N800 as PDA replacement?
 

Hi everyone,

last week my Palm T5 died and I need a replacement urgently.

Given that a Palm TX at the moment cost as much as a N800 (at least here in Germany) and with a beta of a Garnet Emulator for the N800 already available evidently the N800 looks interesting...

What I need my PDA for is reading ebooks (txt, html, pdf), an offline wikipedia, playing mp3s and of course some PIM.

Important for me is a good battery life when used offline (without WiFi or BT, lowest brightness - I got about 6hrs of runtime out of my T5 and don't want to go below that).

Also I would need a good pdf-reader (something like RepliGo, i.e. both a full-page view with zoom and a text-only view).

I am quite Linux-savy and don't mind flashing new firmware versions and the like but I mainly want a reliable everyday device rather than a cool hack.

So could you please provide some feedback as to what extend a N800 would be suitable for me as a T5 replacement?

Many thanks!

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

1) Reading ebooks (txt, html, pdf)
ITTs are GREAT for eBooks. Evince for PDFs is lurverly. Then there's FBReader for the others. You won't be disappointed! No Palm compares imo (the screen alone is worth it.)

2) Offline Wikipedia

A port of SDict is available. Though we're having trouble getting the files :( Prolly best to download Wikipedia and convert them yourself.

3) Playing mp3s

Canola, UKMP, Kagu :) No complaints here!

4) Of course some PIM.

GPE ... though this is still an area that's being worked on by the author.



If these options are no good - penguinbait's also got KDE running on the tablets. You have there a whole lot more available :) KDE PIM anyone?



Re battery life - at the settings you suggest (lowest brightness, no wifi/bt, etc) you should get comparable runtime. On the go I leave all options on but reduce brightness by half - I get around 4 hours runtime; with brightness all the way down you should be able to squeeze more out. It really depends what you do with it offline ... 6 hours holding a tablet (or Palm) in your hands must KILL both your arms and your eyes! If you mean 6 hours in "suspend mode" then Nxx0's can be idle for a little over 2 days.

i.e. You should get a few hours use over the course of the day, all day!

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

1) With the recent Palm VM available you basically can have a built in replacement for your dead Palm device.

2) I use the GPE suite and sync my calendar with Ermining. Works for me (though I can't do contacts but the recent Palm thing deals with that problem.

3) Battery life. if you are very carefull with how you use your tablet it will run all day (8+ hours) on a single charge. To do this you need to reduce the amount of time that the N800 is doing any of the following:

a) searching for a network connection. If you know you'll be out of range of WIFI or are in transit and don't need it. put the machine in offline mode and then lock the keyboard and screen. I have found that my N800 was trying to get online cause some app tried to initiate a network connection and then that "searching" process ate the battery. Also any time your wireless and bluetooth are off you are saving battery.

b) avoid websites that have flash animations like the plague. They will often spike the CPU usage which in turns kills battery. Many sites terms of service explicitly state you "cannot" block advertising. My philosophy is you either provide me with a decent non-flash page, buy me a new battery or it sucks that you have so much flash on your site cause I will block cpu hogging ads at will.

c) keep the screen brightness down to a minimum.

d) Keep your reboots to a minimum. Each time this thing boots a process kicks off that spikes the CPU for an extended amount of time. The more media files you have on your system the longer it takes to scan.

e) purchase a Solio. I am a happy customer. It will trickle charge your device on sunny days and provide you with emergency power should your tablet go wonky. I once used my Solio on a trip from Georgia to NJ and ran the iPod off the sun the entire trip (the battery was near dead at the beginning of the trip. Similarly when I headed to Florida I used the Solio to keep the N800 running when I had to reboot due to a MaemoMapper "issue" which cost me much battery power.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

As far as a media viewer/player, its great and bettter than palm. As far as a PIM, its somewhat lacking. GPE is what I use and has a few bugs but for "some" PIM it works.

I came from a Treo 650 and this is way better. But for Palm apps, becareful, Palm VM Garnet will not run store password keys so the apps you bought typically will not run. Also its not Garnet 5.1 so some apps won't run anyways.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

Thanks for all replys.

Some more questions:

Is there anything known about where the GarnetVM is heading.
Evidently if you cannot run a lot of commercial apps that is severe limitation - but then at the moment it is only beta - will this improve?
Can the Palm-apps that run in the GarnetVM see the SD-card?
And can the GarnetVM run in the screen-format that the T5/TX Palms have?

Could you please point me to some screenshots that show pdf-reading on the N800?

One concern for me is that it seems the N800 seems to be considerably larger and heavier (are there any pictures that show a N800 and a TX side by side?). I need something that I can carry around anywhere at any time and that would allow me to read ebooks comfortably while e.g. travelling. Is the N800 a good device for that or do you basically need a table to support it when you want to use it for a longer period of time because it gets too heavy?

Many thanks!

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

PDA stays for Windows Mobile OS.

Darius

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

Presumably. But only Access knows. So far it appears that apps with arm code won't run, at least it appears to be so, while traditional m68k apps will run (most apps are still in this format). I've also noticed that the more apps you load into GVM the slower it is to start up, and maybe also to launch applications. If there are new versions coming then this is probably the easiest to fix - right now it scans the whole image file (where apps and data are stored), it should be simple to add an index- or hash function for faster lookup.

A very interesting question. I have not tried. I forgot my N800 today so I can't test this right now.

It can run 320x480-enabled applications, yes. What it cannot do (that I know) is to run these applications in landscape mode, that is, in Palm landscape mode. GVM can be set up to run the Palm apps in either N800 portrait or landscape mode, but that's a different thing.

