To each his own.

I realize that's a silly concept to anyone convinced their personal opinions and experience are universal canon, so I apologize to anyone I've shocked with that bold declaration.

I love this thread - always a good idea to consolidate the ranting

I got my n800 as a Christmas present from my wife and so far its been the most tech fun Ive had since trying to configure X11 on Slackware 15 odd years ago.

<rant>

I've flashed Os2008 (at least 4 times - corrupt download, wrong version, etc.), locked the n800 in the refrigerator half a dozen times to get it to pair with my phone (might not be a Nokia issue), hacksawed a mini-A usb cable so I can connect flash drives, bought a stereo A2DP bluetooth transmitter so I can hear decent audio, spent 4 hours trying to set up scratchbox on Xubuntu (got it working in the end), bought 2 large SD cards so I had space for movies, tried and failed to get decent video playback in Media Player, installed then reinstalled Media Converter, copied the movies over, recoded them overnight and copied them back again, bought and paired an iGo bluetooth keyboard that I have nowhere to actually use, installed VPNC got it working with wifi but apparently it doesn't work with DUN (yet), rdesktop'd into work to find I couldn't type anything (didnt try the keyboard). I'm currently teetering on booting from MMC and installing Penguin Bait's KDE.

Fun, fun, fun - at least for me but come on what can you actually use this thing for? I see two huge problems with the n800:

1) Form factor - how are you supposed to hold this thing? I try to keep it in my left hand and use the stylus with the right but it seems really difficult to use the Dpad and buttons one handed and its a pain to keep pulling the stylus in and out. Landscape mode sucks - you look like a dork standing in the bus queue with this thing in landscape mode - why no portrait? I like browsing full width as well, but a rotate button would be much more useful that zooming. It doesnt fit in my pocket well and there doesnt seem to be a screen lock so all the applets move around on every journey.

2) Scratchbox + Matchbox - OMG amazing!! I have never seen such a marvelously useless combination of geeky technology. It takes hours to install and gigabytes of disk space, or a huge VM download and either allow vmware to take over your system or use qemu and flaky cut'n paste. Apps can be built from source and because Maemo is debian like it only takes a moderate amount of frustration to get things to compile - woohoo! erm.. well then there is the issue that there really aren't any Linux apps that work out the box with Matchbox or Hildon input and beyond a handful like microb, xournal (still havent got it to install), and maemo mapper and you probably wouldnt want the others anyway. Seriously gigabytes of system scripts, headers, libraries? What are you thinking Nokia? You need a simplified dev environment that runs on the n8x00 and lets people build useful apps. Geez - I get at least Flash is an option now. Processor not powerful enough, not enough RAM for gcc, not enough storage? I dont think so.

</rant>

I'd let it all slide if there was a decent arkanoid or invaders game to leverage landscape mode

Edit: oooo... I forgot to mention the repository fun - but that probably deserves a thread of its own.

I bought my Internet tablet to view websites that i normally view on the laptop, without having to use the laptop.

I let my computer do other tasks and use my tablet solely for my internet browsing, email and chatting.

They implimented a browser that supports full web browsing and created a large screen to view it one, so assume they intended it to be used for the full internet experieance.

Its always nice to have an out of box experience that allows the use of the basic advertised functions without having to search first. The extras and the special stuff can be researched. The fact that you have newbies coming here to air their views shows that at least they did a lil reserch to find the place and are seeking advice from those in the know here. Dont shoot them down for it.

I use my N800 as my primary mobile media player...video and audio.

My mobile phone has its duties and is totally different from my N800.

We all have different uses for these devices, generalisations wont help fix its ills. There is a common ground and that must be major improvements on the basic functions and software support of these devices. It all well and good pointimg people to google and giving them a xterm script or two to punch out, its helps them learn abit about the inner workings, but honestly most wont want to hear of it and would require a less hassling approach to things. Making things more user frindly and mainstream cant be a bad thing.......even the most elitist of the bunch must agree.

Anyway, its all good dialogue and i hope those that have the power to make changes are reading up on everything here and elsewhere. Its all good (except the smartasses and trolls :P).

Ack, as Senior Smartass maybe I shouldn't comment.

But you bring up many good points bazanime. Yet as you ask elders to go easy on the newcomers, it's only fair for newcomers to correspondingly show respect to their tablet elders. The common barging-in-and-screaming "the tablet is useless/sucks/fails/etc and you people are idiots" just polarizes people needlessly.

Can't smartasses and screamers just get along?

i.e. Trolls.


Constructive criticism is always key.

You are a tolerated smartass here it seems, so you're exempt. Maybe you earned your wings (forked tongue) at some point.

Tolerated by few, burned in effigy by many.

I was the lucky product quality engineer for the N800 when it launched in the US. Fun times. Yeah, I earned a wing or two. And a handful of N800s for fortunate friends and family.

Welcome to the forums.

I'm guessing you wear cargo pants and don't have bluetooth stereo headphones?

I've also had my N800 for a year and am very happy with it.

vvaz, or whatever your name is, what's up with you? The comment about the fm radio is totally wrong, and then you say something about a 5-stage plan later, that doesn't explain anything to me.

And your comment about American FM radio is completely misinformed. There is lots of decent stuff on FM here. For just one tiny example, the NPR public radio chain is chock-full of great stuff. If you don't believe me, find my favorite NPR station, KCRW, on your Internet radio. It is also available on the FM radio, if you are lucky and live in the US.

And there is lots of other decent stuff, and even more junk. In Los Angeles, a big city in the west of the US, there are even decent rock stations. Some people might like the Pacifica chain, which once was a great bunch of stations.

Oh you were huh??? Where can i get one of those effigies then?

i kid i kid!!

Always nice to get insight from an old soldier that has been in the trenches and seen the horrors first hand. Shame the war aint over tho, but at least its not as bloody as OS2007.


I like my N800, but i HATE the rss reader and bookmarks apps. Mowing the lawn is a chore enough. Kinetic scrolling is king and sorely needed.

Texrat, I never knew your actual job title before.

This probably isn't the right place to ask it, but what do you think of all these weird battery problems, or "my N810 won't turn on, or I have to press the power bar a special way, or I have to leave it turned off for exactly three minutes to turn it on" and other weird threads? I originally thought it was just a bunch of newbie crazies, but there have been so many of those comments that I now wonder, even though I have never had the whisper of a problem of a similar nature.