire up ebay on your N800 and count the number of objects loaded-- it's insane.

I'll grant Garage's point that the Internet isn't generally designed around the tablet form factor, but that begs the question: why couldn't it be? What's wrong with minimizing per-page content and size? Is all that flash and graphics necessary?

I think not... and my policy has been for some time now that I will aim my sites at the tablets by default. That's the future, folks.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

That still in no way belittles the obvious accomplishments of decent independent developers. I like project-scale approaches, too, with plenty of resources behind the effort... and then I see Maemo Mapper and Pidgin and realize that's not the only way to get the job done.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

well, a good example would be a a site like this:

http://racingsouthwest.com/forums/lo...41794-250.html

found it on the net browsing around. read it with the n800. click on a video while ur there. anything happen? nope?

but for some reason on my archos 605 wifi, not only does the page load quickly, it scrolls smooth. if i click on a video link, it opens it full screen and caches the vid within 5 seconds.

dont get me wrong, the n800 blows the archos away, but it shows me what is possible with more power and more memory. im not asking to play games on it, or to do photoshop. i want to browse the internet, just so happens the internet has pretty photos, videos, and flash content.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

To me http://www.internettablettalk.com could stand some optimization. I find it slow to load completely, when compared to google, yahoo and others. Do others find this to be true?

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

YES! Since buying my N800, I visit this site all the time both on my desktop computer and my IT. The site itself loads pretty quickly but I am unable to scroll down the page on the N800 until the add finishes loading and that takes FOREVER! I think it's a slow adserver causing the problem or maybe it's the way the N800 processes the ad. I have the same problem when trying to load Engadget; the site itself loads pretty quickly, but I have to wait for all the ads to load before I can scroll down the page.

I'm really looking forward to adblocking on the N800.

(PS: This thread has gone waaay off course, but it's a great discussion!)

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Yes I do, hence this request which seems to have fallen on deaf ears. While it's possible to view ITT on the NIT (in my case a N800) it's not pleasent, which is quite ironic in an unfortunate way. ITT is fine on a desktop though, so really I think we need a "lighter" mobile version optimised for NITs (the current mobile theme is far too basic as it's designed for a mobile phone with cr@p resolution/tiny screen - not really issues on NITs!)

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I get the hanging problem in Micro-B when I click the "go to newest post" link (which is too small on NITs - another issue being ignored by Admin!) The page appears to load, then the browser hangs for several seconds - up to 30 seconds or so - and then finally the browser snaps to the correct place in the post (ie. the newest post). It seems like it may be a problem with anchor processing, or perhaps the rendering engine in Micro-b hogs the CPU and no longer listens to touchscreen/scroll events while it grinds it's way through the HTML. Either way, it's horribly unresponsive. :(

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I should have mentioned that I am also using the MicroB browser and I get this problem too. Maybe when I get home today, I'll reflash with the updated firmware and go back to using Opera for a few days and see if I prefer the way it performs. I never was able to figure out how to be able to use both Opera and MicroB on my N800.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Thanks for the link.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I'm no electrical/computer type, but is there anything in the FCC filings to suggest that the new IT is 802.11N compatible? My current thought is that the new tablet has wifi-N and built in gps. Still optomistic that it also has WiMax.

Trying to steer the thread back on course.... :)

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

The FCC only tested radiated emissions in the 2.4 GHz range which is 802.11b/g. I can't remember is draft-N requires operation in the 5GHz range or if it's optional (5GHz is 802.11a) but I know draft-N is supposed to be compatible with 802.11a. All I can say for sure is that unless the FCC docs are revised, this tablet will not operate in the 5GHz range and I think support for draft-N is unlikely at this point.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

802.11n can us 2.4GHz or 5GHz, or both. 5GHz support is an optional component of the draft 11n standard and unlikely to be supported by most devices (routers or mobiles) due to the additional cost of the second radio and also the problems inherent with the 5GHz frequency (ie. limited penetration through walls). However, the 5GHz band is much less congested than 2.4GHz so dual radios may be implemented on "top end" devices. :)

