Keep or Send Back?
 

thought i would get some feedback on my new n810. g/f surprised me with a n810 for my b-day on the 24th. she bought from buy.com (14 day return policy)... on the 12th.. so basically i have 1 day to decide if i want to keep this or not. she know's i read certain internet sites pretty much everynight on my laptop and sometimes it's just too big and bothersome. i also read the same sites on my t-mo dash smartphone and it actually loads pretty fast even without turning on the wi-fi.. so.. here are my thoughts.
1) after loading diablo and jumping on some sites i usually read, the device seems really really slow. great connectiong to my Fios router so that doesnt seem to be a problem. i loaded a website i read (t-nation.com) on my cell and the n810 at the same time and the cell was much faster loading the website with just Edge. couldn't believe it. also.. when Zooming to a level i could actually read, it doesnt make the sentences inside a thread short enough to not have to pan left and right.. if i use "fit to width" i still have to zoom to about 200% to see the text. is this normal?
2), when zooming, the avitar's get zoomed also so i can only see a little section of the avitar picture (normally this wouldnt matter but when i read certain threads, i only want to read posts by certain people and need to see their avitar to identify the post.
3) what takes me 5 minutes to read on my laptop, and 7-10 minutes to read on my smartphone i couldnt read in 30 minutes on the n810. is the learning curve that great?
4) seems like there's alot of "root" work that must be done to the n810 to get it to work right. example to get it to connect to my windows smartphone as a modem.. is it like this always with this device? dont get me wrong, i hack and put new rom's on my phones all the time but would like to cut back on that stuff (as it's time consuming) and just read/study/research etc. shoot. on pubmed.com i couldnt even do a proper search of a subject in 20 mnutes.

well. those are my concerns after only getting to know this device for a couple of hours but basically being frustrated at it. Am i alone in this feeling. maybe it's just that im used to I.E. on my laptop and Opera on my smartphone.. also, i have owend 3 different windows pda's and 3 differnt smartphones (and a palm).. so i have a fair amount of general device knowledge..

any thougts or suggestions would be cool since i have only one more day to return to buy.com or im sure i could always sell on the bay or here if needed. i was really looking forward to dumping the laptop for my late night reading. hopefully i can get some suggestions or feedback and get talked into keeping it.

thanks for reading.

Bill.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

I'm not going to tell you what you should do, but if you're only using it for web browsing and you're judging it on the issues you listed, maybe it's not for you. Is your smartphone viewing full size web pages or mobile web pages? Mobile web pages are optimized for small cell phone displays and will load faster.

For me - I have an N800 and I love it. Linux is my hobby and the N800 is a wonderful toy for that hobby. I've taken it on trips instead of a laptop. It does anything a laptop does (yea it's slower - it has a slower processor): email, web, rss, youtube, internet radio and internet xm radio, plays music and movie files, displays photos, makes Skype phone calls and Gizmo video phone calls, edits and prints spreadsheets and documents, and much much more. It's always on standby - I never turn it off, so it's ready if I want to do a quick lookup on the internet.

Some of this takes some work to get running, but that's what makes it so much fun!!

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Search for increasing font size in microb in this forum.

And yes the learning curve is a little high.... but i assure you it is well worth it.

In a few days you will be inseparable with your n810. Of course your girlfriend will not be happy for giving that gift.

Believe me .... all the good things in life need a little patience.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Well... the browser's not anywhere near that bad, in my experience. It's not as fast as on a desktop, to be sure, but nowhere near as bad as it sounds. Most complaints of the browser being really atrocious turn out to be due to having "Fit to Width" turned on -- the implementation of this option's really not all that great. I've had occasion to use it a couple times on very lightweight sites and gotten good results, but mainly, it just makes pages ugly and horrifically slow. But I guess, from what you said, you had that on some of the time, and off some of the time, so I'm sure you saw the difference due to that.

