A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

I'm planning on picking up a N800 off of NewEgg (280$ with shipping). I'm going to borrow a friend's in order to get a feel for it, before I go shelling out close to 300$ for one. I have a few questions though.

- I've never used Linux, ever. Is it going to be hard for me to load programs onto the tablet without any knowledge on the OS? I know I can get help on it from a friend of mine, but I'd like to be able to do what I can.

- If I screw up with Linux, will I brick the thing?

- How much memory can it support? I've read 8BG, 4GB, 16GB, and 32GB. Which is it? I might not get one if I can't get it to work with at least 16GB of space (I'd get 32 if I could find it cheap enough.)

- And lastly, where should I go to but one? Is 275$ off of NewEgg a decent deal, or could I find one cheaper? What about the SD cards for it?

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

dude check the deals and promos forum or heck buy and sell section.... at that price you might as well spring for the n810 if your a driver.

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

Yeah, I think they mostly have been answered, if not asked in precisely the same terms.
Depends on the program. Anything in repos, with proper .install files, should go smoothingly. ;) Some things, games especially, are often only available as a download of bare binaries. Naturally, that's a little more hassle to install. But you should be able to do those without learning much.
Depends how you screw up. It can be bricked from software, yes. It's highly unlikely to happen by accident, if you define accident to exclude deliberately tinkering with dangerous parts of the system. If you do that, then a typo (and pressing enter without checking) can spell B R I C K.
Up to 4 TB, AFAIK. Of course, no one is producing 2 TB SDHCs yet, but they should work. Currently available SDHCs run up to 16 GB (about $60), with 32GB coming real soon for about $300+. So you can have 32 GB (2 x 16GB) for about $120.

NO, that's not a deal! about ~$200 is right, look around. Buy.com, Amazon have them.

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

Yes, no, yes, dunno.

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

1. Check buy.com they have usually cheapest or next to it tablets.
2. If you don't want to play with Linux you absolutetly don't have to. Most of device you can get without dabbling with OS guts - especially if you want to use it only to basic things: internet browing, media player, e-book reader, simple notes taking.
3. N800 has two SD slots - each one of them can take 16GB card. In total 32GB

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

Depends on what apps... most of them are available as a friendly one-click install from a Web page, then you find them in your menu, nothing difficult there. Learning linux is fun but optional.

If you start messing around with cryptic instructions found here or on a Wiki, you might screw your system to the point that it won't boot anymore. That's not bricking, though - you can always "reflash" your tablet to its original state, then restore your latest backup. The latest version of the OS makes this almost painless.

One nice thing about the N800 is that it can hold two regular, full-size SD or SDHC cards, which are the cheapest format around. So you can have 2x4, 2x8, 2x16, 2x32GB, depending on the best deal you get...

Can't help you there, we don't use dollars here :-)

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

1. If you've never used linux before, you may not be happy with the tablet, but it really depends on what you want to do with it. If you don't ever plan on mucking about in the command line, then you might be fine. If you want to tweak it, however, you're going to need some familiarity with linux's quirks. You'll really need to get comfortable with the idea of repositories and dependencies for software installation. Before you can install a program, you often have to 'install' the repository and make sure you have the proper dependencies.

2. That I can't answer for sure, though you are not likely to brick th e tablet. You can always reflash the OS. (If I'm wrong, someone will most certainly correct me).

3. It will/should support any SDHC card. I have 12 gigs in mine right now. One 4 gig and one 8 gig.

4. $280 is a bit steep for the N800 right now. Definitely shop around. Buy.com has been known to offer a good deal from time to time.

Good luck.

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

The SDHC standard defines card sizes up to 2 terabytes, and the N800 has two slots that follow that standard. So, should you buy an N800, you'll have a device capable of expansion to 4 TB of storage.

Finding 2 TB SDHC cards may be difficult for the next year or so, however. Oh, and you'll need to find a file system other than FAT32. It falls apart before then.

Newegg is almost never the cheapest source. Try checking PriceGrabber or Google Product Search.


PriceGrabber again.

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

<3, thanks.

Re: A few questions before I go buying one of those- sorry if these have been asked.
 

You don't (or shouldn't) ever have to go to the command line if you don't want to. I'm very familiar with linux (been a Linux user for well over a decade now), and I think I've been to the command line three times on the N800. Of course you might give up a bit of capability, but eventually mature packages will make it to the package manager, and that's all point-and-click. The odds are slim that most people who didn't care what OS it ran would realize it was linux.

The odds are very very slim you're going to brick the thing unless you end up at the command line trying to do "advanced" things. Reference above.