Pepper Pad
 

I don't see a thread for the Pepper Pad, so I thought I'd start one. It seems like the most similar device to the 770 out of all the ones mentioned. Does anyone here have one? I'm thinking about getting the yet to be released Pepper Pad 3.

PepperPad 3
 

I too would buy one, IF the price break is close to the 770. Though it is a little larger, it has some interesting features. The original was too large, and the price was way too much. I think that I had heard that PepperPad 3 would be around 399.00, if so I might bite.

Robert :)

Internet tablet or (web-based) media player?
 

From the Pepper website:
The 770 is a Unix handheld optimized for the Internet. I don't think you can say the same for the Pepper 3. Of course, they don't show a lot of detail there.

I think a little larger is actually good. I find myself squinting pretty often with the 770. The pepper pad will be $699 which is still a step down from what it was before. They changed the operating system to X11 I think, whatever that means. It was supposed to make it easier for developers.

Hi!

have a look here: http://www.pepper.com/platform/index.html

"Linux System Software - The Pepper Platform is built on system software consisting of an embedded Linux kernel, high-performance X11 and GTK+ graphics, auto-configuring Wi-Fi networking and wired USB and wireless Bluetooth peripheral support."

Sounds good ;)

Regards, Diet

Too expensive.
 

Ok, more like the 770 than I thought...but $699--ouch!

Well, it does have a 30 GB hard drive built in, 256 MB of RAM, a VGA camera and a keyboard. It also has USB host enabled by default, a Java VM and is not root-crippled.

But it has no HWR, has a much chorter battery life and is a lot bigger and heavier than the 770.

For me, I like the 770 better as a couch-surfer.

The 770's not root crippled with the 2006 OS.

I have Pepper Pad 2.
It fits all my needs, but it does not have ''Maemo''
So, only preinstalled apps, that's it.... But I am waiting for
Pepper Pad 3, because it will be not ARM based, so
any i386 apps will work... Just find way, how to start them.

Bigger isn't better.
 

Hmmm....

1) No camera--who cares.
2) 30 GB Hard Drive, good grief, what do you do on this thing?
3) Root crippled? Puh-leez, the 770 is only root crippled for those without the skill to flash it out (or in, depending how you look at it).
3) Shorter battery life. Frankly, I can't imagine anything shorter than that of the 770.
4) Bigger and heavier--ok guys, mov'in in the wrong direction here.

So, I repeat...$699, OUCH!

I figured you were asking why it was more expensive than the 770, so I gave a couple of reasons why. You don't have to like them, or even see a need for them, but they are still valid reasons why the Pepper is more expensive than the 770.

As for the root-crippling: I admit that I am still 2005-biased. WHat can I say?

With the 2006 OS you don't even need to flash anything to get root.
Just install a tiny package from the app manager and bingo...

I don't think we can compare them,
Nokia is Internet tablet device, as it was said.
Peppere Pad is Media device with Internet option,
can play movie, audio, read books, it's why it has harddrive
and bigger screen.
I have both and do with them what i discribe...

Honestly I thought the original post was a bit of a joke. The Pepper Pad is in a bit of a black hole. The price is close to a cheap UMPC and the same as a basic small laptop like the Sentia m3200. You double the weight with the Sentia, but I think most people would choose to do that. It's size and price puts it nowhere near the 770 IMHO. I'd rather get 2 770's.

I was really into the Pepper Pad when it first came out, but being a Nokia addict I got the 770. But I think I'd like to have a Pepper Pad just for the heck of it. Just another toy to play with you know. :)

I wouldn't compare it to a Umpc. imo a laptop is qkite different than these touch screen pads. A umpc has full windows. the pepper pad doesn't and was marketed as an internet pad at first if i'm not mistaken.pepper and 770 both run linx. i would nevr want to deal with norton etc on a umpc. pricewise its 20 closer to the umpc than the 770. thanks for being mature and polite in your post.

The Pepper Pad 3 is now in stock at amazon.com. I bought a white one, but the black is apparently more popular. I would not characterize this as a direct competitor to the 770, although both can be described as an Internet Tablet. It is about 2x as wide and high as the 770 (significantly wider than I expected), with the screen about 1.6x as wide and high (800x480). I find I use the PP3 on the arm of an armchair (it has built in stand), and the 770 for portability around the house and on travel.