I'm not familiar with the Dash's web browser, but it may be doing a lot more magic to fit the page neatly on a small screen, or even using a mobile version of the site; the N800's browser runs a config very similar to a desktop, intended to give desktop-like results, only smaller. You could try mobilizing proxies, but these do mangle pages in the process... (I haven't used any of them.) More stuff here, but I am only using Brontide's CSS, and flashblock.

You're best off going to full screen, leaving it at 80-120% zoom (I seldom use 120%, but some do; on a lot of sites, that can fit the main text column with no lateral scrolling, and get slightly bigger fonts.), and using "optical zoom" (move the tablet closer ;)) for any further magnification.

If you do need bigger fonts, but not zooming, that's possible either by changing the minimum font size (documented in the wiki) or another way (which IMHO is better): there's a global scale factor hiding somewhere to scale the reported 96 dpi before converting point sizes to pixels. Of course, I don't remember it, and am not sure where I saw it...

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

wow, thanks guys for the great responses. Benson, I was using Fit to width mainly because when reading forums like this one if i had it zoomed to anything less than 120% its basically unreadable.. the text is way too small. then zooming to 150% or above the text is readable but i would have to scroll way right, kinda defeting the purpose of easy web browsing. The dash whether im using mobile I.E. or Opera is definetly doing some "magic" but it does it well.. i just wanted to same thing with a bigger screen to keep the scrolling / adjusting down and the reading time up. I will try the bigger font idea as the zoomnig and fit to width do screw up the screen a bunch..
maybe it's the web site.. if you can, navigate to T-nation.com and go to forums.. tell me you can read the threads easily and then if you can tell me what settings you used.. that web site give me alot of enjoyment (it's a bodybuilding/nutrition) website, but is not pda/smartphone friendly.

Possessedskier, im not sure if the smartphone is viewing a mobile version of the full web page but every link, picture, etc is there.. i just wanted to scroll less and read info more.. that's why i thought the bigger screen of the n810 would be perfect.. Opera mobile is a really good web browser though.. i dont need to do too much adjusting to get it to look right.. certainly not as much as with the n810. but i've only used it a few hours now.. as far as email, spreadsheets, word, and skype, i can do all that with my smartphone. windows mobile 6.1 is really an upgrade from 5.0 and 6.0. i do emails daily on it and can pound them out pretty quickly.. mainly i wanted the n810 for nightime web browning/reading. thanks for the posts!

One of the things im disappointed with is the 14 day (from the time they shipped the product) return policy of buy.com. i won't buy from them again (i have in the past) because on an idem such as this, it's not enought time to eval. granted my g/f bought this on the 12th and i only got it yesturday (and finally used it last night).. just not enough time to really get into it.. but i have to say writing linux code is not fun to me.. just don't have the time for it.. or maybe i should say patience..

i will try all your suggestions as time permits today.. im sure i could always sell the n810 here on this forum if needed. what are they going for now (with less than 3-4 hours on it?).. prices seem to be dropping but buy.com gets a 15% restocking fee anyway..

any other suggestions are much apprecitated.

Bill.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Probably the web browser on the mobile handset is going to a proxy that is adapting the page for your browser.
There's no flash, no javascript (probably) and pictures are resized and so on..

The tablet is loading a full desktop version of the webpage.
This, to me, explains it.

You have to pay something to get the full Internet on your hands.
The N800 ad used to say "Take the Internet with you".

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Checking the site now...

Well, the site's main page does take quite some time to load. If your interest lies mostly in the forums, you could bookmark that as your entry point to avoid some slowness. With my N800, navigation within the fora isn't snappy, but I'd consider it acceptable. Mind you, my standards may not match your own.

With my standard web browsing setup--zoom at 100%, "Fit width to view" off, and the browser not full-screened--I can scroll horizontally slightly to fit the message text plus all but the left 10% or so of the avatars in the screen's width. If I full-screen the browser, then the entire content column fits, but I hates full-screen. Either way, finger-drag scrolling works well.

In the end, what matters is whether the device fulfills your needs and expectations though.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

My present configuration: Stock Diablo MicroB + FlashBlock, no "Fit to Width", and 100% zoom unless otherwise specified (EDIT: And full-screen, too).

