I don't think the reviewer was wrong. He's reviewing for (mainly) Windows or Mac people who might see the IT and think 'I'd like one of those!'. The review will put them off it and rightly so.
The IT is quite good at some things but it's not even bad at the everyday things that an ordinary person might want, it doesn't really do them at all - and it's not likely to improve in the near future.
For non-techie people the IT would be a frustrating toy rather than a useful object. I like solving problems but even for me, finding ways to do the most everyday things is like an obstacle course. If I gave one to my wife, I doubt she'd give it more than 1/6!

I'll grant your context, but IMO he didn't do that as well as he could IF that was the intent. I have a problem, say with statements like "it needs to have a SIM!" without the important qualifiers following.

ok... I'd like to point out that it would make the discussion easier if you said what the "things that an ordinary person might want" are -- personally I think there is no "ordinary user", but if I had to guess I would have thought that a typical non-tech user might expect an Internet Tablet to be nice for things like facebook, web forums and gmail. Internet radio and such would be a nice surprise.

Ok. The list above is actually what my gf uses our tablets for, pretty much every day... People have different expectations, don't assume yours are universal.

Those are good points, too, jussik.

It is rather broad to assume non-techies will be turned off of the tablets. It all comes down to user expectations. IF an N800 or N810 do what a certain user wants out of the box, then they don't need to get under the hood.

Now, originally the out-of-box experience had much to be desired. There are still holes, but the important news is that many have been and continue to be filled. To me, continual progress is the most important aspect of the tablets' development.

Heh, I'll probably say heresy but... I don't look especially forward PIM and/or Office solutions from Nokia. So far software provided by them isn't very impressive (euphemism). Maemo & Co. should rather concentrate on fundamentals to make things possible like:

- Gene Cash can easily port his PIM suite to OS2008 without problems (read his site to read what he thinks about OS2008 )
- Easy installation of KOffice and/or similar tools

Now, these are only examples of what I am using (would want to use). Other users can post their own examples.

Not heresay at all IMO. I'd love to see it.

Unfortunately, KOffice is out of consideration. True, it can be installed on a tablet, but it is way too heavy in terms of space and performance requirements. Also, it does not take into account unique input requirements of tablets.

AbiWord/Gnumeric pair looks like a much better bet, after somebody polishes them for long enough. May not happen though, as nobody is paying for this work. Texrat, it is something you might talk about with your management: the cost of partially supporting a developer or two to work on AbiWord/Gnumeric is much less than the benefit of having these tools working properly on these tablets.

I'm sure this is understood, based on internal communications I've seen, but it may bear reiterating...

For me, the ideal would be:

1) YES, GET THE PIM SUITE ON THE DEVICE AS OF YESTERDAY. Calendar, Todo, and the ability to at least read doc and xls (and hopefully power point). As well as the ability to sync with at least contacts/calendar/todo/bookmarks with Google Apps, Thunderbird/Firefox, Apple Mail/iCal/Safari, and probably Outlook/IE.

2) Software for the NIT platform that lets you completely control a Nokia phone. There's a library/app out there that gets you half way there, but not all the way. Complete support for hands-free control of your phone: make calls, answer calls, be the handset for calls, sync contacts (and other data on the phone, so if Nokia has a standard format for their embedded calendar apps, sync those with #1 above), view caller-id, send and receive images/sounds, send SMS/MMS, read SMS/MMS, receive notifications of SMS/MMS, etc. Basically, the ability to treat any Nokia phone like a non-user-interactive device IF you want to (ie. a device that sits in your pocket and only comes out to get charged).

2a) it would be nice if the software for #2 was somewhat open source, in that it should be possible for people to adapt it, as much as the vendor supports those protocols, to other phones. As far as I know, gnoki (sp?) is Nokia only, for example. Knowing I could at least somewhat use #2 with my Samsung SCH-R410 would be nice, for example.

3) Offer bundle _options_. Pick a CDMA/1xRTT phone, a GSM EDGE phone, a CDMA/EVDO phone, and a GSM/HSPA phone. Offer them in bundles through Nokia's web store, AND get carriers to offer the N800 and N810 as _ACCESSORIES_ for the Nokia phones that they sell. (so, when you go to the page that shows you a nice wide array of bluetooth headsets and chargers for your phone, the top of the list of accessories should be the N800 and N810)

I don't care who provides it, as long as it's fully integrated.

For example, I don't want two different contacts databases. I want 1 contacts database. I don't care if Nokia gives up theirs and we get GPE's installed on the base tablet, or if we have to use a special version of GPE that uses Nokia's contacts database. As long as it's 1 contacts database.