Speaking of competition, the new Kindle and new competition for the Kindle are being discussed on the front page of the NY Times today, and elsewhere. I think it's interesting that the competition for the Kindle (which I think will flop) would be even larger. Yuck!

Now, if someone came out with 500 gb of free storage provided by a free net connection analogous to what the Kindle provides, plus of course free Internet connectivity, that would be nice. One thing people appreciate about the Kindle is the no-brainer aspect of getting a book. You don't have to find a provider, just start downloding.

I think that no-brainer wireless Internet access included in the price of the device would be an interesting way to go.

By the way, I noted with interest that the new Kindle has text to speech provided by Nuance, the clear speech-to-text leader. It tempts me to buy one, just for the good voices Nuance has.

(My wireless keyboard is going insane as I type, so some opinions above may be its and not mine.)

If it's Android, it's not in the same class as Maemo.

While Android claims to be 'open' (it's not all that open, compared to Maemo), you still can't go and throw just any existing application at it. People make apps for Android the same way they make apps for S60 or the jPhone... Did anybody say 'fragmentation'?

It may be a competition in terms of marketing and commercial success, yes, but it's no compatition at all when it comes to my money.

<shrug> Obviously.

Nobody can answer the "usable" question yet, but if Nokia is going to do for Maemo what they did for Symbian (and everything we've heard from Nokia suggests that they're throwing that kind of weight behind this project), then I'm pretty sure we'll see "usable" too.

I think Nokia is holding the new UI really close to their chest on this one because it's going to be really nice. You can tell by the way they don't care so much that we know the hardware specs, but they're not ready to show us the UI stuff...

On the other hand Nokia skipped the Elephanta (and maybe a device) to speed up the RX-51 development. As they're about to release them in about the same time frame as this Archos and other competitors, it seems it was a wise choise. If we had gotten a device and OS in between, Nokia would be behind the competition now.

Just my humble opinion of course

The problem is that we have been hearing about fremantle being sooooooooooooooo.... good and so on.. but seriously until it is here.... no one cares

I wouldn't say "no one cares", but I would say that it's irrelevant until it's public. There is no substantive information about the fremantle UI today ... and there's no need to speculate about the Android UI today, because it's here.

Nah, the OMAP3440 is 800MHz, while the OMAP3430 is 600MHz (I just redid the OMAP wiki page, which has some details). Basically, this thing is going to be a power hog like no other. The consumption jump between the OMAP3430 and the OMAP3440 is . . . non-trivial (I had some numbers at some point, but I can't seem to dredge the up).

It'd be cool if the OMAP36x were on a schedule that might work for the RX-51. 45nm would offer some nice improvements.

As far as "usability" discussion, well, none of us can do more than talk for the time being, because no matter what anybody says (unless they work for the big N), nobody here really knows (so stop pretending like you do ).

Nokia has stated their intention to improve on this point a lot for Fremantle (remember, this is step 4) and it will be a major departure from Diablo, but this is as much as we can say for sure for now. There's an intention, and there's change, whether it'll pan out will have to wait for a real release (or the beta SDK).

It is hard to make something usable with out usefulness. If it isn't useful it's soon becomes useless.

I like the way Maemo has matured and what RX-51 is shaping up to be. The N800 is my first Nokia device and if I was a "fanboy" of any manufacturer it would be /\/\otorola. < Like that fanboy stylized "M", LoL.

As to the device featured in this thread: I'm thinkin' that the 5" screen is just a tad big for top pocket usefulness. The 3440 a tad slow to run any useful HD apps. And Android may be a tad immature to use all of the device hardware.

My N800 was guilty of all of this the first year that I owned it. On top of that, the first 3 releases of the OS could not broadcast the syntax I needed to BT DUN using my cell phone. For that first year it was pretty much useless to me...

...however, there was this useful community that grew up with the tablets so I stayed involved. The syntax problem was resolved through a very useful bug tracking program and the Opera web browser gave way to MicroB so that useful web apps like flash and CSS could be used. These and other things made the tablet more "usable".

I now seldom leave the house without my N800.

What kind of "useful" support does Archos provide for its other devices?

Has it ever abandoned or orphaned a device?

Just thinkin'

It's an Archos... they can keep it.

I have an Archos 604, and it's locked down so tight you can't even replace the hard drive in it without sending it back to Archos. Every codec costs an additional $20-$25, the expansion connectors are all difficult if not possible to obtain (no cheap docks, etc). Android or not, you won't be able to put anything on it, based on Archos' past policies.

As far as support, they stopped supporting it as soon as the next device (604 Wifi) was out, and there hasn't been an update in forever. So basically they abandon their legacy users after a year at most.

I bought an iPhone 3G in the meantime to give me something to tinker with, but will probably end up with the RX-51 when (if?) it ever comes out.

Be patient, and don't make a mistake on the Archos.

Those two comments kind of lead me to believe that you don't know what usable means...

Usable is the formal/clinical term for the colloquial "user friendly". It's a Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics term. Things can easily be usable, but not very useful. Several of the cheap $10-$20 PDAs that don't sync with anything, don't have the ability to load apps, etc., are actually quite usable (well designed, straight forward, easy to use/figure out interfaces), but have rather limited usefulness.

The opposite can also be true... things can be quite useful, even amazingly useful (lots of utility, lots of features, powerful hardware for delivering those features, etc.) and abysmal when it comes to being usable.

Useful and usable have almost nothing to do with each other, other than building on the same root word.

The things you said in the 2nd paragraph I quited, in fact, do nothing to make the tablet more "usable". More useful, yes. More usable, no.

It is true that something which isn't useful becomes useless. That says NOTHING about whether or not it is usable.