OK, takes 33 seconds to completely load the whole front page here. This site seems to be designed for 1024x768, so it just almost fits on-screen at 80% zoom, but not quite. And it's big and image laden, so drag scrolling's not exactly snappy. But it works.

Hit the forums link at the top, and it loads in <20 seconds. Individual thread loads completely in ~15 seconds. (And scroll nicely.) At 100% zoom, the entire thread (text + avatar/etc.) fits in the browser width. For me, the text is quite readable...

At 120%, you do lose the avatars (unless you scroll sideways, too) but can handily keep the text on-screen. (Font is perhaps somewhat easier to read, but not much.)

At 150%, you have to align things very carefully, but you can read down the column of text with no horiz scrolling; now, though, the finicky alignment is making it hard to dart over to the left for avatars, so it's rather unusable. The text is getting huge now, but for me, it's no easier to read than at 120%.

Just for kicks, I threw together some css to "fix" it. It's not optimal, and has rather ugly results, but it helps...
You'll need to put it in .mozilla/microb/chrome/userContent.css. (More details...) It right-aligns the avatars (and user info with them) and makes the font 150% in the text. Now zoom up to 120% works with a good chunk of the avatars (and all but lengthy usernames) on screen, or 100% is comfy reading. There's a screenshot of this at 100%...

Finally, I tried applying "Fit Width to View"; it now takes 15s to load the thread page, and then 7s to reflow everything, leaving the actual posts down below all the ads... Not good. Zooming, of course, takes 7s each time, blows the avatars way up, and drops them after the corresponding posts. But no major page rendering breakage occurs up to 300% zoom, for me, so I can still read just as easily (after the initial wait) as before... (Are you running Diablo, i.e. did you flash the device since you got it? They may have enhanced this there; it doesn't seem near as bad as I had remembered from previous versions... As I said, I almost never use FitWidth, as it tends to break most anything but plain text. OTOH, it can be handy for reading online books...)

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

thanks for the reply.. im not sure about flash but there is javascript. it's free with mobile i.e. and opera browser does cost about 20 bucks for the full mobile version. it's nice though (as nice as can be on a smartphone screen that is)..

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

yes, i will bookmark the specific threads as some of them get very long and i read them daily to keep up with info. thanks.

wow, those settings are way different than on my n810. at 100% the letters are not even legible.. and i have 20/15 vision (at least in one eye, lol).. the left and right scrolling alone is a pain in the behind only cause i read a line every what 3-4 seconds and to constantly adjust let to right doesnt make for easy or quick reading.

the finger dragging thing seems slow too. not like the iphones i've used (and hated!).. :)

thanks for the replay, much appreciated.
Bill

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Benson, dont know how you got that page to work and look that good. mine looked nothing like that. i will try to follow your instructions and see what happends.. i think i will hold onto this device for a while and see if i can get it to work. i can always ebay it or sell it here. i'd be taking a 15% hit returning it back to buy.com anyway.. ouch!
I am running diablo. it's the first thing i did as i didnt want to have to set up the device twice and reinstall everything. I was using full width for the most part as well as full screen and pretty much everything you said you don't use.. There were several times the device just got stuck for 1-2 minutes while it was trying to figure out what to do.. seemed odd for a 400+ mhz processer as my smartphone's processer is half that and never or almost never bog's down like that.. im sure it's just learning tricks and learning what you can and can't do.. ill keep paying with it as time permits. not as simple as turning on and opening a brower i guess..

thanks for the great reply , screenshot and time you spent. much appreciated.

