This FAQ is for my own selfish sanity. Because my blog is pretty darn extensive on 770/N800 stuff, people contact me personally quite often with questions. I do my best to answer them all, but I just can't keep up anymore!

More questions! More!

I think a pointer to the "what do I do with "missing install file" on maemo.org would be helpful I know the first debian package I installed made me a tad nervous....

also I think a list (updated periodically) of the most popular apps people install on their n800s would be a good thing for people to see...

i second the apps list. with updates. also with apps to be carefull with, or bugs to watch out for if the release is still in Beta.

some apps/versions have common bugs that everyone knows/should know about.

also a list of software/hardware common problems and quick fixes/work arounds if they exist.

in general questions that are repeated all of the time, USB/Bluetooth/Wifi - what works what doesn't.

I think the FAQ should have some information about what to expect the device to be capable of. Most people don´t know the difference between browser, flash and streaming media version. They will think that a ¨Internet tablet¨ can do what a normal computer does when connected to the internet, but the N800 is not a windows machine so:

question:
Can I watch streaming videos from the net (like youtube or windows media streams)?
short answer: No, not very well.
longer answer: not as easily as on a computer. The buildin flash player is only version 7, a lot of flash video sites require flash version 9. Also the flash player is rather slow, so youtube is jerky .Speed problems when playing youtube videos can be overcome by using Orb 2 to re-encode the streams in realtime to Real media (supports higher bitrates), but this requires a fast computer and some people reported stability problems.
if you install Mplayer you can watch windows media (and also quicktime), but the bitrate of most broadband streams is too high for smooth playback.
The device does include Realplayer support, but this also has bitrate limitations.
The webbrowser only includes support for embedded Real streams and flash (no windows media or quicktime), and Real is supported by placing a button to launch the external application.


question:
Can I chat with my MSN buddies?
short answer: No, not out of the box
longer answer: you can if you install Gaim with the MSN plugin But A lot of users think Gaim is rather slow. Also I think it isn´t very user friendly compared to the simple MSN clients on modern Windows Mobile devices. (but Gaim does have alot of options)

question:
Can I play online games (javascript, java or flash games)?
short answer: No most games won´t work
longer answer: Java isn´t supported, and the build-in flash player will be too slow for a lot of games. Also a lot of javascript games don´t work in the version 8 of Opera. (the javascript support isn´t good enough on this version)
Most games online are optimized for mouse and keyboard, that the N800 by default doesn´t have, so you will encounter problems because of this with a lot of games.

I almost forgot:

question:
Can I make voip calls on the N800 (like skype or using a SIP based provider)?
answer: Skype will be released in june for the N800, so untill that time: no skype calls on the n800.
The N800 includes a Googletalk client by default, but it doesn´t have a universal SIP client. Gizmo project is an application that you can install, that includes a partial SIP client with limited options (not all SIP services work when using Gizmo), in addition to Gizmo project Voip services.

question:
what is the webcam quality like?
answer: terrible, absolutely terrible. ANY webcam you buy for the PC will have a better video quality (even the $10 ultra cheap ones),
The webcam is totally useless currently: only the google talk client can start video calls, but the Nokia video call client for the pc is rather buggy, and very few people use google talk anyway.
Because of the low quality picture, you don´t want to use it for video recording or for use as a digicam.

Questions:

Is there non-official java for the n800?

The built-in browser doesn't log into blogger. How do I post to my blog?
A: download minimo

How can I mount it on my bicycle handlebars? (Do I need to add waterproofing? Why doesn't anybody make a kit for this?)

What solar chargers work with it?

Are there drivers to do bluetooth stuff (like browsing & file transfers) with OS X?

How can I copy pictures from my bluetooth (non-nokia) phone to my n800 wirelessly?

How do I make it sync to my apple contacts and calendar?

Reasonably, should I hold out any hope at all for browser bugs (crash and otherwise) to be fixed? Are stupid UI bugs going to get fixed? This feels really beta, is it going to get better?

Some of the cool looking 3rd party apps have dependencies which can be filled with repositories that I don't know about yet. Is there a list of all the repositories that I should add to my application manager?

I screwed up the settings for a 3rd party app and I think the best way to fix them is just to start over. How do I trash my old settings?

Why does the iphone not support GPS?

Um, but seriously, if anybody has answers for these, I'm all ears.

Alrighty, I'll give this a shot.

There are a few projects working on this, such as Jalimo (http://www.jalimo.org/), however it's still very much alpha. No, this will not allow you to run Java applets in the web browser.

I believe you can also use Maemo-Blog for this, however I don't know for sure. Also, the program seemed very unstable to me. Might fit your needs.

Because people don't want to be run down by bikers who were too busy staring at the excellent screen. (Good for a potential ad.)

I don't know if the N800 supports the Bluetooth profiles to do that. I would imagine that whatever Bluetooth dongle you have for your Mac should work with it though.

It's not a PDA and doesn't even have a built-in calendar app. You can try using the GPE apps for that though. I have no experience with this kind of stuff, so YMMV.

Sure. The N800 has gotten far more stable than it used to be a firmware upgrade or two ago. I doubt the UI is going to change much, but I can easily see some browser bugs being fixed.... so long as they were entered into Bugzilla, anyways.

A little hard to come up with a full list, but the best is on the Maemo Wiki (http://maemo.org/community/wiki/appl...repositories/).

I believe you'll have to use Bash to do it, but I believe the files in question are stored somewhere in /home/user/ and probably in a hidden file or directory (those all start with a period).

Because Apple is ******ed, but I'm sure that's nothing you haven't already suspected.

Hope this helped.

Some basic things I havenot found out so far:

How do I manage my icons in the "'start" menu (move something from EXTRAS to TOOLS for example)

How do I create a shortcut in the "start" menu for an installed program which does not appear to have created one itself (for example the FM Radio), or does this indicate that something went wrong with the install, despite an affirmation at the end of the install process?

How do I format an SD card in the N800?

Why can't I read my media from the N800 in Windows?

Can I download the sourcecode for any applications and try compiling them on the N800?

(This is less of a frequent question and more selfish) - How can I install Freeciv on my N800?
I have found this port, but it is not of the latest version. FreeCiv port


I may have more later
Thanks
James

Sniff around in Control Panel. It's there, trust me.

If no shortcut is created, the program you installed is almost certainly a command line program and can only be started via the X terminal.

I never do.

What "media"?

Not yet, as far as I understand. There is a Vmware image to do development on the pc.

Dunno.


Is that a threat?