A major advantage of the PP3 is that its Geode LX800 processor is i836 compatible, and it runs a nearly standard version of Fedora Core 4. This means that many FC4 GTK+ rpms can be used "as is", and you can do development directly on the PP3. On the other hand, there is currently no easy way to add 3rd party applications to the primary application screen.

FBReader is available, and is an example of standard FC4 rpms working without change. A very basic Mobipocket reader is bundled with the machine, so reading encripted e-books is possible. However, I still use the 770 as my primary e-book reader.

The physically larger screen, the built-in keyboard, and the FireFox web browser make it a better web device than the 770, if the loss of portability is acceptable. Price is high relative to low-end laptops, but not to UMPCs.

Probably naive question, but sine you seem to have one...

Is it even thinkable to use (use, not run :-) OpenOffice (at least the writer part) on the Peeper Pad (or the Kohjinsha SA1F00A, which uses the same CPU) ?

There was a disscusion of this on the Pepper Pad forums yesterday.
http://www.pepper.com/forums/showthread.php?t=426

It appears that the standard OO rpms work, but how well OO interacts with a small screen (and how fast it is) are presumably your main concerns. You could try asking on the above thread. The SA1 appears to come with standard Windows XP, and I would worry a bit about using XP at 800x480.

Thanks for the pointer, I'll look it up. I believe OO is configurable enough to be usable at that resolution, XP or not. Reasonable speed in day-to-day operation (launch, open file, edit, save file...) is what separates an interesting hack (ie OO on a Zaurus) from a useful tool (ie a laptop replacement with compromises) : if it works, OK, is that 3 seconds, 30 seconds, or 3 minutes ? :-)

Heh. These guys look like they're having loads of fun :-)
probably lots to be had with the SA1 too...

I was also wondering about the SA1 in comparison. Wallcraf, why did you get the PP3 and not the SA1?

Maybe because the SA1 is not available yet :)

LOL.

Given that the weight/size are similar, it just seemed to me that someone with enough spare cash to get a PP3 would also be able to affort a SA1.

I was not aware of the SA1 when I bought the PP3, even though I often check the dynamism web site. It may have hit the sweet spot for a fully functional tiny laptop. I would be concerned whether Window XP (and some applications) would run well on a 7" 800x480 screen. Many computers used to have VGA (640x480) resolution, but on larger screens (so readable fonts could use fewer pixels). But if I was in the market for a laptop I might still buy it today. One downside of Windows XP for me is that there still isn't an e-book reader that supports the Plucker format.

One feature from the SA1 I wish the PP3 had is an external VGA connector. The PP3 has composite video output instead, presumably because of its consumer orientation (although VGA is on many new TVs). Given VGA out, I would plug the device into my USB/VGA KVM switch and use a full sized keyboard and large screen for some tasks when at home.

The standard keyboard on the SA1 is a must for a "laptop", but on the 770 and PP3 the touch screen is used for almost everything - so working on the SA1 would be a quite different experience. The keyboard on the PP3 is much better than an on-screen keyboard for ocasional input, but is an obsticle to its use as a laptop replacement.

I have a PP3. Opened it up, stick a 1Gb stick of memory in (it takes a standard DDR 333 SO-DIMM), then do some tweaking to bring up icewm and hang some useful stuff off the menus ... and it's basically a tablet PC running a slightly borked version of Fedora Core 4. Which is what I wanted.

With the 1Gb memory upgrade the PP3 runs OpenOffice 2.1 acceptably fast, and the screen is big enough for every dialog I've bounced off. It's not quite as good at stock Firefox 2.0 and Thunderbird 1.5 -- TBird in particular has some dialogs that are too deep for the 800x480 screen, and Firefox on Linux seems resistant to attempts to change the standard menu font to something that works well on a small screen. However, the basic stuff works (with a bit of tweaking -- it helps to know your way around a Linux system!) and with the assistance of a slim, lightweight keyboard with built-in pointing stick (originally for the Samsung Q1) it works well as a Linux UMPC workalike.

There's not really any comparison with the Nokia 770, IMO. On the other hand, if you don't run your life around PIM tools, the 770 *is* a pretty good competitor for the Palm TX, in all respects save speed -- and it's infinitely better as a web/ebook reader.