Bill.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Sell to me? :D

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Benson, after seeing your timed results i tried the same tests.. the initial page t-nation.com loaded for me in 40 seconds. the forum link took 31 seconds and the individual thread links just sits there with the bottom saying connectingg but it never does. im 10 feet from my router and my laptop loads the page in about 10 seconds, so i dont think there's a wi-fi problem. it did this to me yesturday at my house too. very frustrating. any ideas? Bill.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

ask me again tomorrow as it's frustrating me to no end! :) pages just dont load.. weird! Bill.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Well, could be wireless issues, but I'm not sure if this is typical symptoms. A lot of people (numerically, not percentage-wise) have strange problems with particular APs. You see, the N8x0 uses some corners of the 802.11 standard related to powersaving that basically no Windows WLAN drivers use, even on laptops. While it's great when it works, and it works with most APs, there are a surprising number that don't work, apparently due to not testing those details that "nobody" uses.

If this is the case, options in this case include updating firmware (if the manufacturer has fixed it) or switching to another brand of router. There's one other option, but it is havoc on batteries; try it to see if this is the trouble, but if this is the problem, you'd probably better try other measures. To try it, disconnect from the network, hit the WiFi icon -> Connectivity settings -> Connections -> your connection -> Edit -> Next-> Next-> Advanced-> Other, and select a different Power saving value. Try turning it Off, then see if things improve... If you see a substantial improvement, you can then try setting it back to On (intermediate), and see if that still works.

From a clean flash, I don't know why you're having so much trouble. It sounds from your description like SW troubles, but your software should be essentially identical in this respect. So if it's not hardware trouble, I'm stumped.

Best of luck!

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Just for kicks, I threw together some css to "fix" it. It's not optimal, and has rather ugly results, but it helps...
You'll need to put it in .mozilla/microb/chrome/userContent.css. (More details...) It right-aligns the avatars (and user info with them) and makes the font 150% in the text. Now zoom up to 120% works with a good chunk of the avatars (and all but lengthy usernames) on screen, or 100% is comfy reading. There's a screenshot of this at 100%...

ok, at risk of sounding even more clueless, how do i get to the .mozilla/microb.... location? under control panel somewhere? under settings/file manger/.. ? thanks. bill.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Open up osso-xterm (Last entry under Utilities) to get to a command line, and then I think you'll need to make that directory...
... well, then it gets interesting, actually, because it ships without a decent text editor.

The simplest thing, if you can copy that to the clipboard exactly on your tablet, is to typeThat will start the infamous vi editor; then press i to go to input mode, and then paste through the xterm's menu. Then, press Escape (that's the "back" hardware key), and type ZZ to save and exit.

For more info on vi, see this thread; you could also install nano, joe, or any other text editor.

I believe that thread also explains, but the file manager only accesses things in the /home/user/MyDocs/ hierarchy, and on memory cards. The shell starts in /home/user/, and lets you get anywhere.

Now, I just saw a thread indicating that Stylish is ported now, which is a Firefox extension to allow easy management of user styles; that should make this easy, but I haven't used it, or even read the thread, so I can't advise on that. You might look into it...

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Benson,
wasnt a router issue as it worked yesturday.. i didnt see your post but basically rebooted the n810 and it started loading pages again. now to try your suggestions for formatting the web pages.. will let you know how it comes out! thanks alot

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Benson, am i trying to write code or are you speaking in code? you lost me after i created the directory.. guess i have some reading to do.. thx.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Try installing Leafpad from the application manager.

Then create the .css file in Leafpad and copy it to the chrome folder :)

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

when i typed in .mozilla/microb/userContent.css it says fiile not found. i had already created the chrome directory then got stuck.
Should i go to leafpad and start over?

so i can't just email myself the string (code) and copy it from the email and paste it in the chrome directory?

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Okay, so open leafpad and paste in the css code,

Then save the file to the "Documents" folder as "userContent.css"

Then, type the following command in xterm:

That should do it :)
Feel free to PM me or post back here if you've got more questions :)

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

ok, havent tried the leafpad thing yet, could find it. but now im in mozilla/microb/chrome/userContent.css and i have copied the string Benson made for me to the clipboard.. how do i paste it? i dont know the command to paste and save.. thanks.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

leafpad isnt in the application manager or in the installable applications either.. where do i find it?

