Hey everyone. I'm new to the site and am looking for some recommendations. This will be something for my wife. She needs it for email, and documentation (M$ Office).

I was looking at the Nokia N810 but have some worries about the Linux based OS (she's never used Linux and I'm not good on it - I'm sure it has a GUI though?) Will open office run on this? If so, can it be synced with Word / Excel on a Windows XP desktop?

How's the GPS on this, I've seen reports of it not being so great?

Can a USB keyboard be hooked up? Is it easy to hook up, and hook up other USB devices as well.

Other than that, I was also looking at the Samsung Ultra Mobile PC?

Any other options and comments suggestions would be more than welcome.

Thanks,

Craig

I know some of these answers are already posted somewhere in the site forums, and I'm still searching through there as well.

I am no expert but here goes:
Office - There is a native AbiWord port for Word... Open Office will run but in a debian chroot and it runs very slow.. not a very good option for someone not familiar with computers. Office products in native Hildon are lacking something fierce.

GPS - Diablo (apparantly) got a little better but I still think it gets an initial lock pretty slowly. The biggest problem with GPS is the turn by turn directions for maemo I guess need to be done while Online; and the built in software is an extra $130 for the good stuff.

You need an adapter to get USB keyboards/mice etc to work right.. won't work out of box without the adapter (look in these forums for USB Host mode)


hope that helps...

At the moment, it's not really feasible for office-suite work, particularly if MSOffice compatibility is required.

If you're comparing it to the Q1U, though... that's around 2.5x the price, I think; results are expected to be much better, naturally. (I don't have one, but they're fairly well reputed.)

Key strength of the N8x0 is insane battery life; 5-6 hours of actually working (with some network usage), over a week just sitting idle, with no suspend/shutdown. The Q1U, on the other hand, has weaker battery life; I understand around 3 hours, but am not real sure.

Cool, thanks....that may rule the Nokia out for her...might be good for me though.

Can anybody give any other options besides the Samsung and Nokia?

asus eee pc? or the new UMPCs by msi and hp (i think)

the office aspect of the NITs is currently immature.. in a few months time i think we'll start to see great improvements, esp on abiword and xournal.

as an alternative you can use google docs on the NIT.