Lastly, I don't think the N800 is heavy, compared to my Palm T3. I have never touched a TX, but there's more plastic in the TX than in the T3 I believe, so the TX is probably lighter than the T3. There have been pictures posted here (or links to, at least) with N810 vs N800 size comparisions.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

I use the N800 for reading PDFs all the time. I read both e-books and large manuals. I read a large (900 page) manual all the way through with only a few rests for my eyes. That would have been impossible on my old iPaq as my eyes wouldn't have taken it. The resolution and screen quality of the IT are such that the amount of paper that I print has gone to nearly zero. I am working on getting e-copies of all my important books onto my IT.

Hope that helps.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

The N800 is larger, there's no disputing that. For me though, my T5 was already a little larger than I'd have liked. My N800 is larger still, but it still fits in my pockets, and the trade-off for a much better device seemed worth it to me.

As for weight, the N800 is 7.3 oz, heavier than the T5 at 5.1 oz, but not enough to make a real difference to me.

Would photos of an N800 and a Tungsten T5 side-by-side be close enough?

I don't read ebooks, but I do use my N800 for extended periods of times reading RSS feeds and web pages. I don't find holding it uncomfortable, and prefer holding it to placing it on a table, even when one is available.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

A PDA replacement in my mind means a good working PIM suite. I do not mean to be negative but GPE or Pimlico Date/Contact do not even come close to what a Palm device can do.

On the other hand: all other things are better on the N800. PDFs/multimedia/webbrower is much better on the N800. Most of this is because of the very sharp/crisp screen. The browser is also much better than anything I have seen on Palm or Windows Mobile devices.

So my solution for the moment is to carry a HTC PDAphone for syncing email & contacts with my laptop and for all the internet browsing/ebook reading/mobile media streaming I use the N800.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

ITTs are NOT great for ebooks. Ebook readers are great for ebooks. ITT's are "meh" for ebooks.

On another note, PDAs are dead. Most folks nowadays use either smart phones or these UMPC type devices. In fact, I ain't even heard the word PDA till I read this here thread.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

I've read a few books and *lots* of scientific journal articles on my N800, I like it a lot as an ebook reader, YMMV.

I use my ITT as a PDA, it's not perfect (pretty close, good enough, bye bye Axim) but I really have no need for a cell phone and have *zero* interest in signing a contract or paying anyone a monthly fee for the use of a PDA... again YMMV

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

I have a Palm Tx (never use, collects dust), a Palm Centro, and an N800 that I love. Without a doubt I can say the Palm PIM apps are 100% better than anything on the N800, and if you're planning to switch over, I would bet money that you will be disappointed. Not to say that cant change, GPE looks like it has promise, but Palm has been at it a long time, and has it perfected.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

I didn't think much about PDAs either (although I could other people were using them) until I finally got myself a Palm. Very quickly I couldn't live without it, it's like getting an extra little brain to keep track of all things I didn't know needed tracking.

I still carry my Palm PDA in addition to the N800, because as Scrabbler said the Palm is just so much better at those things. (GVM can make up for some, but not all, and nothing that really needs alarms.)

Smartphones are not for me, even if they had good PIM (which they IMO mostly don't have) - their screens are too small for me (and getting more of a problem for every year..), unless the phone is as big as a PDA and that's a bad phone as far as I'm concerned. So, for some of us, PDAs are not dead at all and won't be for the foreseeable future.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

I bought my N800 specifically as an upgrade from my trusty TX, and I can honestly say the TX hasn't been switched on since. I've got the Garnet VM installed, and have played around with it a little; one thing to note is that when running fullscreen, scaling is a bit ugly - 320x480 doesn't go nicely into 800x480, while at 1:1 resolution, there's a lot of empty space around the palm screen. The one major app that I would have used but wouldn't run for me is Pimlico's Datebk6. Another point to consider if you're a long-term Palm user is that the handwriting recognition doesn't match Graffiti. Although you can customize it, I've tended to stick with the onscreen keyboard.
I'll confirm what everyone else says about the limitations of the PIM software for Maemo; that said, it's good enough for me. I'm using GPE for contacts, and Maemopad+ for memos. I can offer scripts for converting from Palm dbs via pilotlink if needed. The main advantages come through the larger screen - as a result of this, Claws on Maemo beats any of the Palm mail clients hands down, indeed any handheld mail client I've used, and both Opera and MicroB really show up the failings of Blazer, Opera Mini or (shudder) Pocket IE for browsing.
The other major difference is that I stopped using my handheld as an add-on for my desktop, and now use it as a standalone computer in its own right. For example, I no longer sync with my desktop automatically every morning; the N800 downloads and converts my plucker feeds itself. Ditto for accessing files across the network; I no longer need to copy data across in advance, as I simply access my home PC directly over sshfs or openvpn from where-ever I may be. I find the N800 to be a vastly superior machine to my old TX almost every other respect, and the PDA functions, although somewhat limited, are good enough.
Finally, nobody else seems to have answered this - I've just checked, and I couldn't see any way to access either of the card slots from within GarnetVM. There's a way to do so in POSE (the old palm emulator) which is available for Maemo, although I haven't tested it.

NB. Apologies - didn't check the date of the original question; however, my comments may be useful, so I'll leave 'em here.

Re: N800 as PDA replacement?
 

Your're correct about the limitations in GVM: The current version can't access the cards (except through the 'install' function in the launcher, which can copy .prc and .pdb files to the GVM itself). It also can't access BlueTooth directly (only indirectly, if you use BT as networking in the N8x0. GVM sees the network).

Those limits should be pointed out to anyone who's interested in GVM as a Palm replacement. If you favourite Palm apps need to read or write to SD, or use BT directly, GVM won't do.

Networking apps, on the other hand, work fine. So does almost everything else in fact, except non-m68k applications (there aren't that many). And AvantGo doesn't work (only the AGConnect part).