own one since about a month. I had very very little experience with linux before. Just installed on a pc and did some pc to pc connections using live cd's, almost no terminal experience before.

I got N800 with some expectations, but so far, I am more than pleased with the device.

I updated the device to the latest firmware,

I installed:
Gnumerics,
Abiword,
Camera,
Maemopad,
Mediastreamer,
Maemorecorder
Pidgin
Skype
Mplayer
White stork dictionary
Kagu player
Lybniz (graph plotting)
FBreader
MH shot tool
NmapFe
Granule,
Video Center
Tuner (to tune musical instruments)
Meemo WordPy
Maemo Blog

Most of these applications are working as far as I could test. There are occasional crashes but I am used to having crashes. Actually, N800 crashed much less than I expected it to.
I was able to redo my DVD to watch on n800, do also videostreaming, FM radio reception quality is excellent, when I did skype, I noticed that I can leave the device on one corner of the room and speak from the other end at least 3 meters distance and have no problem to be heard by the person 100 km from me. Audio recording is also fantastic, not only the room but also the outside sounds are recorded. There is aan excellent mic on this device I guess.

I love the ease of it connecting to public APs. I like the way I can use emailing. Browsing internet is also nice and I am pleased. The only problem is with the small fonts for my aging eyes. But this is my problem anyway.

I was able to use xterm and be a root and enjoy my first command line in linux like system of N800. I checked kismet and airodump-ng and was able to use them and get the logs on the screen. Other network tools are waiting to be touched. There are many things I have not had time to try yet but I feel calling N800 as an internet tablet is an understatement. For me, N800 is a computer. Maybe has limitations to notebooks and desktops but considering its size and weight and battery life, I am able to do a lot lot more than what I was expecting it to be able to handle. Therefore I am satisfied with the device.

All these I was able to do because of two main reasons:

1- Nokia has done a good job,
2- There is very good information accumulated on this forum, just reading and following the lines were enough to make many things work without even asking a single question. There are also a lot of people out there working hard for development. I have seen many pages with good content, and software.

I am sorry to write it long, but these are my feelings and thoughts right now. A great thank you to all the contributers. Just wanted to share with you.

How many packages did you have to hunt down to load gnumeric?

Installed:
gnumeric-common
gnumeric
gnumeric-doc

Could not install:
gnumeric-plugins-extra
because I think it depends on python2.4-gtk2 but in my tablet
pyton2.5-gtk2 was already installed with a lot of other same version python stuff. So I did not bother to uninstall them to replace with 2.4 versions. But my reasoning may be wrong though.

This last package that did not install has: perl plugin, python plugin, python plugin loader and additional python functions. By not installing it, what am I missing in spreadsheet usage, I am not much sure.

gnumeric-doc package should be for help. But I can not find it where in my tablet. If someone can give me a light on that, I would be happy.

I just got my N800 last week, and I agree that it's a great system. It's probably the _first_ linux system I've ever used that has a reasonable UI :-) (that's not to say that I've never used linux before: I've had various linux systems, under various distributions, over the last 12ish years ... and all of them had craptastic UI's ... until the N800).


That said, there are a few things I find lacking:

1) is there a way to use the built in cam as a low-quality _camera_, instead of having it always open skype? (I don't plan to use skype on my N800 at all). I don't need a camera on my PDA, but as long as it has something built in, I'd much rather use it to take pictures or shot movies than use it for skype or chatting.

2) I don't like the scrolling buttons. If I put my finger on it like a D-Pad, then it feels like I might awkwardly press the select button instead. I would, actually, prefer:
a) swap the location of the scrolling buttons and the escape/home button cluster, so that escape is up in the corner (where it belongs),
b) change the scrolling button to a D-Pad, and put the select button on the un-used right side of the screen,
c) add a second, application specific, button to the right side of the screen.

(depending on the API, which I haven't looked at, this could also make it easier and more interesting to develop games for the N800, but that's not my motivation for this suggestion, my motivation is purely ergonomic for the D-Pad and select button placements; and my suggestion for app-specific-button is actually to have an "alt" button for web browsing, because getting it to pop-up the context menu when you press on a link in Firefox is a pain in the backside)

3) The built in mail client appears to use IMAP in a fashion that is the same as POP: It only looks at your server-side INBOX (which is inconvenient, since NONE OF MY EMAIL EVER SEES MY INBOX, it gets filtered out to other folders, and only goes into m INBOX if there's an error), all other folders are local to the N800 (ex: messages in the Sent folder don't show up in my server's Sent folder), and it doesn't let me subscribe to IMAP folders on my Server.

So, essentially, the built in mail client is useless to me. Unfortunate. Until I find a better one, that does _REAL_ IMAP, I'm stuck with webmail. While I find the N800 port of Firefox to be painful (see below), I wish someone would port Thunderbird to the N800. Firefox for N800 seems like it's merely a matter of taste. Thunderbird for the N800, tough, seems like an absolute necessity for real GUI IMAP support (I heard that there's something called Pyne, but that sounds like pine, which is a text IMAP client ... I'd prefer a graphical IMAP client ... so I don't know if pyne is a python pine, or if pyne just sounds-like-pine).

4) It's unclear to me if you can use the built-in mini-USB port in host mode, or if you're limited to client mode (if you could use it in host mode, you could use USB to connect to some cell phones, instead of bluetooth, and get your internet connection that way; plus, you could use one of these mini-keyboards:

http://www.dreamgear.net/view-product.asp?idpr=437

which, while it doesn't say are USB, they are USB keyboards ... you'd just use it by itself instead of attached to the PS2 gamepad)

5) I wish someone made a case for it that uses the form factor of this device:

http://www.dopodasia.com/NR/exeres/C...eft1_pro_9_1_1

The case could just include a Bluetooth (or USB if #4 works) keyboard, and a holder for the N800.