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

[QUOTE=Benson;207126]Open up osso-xterm (Last entry under Utilities) to get to a command line, and then I think you'll need to make that directory...
... well, then it gets interesting, actually, because it ships without a decent text editor.

The simplest thing, if you can copy that to the clipboard exactly on your tablet, is to typeThat will start the infamous vi editor; then press i to go to input mode, and then paste through the xterm's menu. Then, press Escape (that's the "back" hardware key), and type ZZ to save and exit.

QUOTE]

well.. i was in the chrome directory and pasted the code.. then hit the back button and typed ZZ but nothing happend.. so i exited and opend the web went to t-nation and it looked the same as before.. is ZZ to save supposed to confirm SAVED in anyway.. i might have typed zz not ZZ.. does that make a difference?

did it again and type capital ZZ and exited.. do i need to reboot or something.. still not working. it did seem to save the code when the ZZ command was given cause it moved the cursor down to the next line..

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

question.. when i pasted the code i realized i didnt copy it all in the first place.. how do i delete the code once it's pasted so i can recopy and paste.. sounds simple but i can't find a "cut" or "delete" .

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

In normal mode (not insert/replace) press dd to delete the current line.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

it would be easiest to forget about vi at the moment because it can be frustrating if you do not know how to use it.

The best thing to do would be:
- open xterm
- type: cat >> /home/user/.mozilla/microb/chrome/userContent.css
(only works if the chrome dir exists, if not you'll have to create it)
- paste in the css code
- press Ctrl in the xterm toolbar followed by the z key

you should now see something like:
[1] + Stopped cat 1>>.mozilla/microb/chrome/userContent.css
- you might have to restart your browser

look up the 'cat' command on the web, it is useful to view, create or append to files.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

I think that hint is great for small stuff, BUT

- Change the >> to > (otherwise you append which is not what you want probably)
- Press CTRL + D, not CTRL + Z. The latter backgrounds the program/job. The former sends an end of text and cat exits normally.

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Got your PM, bd7.

Yeah, Bousch is right; that cat stuff is actually the easy way; sorry for not thinking of it... (and darklajid is right... ^Z is used as EOF marker on DOS (inherited from CP/M, which I think inherited it straight from VMS?), ^D in UNIX).

From some of what you've said, I'm not quite sure you got it right.
/home/user/.mozilla/microb/chrome should be a directory, and it should have a file in it named userChrome.css, with the contents as I posted, and with UNIX style newlines (^J). I'm not sure that MS-DOS style (^M^J) is a problem, but should be avoided anyway.
So a couple of checks; can you post the results of:
(The cat ... should just dump the CSS file as posted; no need to post it unless it does something different or weird...)

(Actually, better way:
and attach the results.txt to your post.)

And you will have to restart your browser after applying any CSS changes; the only easy way to ensure this is to reboot. (Forgot that too. :o)

But if your browser isn't rendering things the same, except for the font being two-thirds the size, the CSS isn't going to help. It seems you've got some strange setting in your browser, which is just weird.

To try checking for that, can you also post your prefs.js? That'd be:
and then just attach it to your next post... (There shouldn't be much privacy-type info in here (not saved passwords, etc.), but do look over it before you post, and feel free to censor any URLs or domain names.)

Re: Keep or Send Back?
 

Benson and the rest of you guys that helped!

Thanks so much.. you guys have a cool community here.. I did send the n810 back.. im working my butt off at work right now and just want to relax and read before bed. i frankly don't have time to learn all this code even though i think it's pretty cool. the sites i read all the time just didnt format correctly "out of the box" and after several hours trying to get the code right to adjust them correctly, i gave up and sent the unit back. took a big 15% hit on the return too.. but with the price at $300 now anyway.. i guess my g/f just bought from the wrong place a week or so early.. looks like it's a mini-netbook for me.. probably the msi wind.. will let you know how it turns out.

great to "meet" you guys.. good luck to all that helped. really i don't take online help for granted.. i always am amazed when ppl i don't even know help out so much.. i try to do the same on other sites.. if i even get another n810 type device, this is the place for help!

Regards,

Bill