I bit the bullet last night and installed the .39-14 firmware. I had backed everything up first, except my /etc/apt/sources file (damn it!). I was running the version just prior to this.

The first thing I notices is that EVERYTHING is faster. Connecting to my home wifi net (G-only, WPA-SPK) used to take 5-6 seconds, now it takes 3-4. Start up time of all the built-in applications was cut in about half for me. The unit just feels snappier.

For example, in the prior version, if I went to the Control Panel and chose Memory, I'd sit and watch while it counted up everything in use. It would probably take 3-4 seconds to get a full tally. Now it is just BOOM, right there. No watching the progress bar.

Yes, it recognized my 2 Gb Kingston right off the bat. It remembered my pairing with my BT keyboard, after I reinstalled the BT app.

I didn't have a lot of crashes before -- maybe one every couple of days, not counting Opera taking a nose dive. Opera seems faster in both startup and rendering pages. The Application Wiki on maemo.org used to be intolerable on my N770, hitting the CPU hard and just being very slow to load and react. Now it is 10x better and usable without having to chant "serenity now!".

There are still a few bugs in the system, though. Opera has crashed for me a couple times when telling it to remember a password for a site. It DID remember it, but tanked none-the-less.

And there is a new development -- when sending Opera to full screen view, it hesitates for a second or two in sort of a half-state, where the screen isn't properly rendered where the toolbars were. My best analogy would probably be an automobile that used to smoothly shift gears now has a noticeable hitch when doing it. It does it, but you get a "WTF was that?" thought each time.

It used to be when I clicked the power button and chose "shut down", it shut down fully. Starting it back up would mean a full boot and take 20-30 seconds. Now, a "shut down" seems to be more of a deep sleep that only take 3-4 seconds to come out of. It restarts X, which was my intent, but it is so much faster. Before, I had to keep telling myself "It's a handheld, you don't really shut it down, you just pop the cover on and let it sleep. That long start-up time may be embarrassing, but you never really start it, do you?" Well, no more rationalizing for me!

Finally, I took the opportunity to install and configure Privoxy, tweaking it to start when the unit boots. OH MY GOD! The Internet is back to a way I can use it! I was so used to Adblock on Firefox that I had forgotten what an ad-laden cesspool the Internet had degenerated into. Privoxy, even without downloading custom rulesets, brings all the ad-free goodness back, unclutters my screen and speeds up page load times. If you use the N770 to browse the web, do yourself a favor and install Privoxy.

I didn't expect major changes in this update. I don't think we'll see things like Java, Flash >6 or native Ogg-Vorbis support until the next major update.

For me, this was a very nice update -- a must have. Thank you, Nokia.