If Ovi mail gets good enough, I'm bailing from Hotmail.

Heck, right now all Ovi really needs to do is integrate its own contacts. They'll need to do that for the netbook... (see what I just did there? )

Windows, OSX, GNU/Linux, Windows, GNU/Linux, ... why do we care?

I'll tell you why I care and why I'm disappointed:

Part of my respect for Nokia (in the Maemo context) comes from the fact that they believe in GNU/Linux as a commercial alternative. They believe in it as a mass market product. Wow! That's cool. Or so I thought.

A netbook would have been the logical next device to try GNU/Linux on. After all, whatever return statistics say, we have seen the OS work in this market. It almost created it, even if it falls behind now.

Not using either Maemo or Moblin as the default distribution now is like saying: "You thought we trusted in GNU/Linux? Oh, big misunderstanding. It's Symbian and Windows."

Or that's how it seems.

What else could it mean? It could mean that with the current setup (Maemo and Moblin being both in development, consumers needing software they can most easily provide under Windows,...), Nokia goes the other way round:
With the 770, they created a new kind of hardware to attract developers to a new kind of operating system. The netbook could be aimed at consumers from day one, but might include everything hackers need to get whatever version of Debian/Ubuntu/Maemo/Moblin/... up and running. A future Nokia netbook distribution could be co-developed by the community much the same way Maemo was influenced by this community over the years, the difference being that the hardware is not exotic, but mainstream from the start. - So they may wait until ready. Like they did with Maemo.

Well, one can always dream...

On a 10" screen?

Linux has "90%" on the server market and is secure by default.

Sure on a 10" screen. Design on the go.

And why include the "secure by default" comment in a reply to me? I agreed with it.

I know, it wasn't aimed at you.

But it doesn't run Adobe Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4, Flex 3/4. Hell, it doesn't even run Final Cut Studio, After Effects, Office 2007, or Acrobat Pro.

This whole uproar over "It's not Linux"... get over it. OS X ran on Intel and PowerPC... recently discontinued. Windows has run on DEC Alpha, PowerPC, ARM (via a port by the WinNT team), x86 (Via, Cyrix, AMD, Intel, Transmeta).

This whole part about Linux scaling, not all apps are re-compiled, nor can they. And not all apps for other business sectors are present in Linux. As a person that's equal parts designer as well as programmer, Linux is just plain lacking in too many areas where OS X and Windows just does well.

Hell, Mesa3D isn't the same as OpenGL either.

So with that said... this whole concept of "scaling" doesn't equate to a proper business decision for a netbook - a server, yes. More people use this kind of machine for office related functions - especially this niche market - than the usual driver lacking Linux implementation on these kinds of products. Tired of finding out after I install that the drivers for my wifi in a machine doesn't fully support the features as it would in OS X or Windows.

Anyway, this is a mass market device. Don't like the announcement, then the product just isn't for you. And as it stands, what most people want from a device in this thread, it wouldn't be a mass market device anyway.

The Atom created the netbook market, not Linux. Linux was in because it was customizable enough to fit into netbook hardware. The same reason why Maemo devices exists, Linux can be made to work on any kind of device, something you can't do with Windows (XP barely fitted in the original netbooks).

You can't really say that the OS that is falling behind is the one that Nokia should bet on their fist release! It makes sense to jump on the winner wagon to create some traction.

Also, most defaced too. Blame Apache.

You don't use that on a 10" netbook.

Let's bounce around some different product names and logos. For product name I came up with:

WTF

But the logo could be something more simple like:

?

Jim Carrey could be the spokesperson.