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Cougar81 is offline Cougar81
2007-10-02 , 20:13
Posts: 4 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#211
This is what bothers me about Nokia's 1.5 year product cycle.

I have been looking at the N800 since around April 2007 and have been waiting for my end of year vacation payout (free money) to buy. It sounds great - but now here is the next one. I've heard the horror stories of the 770 and I dont want a paperweight.

Why should I buy the N800 and not wait for this next incarnation?

(please be specific if you are going to answer the question, having been a salesman for computer products, Ive been through all of the "if you wait for the next product ....")

Here is what I think my gripes with the N800 are going to be:

1. Slow processor. It may be built for web apps - but given the community uproar about it's potential - it seems to be just a step shy of crossing that bridge to evolved PDA like status.

2. Real photo management software that will work with my WinXP home PC and Flickr. My #1 goal for the N800 is to take it with me into the field and shoot photography. I plan to swap my SD card from my digital camera and use the N800's (acclaimed) screen to view my results. When re-entering a wifi hotspot I plan to upload my acceptable results to Flickr - and wipe my SD card to refill it. (Question for current N800 owners: if you use Mozilla - have you tried fotofox? Does it work on the N800?)

The one thing I really like about the N800 is of course, the Linux side. While I've never been a Debian user - I still use a fedora distro and long ago I used a less cluttered distro but I forget the name. That said .. am I reading too much into the Linux side? Does it really *matter* to me that it's linux compatible? Because - just how many Linux apps will I use on the device anyway? Probably a music app, maybe a (few) photo apps if I can find them, certainly not Gimp, probably a video player, maybe Skype... once.. or twice.

Sorry for the rambling post - this has just kind of turned out to be a bump in the road for my N800 dream :P
Last edited by Cougar81; 2007-10-02 at 20:15.
 
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Noneus is offline Noneus
2007-10-02 , 20:14
Posts: 87 | Thanked: 45 times | Joined on Sep 2007
#212
If the N800 would have more power it would be more expensive. The battery wouldn't hold that long. It would be thicker. The N800 isn't short of power. But optimizing the software to the platform the N800 uses would bring more. Just look at video playing. I think mplayer could be much faster on the N800 if it'd use all the processor specific capabilities.

I hope Nokia improves performance with the next big firmware release (Especially with video performance). Just putting in more isn't always the best way...
 
Garage Battle is offline Garage Battle
2007-10-02 , 20:19
Posts: 122 | Thanked: 3 times | Joined on Mar 2007
#213
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
Sometimes I really wonder what you people talk about. I went to see a friend this weekend whose desktop PC is actually less responsive than my 770... It's a Pentium MMX with 120MB RAM and a hard drive that makes you jump to the next room when in spins up. My fathers PC is not much faster - a bit faster than my 770, but it might not beat an N800.

You should accept the fact that people don't always upgrade their hardware to the latest model available. Some just keep it as long as it works. The average PC, the average laptop in use today might be faster than an internet tablet, but maybe not a lot faster.
So if you say that a 770/N800 is too slow for site A or application B, then the truth is that site A and application B, in fact, cannot be used by a large number of "normal" PC users, either. So blame the site and the application for being too heavy, not the device.
no offense to you good sir, but if those are the system specs you are quoting off to me, you shouldnt be buying internet tablets, as it seems your funds would be better spent on a decent desktop. a 1ghz desktop, case, hard drive, 512 memory would cost you under $100, let alone just picking up a used computer.

my $65 Compaq Armada M300 laptop (PIII 600mhz, 384 ram) can run circles around the n800. sorry, but your defensive position is incorrect.
 
Garage Battle is offline Garage Battle
2007-10-02 , 20:26
Posts: 122 | Thanked: 3 times | Joined on Mar 2007
#214
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
You do know, though, that this was the original approach of bringing the internet to mobile devices and failed miserably? People don't want 2nd class mobile versions. Companies don't want to duplicate their efforts for a mobile audience. The only way that proved successful so far was to bring "the real thing" to mobile devices - the way Nokias IT series does.
dont get me wrong sweety, id absoultely love to spin through google maps, youtube, engadget, etc. The reality is, those sites arent made for 800x480, they arent made for little processors, small memory, and lack of video performance chipsets.

what im saying is very simple. if you are a company, and want to make a product, look at your competitors. i dont own an iPhone, but I respect to hell what Apple has done to put the world in our hands, and useable by our fingers. they looked at the problems, and for some of them, created elegant solutions. nokia, being the powerhouse it is, would benefit greately by one upping them, or at minimum, at least copying them.

even the concept tablet devices that Intel is working on understand that if you want to touch something, well, it should be designed to be touched. we cant covert the whole web to our format, but, the important sites/programs we want to use daily should be.
 
Garage Battle is offline Garage Battle
2007-10-02 , 20:29
Posts: 122 | Thanked: 3 times | Joined on Mar 2007
#215
Originally Posted by Texrat View Post
Most of your comments are highly subjective, but it takes a certain amount of rank chutzpah to slam "hand made" Linux apps for the burgeoning open source mobile landscape.