If 11n were present on the new Nokia device, I'd have expected to see some comment that 5GHz wasn't tested as it's not supported by the hardware then again I don't know the testing process so can only guess.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

iirc, microb does full javascript and similar processing. opera does the minimal or something like that. in other words, microb is much, much more pedantic about how it deals with webpages. thats also why you will see things pop into view and resize maybe 2-3 times before its settles down in opera. microb waits for the whole html to be loaded before it starts the processing, opera does some some guesswork and then redoes it when it gets more data from the server.

i also recall a about:config setting that controlled the default wait before showing anything of a page in firefox. im guessing that said setting could also be in effect in microb.

basically, microb (and the rest of the mozilla family) by default puts correctness ahead of user responsiveness.

or in other words, it may not have anything with the power of the device, but how the browser is coded.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

And as an adjunct to that, how the site itself is constructed.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Bingo!


***

BTW, awhile back in this thread I saw talk of a new OS or one that is specific to the new device.

That would suck on so many levels.

Again, my hope is that the additional hardware will only encourage third party development of new apps that can also be used on the N800 by those that have already enhanced their devices with add on GPS and/or keyboards.

In addition, Nokia themselves may develop more/better utilities that can be used by the current tablet(s) like mapping for the 12 or thirteen buttons on the dang thing. BT connectivity can also use some help.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Yes, not much discussion of 802.11N, although that would be a logical next step, the number of 802.11n hotspots is currently miniscule.

I appreciate your optimism, but for the umpteenth time, the WiMax version will not be until 2008!!!

Nokia has only just recently done the procurement for the WiMax silicon. Search and read the WiMax thread.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

and even then, so far we only know that nokia will supply n800 (or similar) with wimax to sprint in usa. for use with sprint's mobile wimax based network.

we do not know if there will be a N800 like device with wimax for the general public yet. and i dont think we will see it any time soon as there at not many places you have use for a portable wimax device. besides sprint's upcoming network, i only know of south korea having wibro (their take on mobile wimax iirc) up and running, with some samsung devices made specific for it. outside of that, wimax is mostly used as a last-mile solution where laying new copper or fiber would be to expensive.

now, if/when 4G/LTE comes around, then we may well see more of it. basically thats what sprint is trying to get a head start on iirc.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Miniscule... but in my office and home. So =p
N is more important to me than WiMax. By a lot.

Of course, some OS updates, better UI performance, better camera, GPS, better D-pad, better button configurations, etc -- those are all more important than N.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

If built-in hardware keyboard is true it opens many possibilities. One drawback for 800 and 770 was requirement of specific toolkit to make on-screen keyboard work. With hardware solution I believe this is no longer necessary. This one plus usb host can turn "N900" into really good UMPC. I hope Nokia will keep 400 price tag - although $400 = E400 is really ugly for European customers :(

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

This assumption is unfortunately false. A hardware keyboard has a fixed layout, what you see is what you get. I find myself routinely switching language layouts on the on-screen keyboard simply because I need access to both national letters as well as characters only available on another (say, US) layout.

The only way to achieve that with a small-size hardware keyboard is through a bunch of awkward secret key combinations. As on my Zaurus. This is practically useless (I can't remember these combinations). As a result I never use it (I use the on-screen one instead). So, even with a slide-out keyboard it wouldn't be smart to remove the on-screen one.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I wasn't speaking about layouts. Non latin1 users are screwed either way :( I was speaking of special binding of text fields and on screen keyboard. That was mentioned in one of discussions about KDE. Usage of programs built around non-special edition of GTK(?) is awkward because binding between textfields and on-screen keyboard is done on really low level. For example if you focus in some textarea on web form in native browser on-screen keyboard will automatically pop-up. With non-native solutions input of text is more complicated.

This sounds like small thing but this is major block for every day usage.

With hardware keyboard this limitation vanishes - I believe.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I'm not sure what you mean. My BT keyboard works seamlessly with original firmware.