Thanks very much for the comments!

The music... I think this is a damned if I do, damned if I don't situation. :-)

Originally I didn't want to have any sound at all, I like minimalist videos, and my previous videos for other websites I work on are mostly silent. However, I got complaints about this making the vids seem rather creepy and clinical. People told me to put anything in, as long as it made a noise.

The voice idea came up, but one thing I heard from quite a few foreign language users who watched my previous videos was how much they appreciated me NOT having a spoken commentary. By sticking to text captions it made it very very easy for them to follow my english, they could pause and read everything slowly, even run difficult phrases through a translator site. Of course I could read the captions out but I find that very annoying when other people do it (especially lecturers who put a slide up on a screen which they read aloud in full as if the audience was illiterate).

Incidentally, my choice of music is largely dictated by what YouTube has in its official "replace soundtrack" library which fits the video length. I try to choose stuff that's as cheerful and non-threatening as possible, but there's not always that much choice when videos are more than 5 minutes long.

Obviously some people will like the music and some will hate it, but at least everyone has the option of turning it off! :-)


Yes, I totally agree, I think most people with PCs now want something like a television set that they can just switch on and use.

PCs are so cheap now, there are so many reasons for non-tech people to use them, and often they're forced to use them for work purposes. This kind of mass market audience doesn't want to spend time constantly fixing, patching and learning their PC any more than you or I would want to spend time learning the intricacies of how a dishwasher or air conditioner works.

I think also the portable and low power consumption aspect does help, if you can leave the tablet switched on and just pick it up to surf at a moments notice like picking up a book. One thing my technophobic relative loves doing is viewing news headlines on a phone because he can check them without having to go through any start-up procedures. This is part of the reason I guessed he would get on well with the N800.

Tablet PCs have previously had a history of commercial failure, but they tended to combine a casual form factor with a non-casual UI (such as a full version of Windows or something similarly complicated). Perhaps devices like the N800 have the right combination of pick-up-and-use hardware and a simple internet-centric UI.