Hi,
i'm currently looking at a N810 as a small replacement for an Laptop on Weekend trips. The alternative would be an eee PC.
The things i'm most interessted in would be video Playback on long train rides and personal information management during the Weekend.

I'm mostly concerned about two things:
Playback time for video:
I have heard very different times for video playback, ranging from 2.5 hours to 6-7 hours. I would like to have at least 4 hours of video playback at the least screen brightness etc. - Is this possible with external battery packs, or other accessoires?

PIM:
I'm currently struggling to keep my cellphone (K810), laptop and desktop synchronized. This is further complicated by the fact that i'm using both Windows and Linux. On my PCs i use Thunderbird / Sunbird with IMAP to keep my E-Mails synchronized and update my Calenders and Contacts manually.
I don't want to use google Calender, because i try to be independent of third party servers.
I heard of pimlico and it seems to integrate nicely with evolution. Would it also work well with Sunbird?
And if it does sync, does it sync both ways (PC -> N810, N810 -> PC)?

I hope this question hasn't been asked too often.
Bye,
NsN

Don't count on PIM synchronization with the iT.

As for video playback, 3 to 3.5 hours is about right. 4 hours is pushing it. Using a AA battery power extender, I got around 6 hours that lasted through most of my flight home. The iT is honestly picky about video format, and you should take the time and effort to optimize your DivX movies for playback on the iT

This also depends on how CPU intensive the codec is, a video is encoded with, if mplayer or the default Media Player is used for video playback and on the resolution of the video.

For me for very CPU intensive codecs / high res videos it's more like 2-2.5 hours.

I get 3.5 ~ 4 hours of video/music playback and setting the offline mode on, if it keeps looking APs, it will drain some battery... look into the N800 if you just want Video/PIM, it will save you some money.

Solar Powered Self-Recharging Li-Ion Battery might come in handy.

One the things that the Internet Tablet Video Converter (see my sig for link) does is convert the videos into a format that the native media player can handle w/o a lot a CPU overhead. My personal testing (as I spend a LOT of time on airplanes) is that 4 hours of videos is definitely possible to get.

Thanks for all the replies:

As far as PIM goes, i probably wouldn't have a problem if i can just import my data, i guess i could write a small script that exports my calenders to ics and my contacts to vcards and imports them on the N810. A "One click" solution would be nice though.

For video i wouldn't mind using an AA extender, the solar powered one also looks interesting. Most of my videos are 640x352 or below, encoded in Xvid at ~ 120 kb/s. I could reencode them, but i'd rather not. To me a big appeal of the Internet tablets is that they a very versatile, before i leave the home i just select some material for the trip and put it on the SD card...

As far as N810 vs N800 goes, i'm also interessted in the keyboard and the GPS functions, as well as the outdoor readable screen.

Just to clarify my needs an example scenario:
I regularly attend/provide workshops over the weekend.
On Friday afternoon i leave the home with the N810 filled with some Music / Videos for the trip. On the train ride (which usually lasts between 4 and 8 hours) i watch some videos and maybe work on some text documents.
When i arrive at the location i charge the N810 and tether it to my cell phone via bluetooth to check my IMAP Account. If during the weekend we have to check some schedules, i can use the N810s calender to look up the dates or i can access some Websites, