Hi, I am a long time lurker, been thinking and trying to justify for about 3 months now to get a pair of n810 and I have some questions that I haven't been able to get a straight answer.

1. Ad-hock wireless: In an environment, with no wifi availability, can two n810s be connected easily to chat, transfer files, even act as client-server (one will be a http server to serve out files, etc) to one another?

2. Bluetooth PAN: Can this be done easily? In places where I do not have wifi, can I easily use BT PAN, with a Windows/Linux host? The keyword here is "easily". All I've seen from searches are faint mumblings of "yeah, it can be done, if you .... and ... and ...". Is that easy to set up?

3. At work, we use something called Odyssey Client Manager from Juniper to gain wifi access. Has anyone tried to do this, and has reported any success?

4. Last but not least, if wireless access isn't possible, is it still possible to anchor the n810 to another PC/Mac and access the network over the USB?

Do you think I should wait for the next revision of the n810, or are the network concerns easily overcome?

Thanks!
-K

It really 'all depends', the only for sure easy way I know of is to use a (2) cell phones. So depending, I known again that word, on your location and data plan (speed) it may or may not a appropriate way to go.

I must leave the network/BT questions to others as that is not of any concern for my use so I have not researched it to give you any 'factual' advice.

Disclaimer: I'm a newbie

At least, ssh login and transfering files with scp, should be possible.
Http servers (apache,thttpd) are available, but I haven't tried them yet. You can even sync files remotely with rsync, subversion, etc..
I guess you just add a new connection, set it to Ad-hoc and manual IP settings (using 192.168.0.1 and .2, for example).

Yes, there are several howtos and some programs for that (pls search).
The thing is, I never needed this: I found it easier to do the same via ad-hoc wifi between N810 and my laptop.
Then you can ssh to the tablet from the laptop, do backups, transfer media files, or remotely install files using apt-get (which I found much faster than using the app manager to install pkgs 1 by 1).
If you want to access internet, you need to extra steps on the PC (on unix: dnsmasq,iptables -- dunno about windows).

I know that you can do USB networking, but the cable does not come out of the box and I found the article here.

I am not planning to pair this with a cell phone, because I want to avoid the high monthly data plan that my provider charges.

-K

Re: 4, it's not clear what sort of (non-wifi) the PC in question has, and whether there's more of that available. If you've got an open ethernet (10base-T/100base-TX port), you can jack in there with hardware from EPO (jolouis in these fora).

Ad-hoc wifi should work fine, never heard of Juniper's Odyssey Client Manager, so I can't comment on that.

Oh, and regarding BT PAN; there's a lot of posts left from the days when it was hard... I think it's pretty easy now and just doesn't get much noise as a result. But I haven't done that, so my comments on that aren't worth much.

Thanks Benson. Based on what you've said, I think I'm going to get one n810 tonight and play around with it. I like the idea of having a usb->ethernet to get around the wifi at work.

Juniper's Odyssey Client Manager was something that they bought from Funk, and it's basically a front end for LEAP (or something). It seems to work pretty well for WinXP and Mac clients, and I have heard some success stories for WM6 clients too.

BT PAN won't be such a high requirement if there is a USB->ethernet solution/workaround, although it would be nice to get that up and running (wireless is always more cool than wired).

-K

That thread talks about host USB.

For just networking with a PC, you don't need host mode or special cables, the boxed one should do.