it sold well... yes it did... To us. The techno geeks. But the problem here is that we only represent probably less than 1% of the complete market.

And they didn't fly out the door. I mean first off compusa only had like 3 units per store, how hard is it to sell 3 units.

It again comes down to marketing. The 770 is a great device with great possiblity, but if no one knows about it. It will remain a niche product, and soon will fade due to its not making enough money. Personally I would like to see the internet tablets expand and new versions made. But, with no followings expect for us, it won't be worth it to nokia. (example: NGage)

Nokia's successor has been announced in the form of a software upgrade with i.p. telephony...

The roadmap is pretty clear: the present 770 is a beta device for geeks, then later this year you'll have the next software, better adapted to non-geeks. If *that* one is successful, Nokia will carry on further developping the concept (as usual, probably: more memory and a faster processor only at first).

If Nokia were to actually market the 770, they would be nailed with class action lawsuits.

This is a Beta product. It lacks important functionality out of the box. As an experiment, I am sure it would be considered a success - it might even break even, which is no small feat!

Nokia is pretty good at thinking long-term. I would guess that their desire is to make another platform viable for late 2007 for mass market. I think that the biggest risk to Maemo is RIM regaining momentum after the Blackberry patent mess. That could spell a smaller potential market for the internet tablet.

The biggest strength they have is de-coupling the phone and AP from the device, which can fill a different niche than other toys out there. The open source aspect could help it make into uses not previously thought up. ...assuming the next gen doesn't see power/memory problems we have today!

It wouldn't take much to qualify as a second generation product.
I would be satisfied with a faster - 400mhz processor ,and about twice the memory

Without an announcement at CeBit of somethng by Nokia, Microsoft is going to run over the 770 and leave it as roadkill.

The pepper was dead when it came out because it had too few features and too high a price- you can buy a laptop for the same money. They still haven't brought out a second generation of their product and I don't think they will unless they are planning on a move to the origami platform as a Msoft partner.

Microsoft has been watching the market and has a pretty good idea of what it needs to offer to bring out a sucessfull product. The Origami is being positioned to be that product and Nokia has to move quickly to avoid gettng run over

Not to reignite the old hardware debate, but if they start cramming more into this thing, it'll rival a laptop in price - - no thanks! What I *do* think would be a marvellous idea is if they could possibly halve the internal storage to 32MB (big enough for your documents, etc) and use the other 32 for a swapfile. Would that make it more prone to failure to do the abundance of R/W activity? Ionno.

If they replaced the flash memory with normal RAM, the R/W failure would be out of the way. But, obviously, using RAM for a swapfile is kinda dumb: use RAM for -- well, RAM.

The best thing that could be done for the 770 is IMO still the complete removal of Nokia's Linux "distribution" from it and replacing it with something more lightweight, either Qtopia or GPE based. It would run circles around the original 770 with the same hardware. See the Zauri, or Siemens SimPad, the one with Linux installed.

um, maemo is GPE based.

Yes, but hardly lightweight, is it?

I would have thought that by now there would have been an alternative distribution for the 770, less glitzsy and more geared towards speed and general Linuxiness. Maybe a port from the OpenEmbedded project (althought that isn't without its flaws either)?

OpenEmbedded is what is used to build opie and gpe. And GPE will run on the 770, i've seen talk of it in #gpe in irc, don't think it's ready for prime time yet though.

You misunderstand. "Primetime" is what Nokia put on the 770: idiot-proof, tamper-proof, speed-proof.

Why not have a faster-than-light, geekoid distribution for those who want a snappy handheld without the funky borders? It's perhaps not for everyone, but it is right for some.