6) Where's the ability to wirelessly connect and sync data to your PC or Mac?

7) Better Mac support ... flasher 3.0 hasn't been ported to the Mac yet.

8) Why does flasher erase user data? (applications and configuration stuff) There's really no excuse for that. Develop an upgrade tool and data storage configuration that keeps system software segregated from user data and user-installed apps, so that upgrades don't destroy user stuff.

9) When you first get your N800, and it asks you to name the device, it says you can change these settings later. The one setting I can't find, to change, is the name of the device. I see the name in the file manager, but ... no way to change it.

10) When I installed Firefox, why did it replace Opera? Why can't I have access to both? And, if I not uninstall Firefox, will I have NO web browser, or will I get Opera back? It's one thing for firefox to take over the default web browser buttons, but a) I should have a choice over who gets to be the default web browser (the one called up by the globe icon), and b) I should still be able to interact with whichever other web browser I have available (both should be listed in the "Web" menu, for example), and last c) I should have the _option_ of removing Opera, instead of having it automatically happen when I install Firefox)


(* Firefox on N800 is _AWEFUL_ .... painfully slow, getting it to pull up the context menu on a link (so I can open a link in a new window, since I greatly prefer that over using the back button) is much more difficult than it was with Opera, etc. ... while I love firefox on my desktop, I hate it on the N800 ... and since it uses the same bookmarks as Opera, I can't think of a real advantage to why I would want to use the N800 version of firefox)

11) Is there a way to sync bookmarks (in both directions) with Delicious? It'd be nice to have my N800 bookmarks be a sub-set of bookmarks kept on a central server, and have new bookmarks automatically uploaded to the server, and then have server changes propagated down to the N800.

12) Is there a way to sync contacts and/or bookmarks with an ACAP server? Sort of a generalized version of #11 -- that's what ACAP is for, and it'd be nice to have my multiple devices (home desktop, work desktop, PDA) all in sync in this regard. (calendar/appointments too)

13) Why doesn't the desktop clock resize to fit the whole screen? It'd be nice to be able to use the N800 as a clock when its charging at home. I don't need/want to have the other desktop thing there (google maybe, but not the contacts, rss, or weblink).

14) And, while I'm on the clock issue: Nokia has an office in Silicon Valley and a store in San Francisco ... but there are NO silicon valley nor SF "Hometown" options for the clock. WHAT!? So, I have to pick between the cess-pool-of-LA or Seattle (where I've never been in my life). Makes no sense. Even if Nokia wasn't in this area (maybe they closed the office?) it's still a major location for the computing world ... to not include it in a PDA is just silly.

15) In the absence of #13, an applet that had a interface like the Mac's earthdesk or the old X-Windows Xearth would be really cool. A watermarked time over it, and the ability to center on any point along the equator, and it'd be really nice.


Hm. That's a longer list than I thought it'd be. But, most of them are really minor or just annoying. Some of them aren't minor (flasher wiping out user data, for example, is just wrong; and the "firefox takes the place of opera" thing is also something I'd like to see resolved ... but the Email thing is a MUST FIX in my opinion).


If this sighting is to be believed, about what the 3rd generation tablet will be:

http://tabletblog.com/2007/07/third-...otted-not.html

then I would like the above issues to be resolved too (with my suggestion for the button placement, not the button placement in the article; moving the scroll/d-pad to the slide-out keyboard would be a mistake, IMO). A built-in picture-taking camera, on the back, would be nice, but that's not why I bought an N800, so I wouldn't be upset if it didn't have one. But, as I said above, I prefer a different form factor than the slide-out-keyboard. I like the rotating-screen-tablet/palmtop over the slide-out keyboard.

Hopefully it'll have the WiMAX option that's been announced with Sprint in the near future, as well. 3G cell phone capability would be interesting, but also not necessary (but might be necessary from a standpoint of competing with the iPhone and the new Samsung that just came out).

So, after I posted my long list, I looked through yours and saw the "Camera" one. I downloaded it, and it directly addresses the camera request from my list. Thank you :-)

I wasn't able to find pidgin or abiword on the default application manager on my N800 (nor a few of the others on there). Do I need to add a new repository to my N800? or is there a different webpage besides teh download link from maemo.org that I need to go to?

It'd be nice if maemo-blog supported livejournal, too. But, can't have everything.

Also, on mplayer: Do I need to load the movies onto my N800, or will it stream from other sources? If I have to download them, then I'm not sure why I'd want to install it, but if it'll work from urls and streaming servers, then that'd be useful.

Didn't have to hunt down any obscure libs? One of the many disasters of this Gnome stuff is having to install so many silly gnome libraries to get just one gnome-infected program installed.

edit: ok, I took the plunge and got it installed, without any snipe hunts

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/camera/

Just some suggestions to a few of your questions :P

3) Try Claws-mail. It's a little quirky on the small screen, but it works well.
10) Did you install the MicroB browser? If so you can switch between the Mozilla and Opera browser backends in menu -> "Set-Engine".

If you want Pidgin add the repo found here : http://maemo.org/community/wiki/appl...nrepositories/

As to Abiword, forget it for the time being as it is not ready yet, but there is a dev hard at work at it. The order of the day for the NIT seems to be patience as everything is in beta.

Very impressed also after 2 weeks of power use. I've installed too many things to detail, even python apps not referenced in any repositories.
At the moment I have something like 10 windows open; inetradio, irc,vnc,ssh,.. 2 floors away from the AP!?
I am a linux addicted for 10y and have to say .. thanks nokia, you've used a dev platform with great potential (it's only a start from what I see on community mailing list) and made out a very usable IT