Hi everybody. I'm a longtime ITT reader, first-time poster.

I'm posting about my recent experiences with the Nokia 770 tablet so that everyone out there on the Internet who's doing a product search can know that the 770 IS speedy and stable (enough) for many people's purposes, IF you put some effort into it and do a few "mods". Not actual mods of the hardware kind, mind you, but rather by installing some officially unsupported software that's been made available by the hardworking internet tablet community.

I've written this mini-review with a very specific audience in mind. Those who are spendthrift first-time internet tablet shoppers who've done their research and have read several reviews stand to gain the most from this. (N.B., This might also be good for 770 owners considering upgrading to the n800 or n810 but who may not be aware of the software upgrade options available to them.) They know that the 770 by default is slow, unstable, and generally unpleasant, but they're hesitant to put down $200 on eBay for a used n800 or, even worse, $350 for a n810 loaded with features they know they'll never need. They may have even heard that because the 770 runs open source Linux the community has created certain enhancements that make the 770 run better, but since there hasn't been a new review for a long time they have no idea whether those work well or not.

Well, the short answer is "Yes, they work well," but you should read on to learn more. You should have read other more thorough reviews first because this one has been written more with the aim of overturning your expectations rather than informing you of the full capabilities of the 770.

First of all, here is a description of myself and my needs:

-Full-time college student with the important caveat that I'm probably one of the few college students who hardly cares at all about media. I rarely torrent and I buy my music legally as directly downloadable MP3's, so I don't rely on proprietary software. I never watch videos on my computer.
-My 770 is my full-time work computer. I am young and have good eyesight, so high resolutions on small screens isn't a problem for me. I have an iGo foldable bluetooth keyboard that works like a charm, which I use to write very long papers in AbiWord.
-I move my 770 around *a lot* (as it's meant to be used!) Thus, the built-in cover is very important for me and is a hugely important advantage over the n800 and the n810, which don't have any solution nearly as creative and well-suited as the 770's.
-I'm very tech and Linux savvy, so I haven't been daunted by any of the more seemingly arcane software modifications for the 770. If you don't want to deal with Linux command prompts and the like, don't bother, just get a n800.
-Nonetheless, as a principle I hate computers and I generally dislike the Internet. For me, the 770 is the ideal form factor because it keeps the computer and the Internet as just a tool, not as a world for me to get sucked into and distracted by.
-I don't care at all about running the latest and greatest OS for the tablets and I don't bother with all the instability of the hacker editions. OS2006 serves me just fine.
-I don't care at all about disk space. The 770 only has 64 MB available to the user in its flash memory and its single MMC slot can only expand to (8?) GB, but I've never seen an MMC card above 4 GB. Fortunately for me, 1 GB still strikes me as a huge amount.
-I don't listen to recorded music constantly. My city has a lot of concerts and as a student I can usually get in for free or at a deep discount. I don't like having a soundtrack to my life, it's distracting. Yet, I can imagine that the 770 would make a poor portable media player when compared to much smaller, sexier, or more specialized options.
-I don't need PDA functionality. There are some PDA apps out there for the 770, but none tightly integrated enough to seriously contend with anything from Palm.
-I don't use GPS. GPS is the devil's spawn and Google Maps more than fulfills my wildest cartographic fantasies.
-I don't use video or audio conferencing, though Skype does run on the 770.

Now, here's what I use my 770 for:

-Writing papers. As a serious college student studying history and art history I read and write--a lot. I cannot use a tool that I find uncomfortable to write with. Well, with my iGo bluetooth keyboard, I can say that that's not a problem. Again, good eyesight is important for using this device like a typewriter.
-Checking e-mails. As many reviews have pointed out, the default e-mail client is terrible. However, I've gotten around this problem in a way you may find helpful. My school e-mail is my primary account and I have it set to forward all mail to a Gmail account, which I use as a backup. That way I keep a very empty and healthy e-mail account that the default 770 mail app can handle just fine while knowing that if I need to go back to a previous e-mail I can just go to my Gmail account for it. I stick with the default client because of its tight integration with the rest of the desktop and OS, but if you don't mind an ugly but excellent client, I highly recommend Claws mail.
-Surfing the web. The default web browser is an old version of Opera that hardly handles Web 2.0 apps and crashes frequently. Instead, I'm using the 770 port of the minimo browser, which uses the same Gecko engine that Firefox uses, which means that I can browse everything just fine.
-Listening to (some) music. I like to use Streamtuner and Vagalume to check out the occasional online song, and it works quite well.
-Watching YouTube videos. Ah, yes, you might think this isn't possible, but with 1) fanoush's 48 MHz SDHC/MMC kernel, 2) booting off of the MMC card, and 3) Canola 2's YouTube plugin, you can in fact watch YouTube videos through a very slick interface. You cannot watch them directly from the website since the 770's version of Flash is too old, but Canola 2 gets around this through some magic.
-Web 2.0 stuff. Google Docs, mostly.
-Flashcards. I use a neat app called Granule that runs on my 770 as well as Windows, Linux, and OS X computers.
-Checking the weather. Good desktop applets for that.
-IM'ing. Pidgin and other clients are available.

Here are things that I can't use my 770 for that I have had to get around somehow:

-Printing. While theoretically someone might theoretically be able to run CUPS through some heavy hacking into Debian ARM binaries, that's just silly, not to mention no Maemo app has a print option in its menus. I use my school's comps for this.
-Certain wifi connections. My campus and many others like it use WPA enterprise security for its wifi, which requires certificate authentication and the like. While the GUI menus were implemented they are all for naught since the actual functionality is not there. Instead, I just use my regular WPA connection at home and the unencrypted connection at school =(.

Here are things that I don't use my 770 for *yet* but that I will do once I get around to it:

-External hard drive management. So I partly lied when I wrote that I don't care about disk space. That's only because I have an 80 GB external drive that I carry around with me. Now, you may have read that the internet tablets are stuck in USB slave-mode, i.e., can't take hard drives or the like. Well, with a little bit of hacking that can be toggled on and off, and apparently it can even be integrated into one of the status applets so that you have a nice way to switch between host and slave modes. A powered USB hub and a USB B to A adapter, however, are prerequisite, neither of which I own yet.

Now, in terms of stability and speed, here's what you should know about my particular setup:

-Speed: Much, much better than what you've read about in the reviews. Much better. The web browser and Canola, two of the most resource intensive apps for the 770, are snappy and while Google Docs loads slowly (I'd guess maybe 45 sec from the Google Docs login page to actually writing a blank new document) it runs fine once you're in. Overall just good enough for my needs.
-Stability: Pretty solid overall. Rarely do I need to reboot or do something drastic. Occasionally the web browser will close (but much less than you read in the reviews) and there will be the odd application that doesn't function properly (AbiWord, for example, crashes when you bring up the bulleting dialog box), but overall just fine.
-One important exception to the stability: if you use a bluetooth keyboard for some reason once in a while a letter you type will get repeated several times, so if you're typing "while" it might come out as "whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiile". That's annoying, but it's also something I'm willing to put up with. It only happens, say, once per page as I type in AbiWord. I suspect that it has to do with load on the 2.4 GHz spectrum and the 770's ability to handle that. Perhaps turning off wifi may help with this problem. YMMV.

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