Personally I have the utmost respect for those who have freely ported and coded apps for the N800 or any other environ or device for that matter. As zerojay said, as long as it works, I'm happy. No-cost, ad-free Pidgin certainly does exactly what I need.
nokia last little tidbit from their N series event, thoughtfix asked the question about the new tablet. the response was that the new tablet would be even more 'mainstream'. relying on the community to develop important, useful applications is not a step towards making something more 'mainstream'. that needs the help of software developers, R&D teams, etc.
 
mobiledivide is offline mobiledivide
2007-10-02 , 20:38
Posts: 751 | Thanked: 522 times | Joined on Mar 2007 @ East Gowanus
#216
Originally Posted by Garage Battle View Post
no offense to you good sir, but if those are the system specs you are quoting off to me, you shouldnt be buying internet tablets, as it seems your funds would be better spent on a decent desktop. a 1ghz desktop, case, hard drive, 512 memory would cost you under $100, let alone just picking up a used computer.

my $65 Compaq Armada M300 laptop (PIII 600mhz, 384 ram) can run circles around the n800. sorry, but your defensive position is incorrect.
I surf Facebook, Google Reader and sites such as ESPN.com on my N800 every night with a Macbook 2Ghz and a Core Duo convertible tablet 10 feet away from me. I NEVER miss using them I guess if I was hitting tons of multimedia sites I would probably complain more but for quick starting and simple surfing there is really no mobile device out there sub $400 that can come close to the N800 for replicating a full web experience (yes including the iPhone). I really wish there was less bleating and moaning on this forum and more focusing on the real world. The N800 is actually a pretty good device with limited appeal to the mainstream right now but with all of the stuff you hear in this place you would think Nokia had taken a **** in the hands of some of these users. Its not perfect, but as a small part of a huge multinational company working with it seems limited resources, in just over 2 years this platform has come a long way and proven itself viable.

With the added utility of the GPS and WiMAX and a software update that targets the mainstream I think Nokia is headed in the right direction.
 
fanoush is offline fanoush
2007-10-02 , 21:07
Posts: 2,152 | Thanked: 1,490 times | Joined on Jan 2006 @ Czech Republic
#217
Originally Posted by Noneus View Post
I hope Nokia improves performance with the next big firmware release
This may happen. It was mentioned in maemo-developers that N800 contains 'speed sorted' OMAP that can go up to 400MHz (perhaps similar to that 252MHz OMAP 1710 in N770) . With newer linux kernel in major FW release we may get on-demand CPU frequency and voltage scaling which may boost CPU speed when needed.
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lardman is offline lardman
2007-10-02 , 21:12
Posts: 2,102 | Thanked: 1,309 times | Joined on Sep 2006
#218
Why should I buy the N800 and not wait for this next incarnation?
I'd wait and see what the new one brings, or is the N800 significantly cheaper now than we expect the new one to be?

Here is what I think my gripes with the N800 are going to be:

1. Slow processor. It may be built for web apps - but given the community uproar about it's potential - it seems to be just a step shy of crossing that bridge to evolved PDA like status.
I don't think there are major issues with the processor speed, it's not as fast as some high end iPaqs, but it seems to work fine.

2. Real photo management software that will work with my WinXP home PC and Flickr. My #1 goal for the N800 is to take it with me into the field and shoot photography. I plan to swap my SD card from my digital camera and use the N800's (acclaimed) screen to view my results. When re-entering a wifi hotspot I plan to upload my acceptable results to Flickr - and wipe my SD card to refill it. (Question for current N800 owners: if you use Mozilla - have you tried fotofox? Does it work on the N800?)
No idea about the software (what is photo management all about? Create directory, copy image files? Use filemanager...?), is there anything open source you could port/adapt? One thing that does bug me is that large digital photos take a while to open - this could probably be improved by optimising libjpeg for ARM (or using the DSP). The use of hardware acceleration could also speed this up (we'll see whether the new tablet uses this).


Simon
 
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Texrat is offline Texrat
2007-10-02 , 21:29
Posts: 11,700 | Thanked: 10,045 times | Joined on Jun 2006 @ North Texas, USA
#219
Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
Sometimes I really wonder what you people talk about. I went to see a friend this weekend whose desktop PC is actually less responsive than my 770... It's a Pentium MMX with 120MB RAM and a hard drive that makes you jump to the next room when in spins up. My fathers PC is not much faster - a bit faster than my 770, but it might not beat an N800.

You should accept the fact that people don't always upgrade their hardware to the latest model available. Some just keep it as long as it works. The average PC, the average laptop in use today might be faster than an internet tablet, but maybe not a lot faster.
So if you say that a 770/N800 is too slow for site A or application B, then the truth is that site A and application B, in fact, cannot be used by a large number of "normal" PC users, either. So blame the site and the application for being too heavy, not the device.
Agreed. Too many app and website designers adopt the philosophy of "wow I have all this storage, processing power and bandwidth-- LET'S USE IT ALL!!!" Fire up ebay on your N800 and count the number of objects loaded-- it's insane.

I'll grant Garage's point that the Internet isn't generally designed around the tablet form factor, but that begs the question: why couldn't it be? What's wrong with minimizing per-page content and size? Is all that flash and graphics necessary?

I think not... and my policy has been for some time now that I will aim my sites at the tablets by default. That's the future, folks.
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Last edited by Texrat; 2007-10-02 at 23:44.
 
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Texrat is offline Texrat
2007-10-02 , 21:32
Posts: 11,700 | Thanked: 10,045 times | Joined on Jun 2006 @ North Texas, USA
#220
Originally Posted by Garage Battle View Post
nokia last little tidbit from their N series event, thoughtfix asked the question about the new tablet. the response was that the new tablet would be even more 'mainstream'. relying on the community to develop important, useful applications is not a step towards making something more 'mainstream'. that needs the help of software developers, R&D teams, etc.
That still in no way belittles the obvious accomplishments of decent independent developers. I like project-scale approaches, too, with plenty of resources behind the effort... and then I see Maemo Mapper and Pidgin and realize that's not the only way to get the job done.
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Last edited by Texrat; 2007-10-02 at 23:44.
 
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