Hello all,

Any opinions on the N800 as an appropriate holiday gift for a teenager?

Have been reading the forum for a few weeks, prior to my purchase. Have picked up many useful tips. Most posts appear to be from adult owners.

My teen expressed an interest in a Macbook for Christmas - however, it's not in the budget this year. (Is already using a 2 year old Dell, which we plan to keep until a new purchase for college next year).

The laptop is used primarily for internet access, some word processing for school, and syncing the iPod with iTunes. A major complaint is poor (less than 2 hours) battery life - which actually, I think is reasonable. What do I know, I'm just the Dad. Just had a brand new battery replaced by Dell.


The most popular websites visited by my teen include Facebook, LiveJournal, and Youtube. Oh, and there are some school reated sites that are occasionally visited. From my reading on this forum, these websites should perform better with OS2008 vs. OS2007. (Correct?)

Am not as worried about the media player aspects of the NIT, but will send some of the music files over. The iPod will still be the primary music player.

My thinking is that this could be used in conjunction with the current laptop - together providing decent performance and battery life. Is that reasonable?

Do you think the N800 will provide the WOW factor I am looking for? I thought the touchscreen was pretty cool. But, if you have a teenage child, you know if this thing doesn't perform right out of the box, it just won't cut it. (I don't mind doing any setup necessary prior to gifting it).


One more thing - I did a search but am not quite sure if this is correct. Our wireless router allows for access restrictions by inputting the MAC address of the laptop. I believe I read the MAC address of the N800 is its serial number?

Thanks for any opinions.

Nervous Dad one week before Christmas!

Well... if your teen likes gadgets/computers, and does know what a word "Linux" means, then it should be a great gift.

Otherwise... there may be a 50/50 chance if the gift would be received as "wow..." or "oh man..." (But, if you can insist him/her try to use it and learn... I'm sure he/she will love it a week or so later.)

With OS2008 Youtube videos do play nice. Definitely you need to load the latest (released today) OS on it before passing on.

I would take a look at the eeePC as well.

I have both and prefer my N800 personally, but perhaps a jet black eeePC would be way cooler.


But then what do I know - it has been several decades since I was a teenager...

FWIW, I tried to turn my son onto the N800 -- didn't work, so an iPod Touch will be under the tree. For web browsing, the iPod Touch is more intuitive & performs a lot more smoothly. I guess N800 is really more for tweakers & geeks (like me).

Yeah, it depends on the teen.

My 14 yr old and 12 yr old both got N800s for Christmas last year, before they were even released. I thought that would add some "cool" factor. And it did-- for a while. But now their devices gather dust. Meanwhile mine is wearing out. Guess my kids didn't get all of my quirks.

But they have no interest in iPhones-- for my boys it's all Nintendo DS. So the problem for them with the N800 is the shortage of compelling games... : /

Hi, I think it might not be a good match - mainly because surfing on the IT is a lot different than on a PC. WIth the PC everything usually works, the screen is big, easy to use, etc. The N800 (in my opinion) is more for a techie person who doesn't mind the quirks and is just happy to have some internet access, or to check email, etc. Its not so great web surfing compared to a PC because the screen is small and sometimes had to click or select a link. Also, what if it got buggy and the browser kept quitting, or a major site like Facebook didn't really work. It could be frustrating. Just my 2 cents.
Maybe the teen could see it work in a store first?
Also, you do have wi-fi access at home? or where will you use this? good luck.

Thanks all for the quick replies. If I go forward with it, is it agreed that OS2008 would be preferred? And, am I correct about the MAC address being the serial number?
Thank you.

Well, Nokia treats it like a serial number for downloading firmware updates, but it's described (correctly) as the WLAN MAC address in and on the unit.

Just one more scenario here: My 17 years old son will get an n800 as soon as he presents to me his first useful Python program with GUI. BTW to all native speakers here, there is no PyGtk introduction in German language, so he has to struggle with this also (and I am not that expert in this, as you can easily verify here :-).

Gammer: Your post reminds me of the story of King Arthur and the sword in the stone. Perhaps if all N800 owners had to be able to program in Python, there would be fewer disappointed ones :-)