Heh... surely that was sarcasm... right?

<general rant>On a completely serious note, I'm struck incredulous by the number of people buying the products and yet completely failing to factor in the LINUX element. Take Linux out of the picture, replace it with another OS, and the device cost goes up. So for the difference, and especially given the publicly-stated plan for the products (N810 is step 3 of 5), a certain degree of self-help and community support is built in. If buyers don't want this, then to me the solution is absurdly simple: avoid Linux devices. Period. They are not for those needing to be spoonfed, regardless who the manufacturer is.

Now, I believe the day is coming when these devices will in general be more mature. The Linux community is playing a large role in that effort. Many have been rewarded with huge discounts on devices.

Yes, there have been missteps and outright disasters. Welcome to the growth of a new product line! Those wanting instant maturity at this point would do well to note that despite the advanced state of certain elements, as a whole this market space is paralleling the very early days of cell phone and PC development-- albeit at a MUCH more compressed cycle! Consider the Nokia internet tablets to be PC XTs running Windows 3.11 at this point. Windows 98 and 2000 are still to come (sorry for the Microsoft analogy, penguin people).

So IMO a few would do well to take a deep breath and ponder the subject a little deeper, or (and no offense meant by this) move on to something that won't cause you so much heartburn.</general rant>

Ok, my friend.
But you miss the point
Nokia Tablet is proprietary hardware + software coming from Nokia.
I can't buy another mobile hardware, PDA and install bora, mistral, gregale
and have them all working fine.

So Nokia is selling commercial product, embedded system (hardware + software).

So good job of community at maemo has nothing to do with deadly slow server running maemo.org, owned by Nokia.

Nokia may donate developers with new embedded systems, may arrange training sessions, but profit is made by selling embedded systems to customers at full price.

Just exactly as Apple.com with iPod Touch and iPhone.

Third party developers of application for Nokia Tablet are of key importance to Nokia as embedded system without software, applications has no commercial value at all.

So relations between developers and Nokia are out of question.

The issue are relations between Nokia Tablet product managment and tablet buyers, i.e. final customers paying full price in cash for a final commercial product - hardware + software.

And on my hand I see no interest of Nokia to support final buyers, customers of Nokia Tablet.

Nokia Tablet is still in beta version, problems, bugs are discussed
and Nokia says nothing in public.

So you may have excellent communities of developers, testers, users but what counts is volume sale and profit generated by sale of Nokia Tablets.

It's so easy to understand that poor support, problems with hardware (gps), application installations generate loss or margin profit only.

And you can have communities of Linux developers but please keep in mind, Nokia Tablet is not open hardware.
Nokia Tablet is proprietary hardware and totally useless if not running Nokia proprietary OS.

And to run OS2008 software, applications you have to buy embedded system - hardware, made by Nokia not by competitors, exactly as in the case of Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch.

So support provided by a community is great but refers to software
not hardware issues.

But the problem with Nokia Tablet is hardware and not necessary software, open / free software, developed by the community.

I can request a manufacturer to provide me with a quality product for a price stated and paid but I can't request a developer of free/open software to do anything for me.

All I can do is to beg him/her to dop anything more for free.
Developers of software are nmot paid.
But manufacturer of embedded system/ hardware is paid for its product.

Darius

And all of that in relation to the problem mentioned in the first posting - that maemo.org is sometimes slow? That one, specific problem?

I for one will just relax and wait for faster, bigger iron to be installed. It'll happen - I'm sure most of you wouldn't want to bet against that!

Yeah, but, no.

Look at something like the Eee, which also runs Linux. The community around the device, which hasn't even been out a year, is close to rivaling (or even surpassing) the NIT community.

And yes, I know, the form factor is different, the goals of the devices are different (are they really, though), and so on... The difference is, ASUS hasn't made a habit of shooting themselves in the foot, which is something Nokia friggin excels at .

Examples:

• No upgrades for 770 users. Oh wait, since you're all whining about it and for some reason feel that you're somehow entitled to support for your device for more than a year, we'll give you a Halfassed Edition (or Hacker's Edition) of the new OS. Good luck.
• We're breaking binary compatibility with the newest OS.
• New OS'es for everyone. And we're hosting that on a 286 with a 14.4 modem. Good luck.
• We're breaking binary compatibility with our new OS. Again. Any developers left?
• And so on...

I'm sure there's more, but those are just from the last year.

So? This isn't something Nokia does intentionally to drive away customers and developers, this is something that had to be done to maintain compatibility with upstream, and there's no simple way around it. Heck, we get a lot of benefits out of it, too. In particular, it means much easier porting for everybody (look at Transmission).

I don't know about you, but the only time I've had any trouble downloading a firmware update in 2 years was during the OS2008 release.

I've only been a tablet user for about a year or so now... so yeah, the OS2008 was the only firmware issue I've had.

But even now, I can go to refresh my application manager catalog and still have issues with some of the maemo repositories. Another refresh a few minutes later, and the issues are gone. It certainly doesn't inspire confidence.

So Jonny... you'll be one of the chronically disgruntled moving on to other platforms, right?

That's a fairly cheap thing to say... I've been using SuSE for years, and have never really felt a need to be disgruntled about it, or move on from it. Had SuSE done something like screw the Yast repositories up and/or make it impossible for me to get updates, I'd probably get irritated.

I've been a Wii owner since it came out, and again, am not disgruntled. If Nintendo did something like break the WiFi connectivity or make it impossible for me to get system updates, I'd probably become unhappy.

The OP had a point... and I know you're busy slurping Kool-Aid, but consider the point because it's a fantastic point. The maemo site is a mess. It's slow, it's clunky, and it's sort of an embarrassment. It doesn't speak well for Nokia's attitude for the tablet if this is the best that they can do.

No company pleases all customers all of the time, not even the almighty Apple. For instance, ask the folks on the QuickTime-VR mailing list how thrilled they are with the iPhone. Or ask the folks on the QuickTime-Users mailing list how recent versions of QuickTime Player have made their interactive QuickTime projects oh so much better. Or ask the folks on Bruce Nazarian's site about how quickly Apple rolled out a fix for the still menu encoding bug in DVD Studio Pro.

Cheap? Kool-Aid???

Just making an assumption based on the general vitriole in your posts.

Criticism is great. Nokia needs it. But too much of what's allegedly constructive criticism comes across as uninformed, petty (and yes, cheap) slams... rants that serve no greater purpose than personal catharsis for the venter. There are real issues to be addressed, such as the state of the maemo site, and aimless outbursts aren't going to make a single dent in resolving them. That takes the sort of community involvement that a few extremists here decry.

There's a significant degree of context wrapped around these devices that gets shunted aside by a few malcontents, but that point's been made ad nauseum. The one point I will continue to come back to is that if one is truly unhappy with the tablets, and has no serious interest in participating in their improvement, then one should move on. Trolling here is... cheap.

A final bit: I can pull out "perfect scenarios" all day long-- a few even (gasp) highlighting Nokia. But those of us in the real world know that if you look hard and deep enough you'll find warts on almost everything (as sjgadsby just did above).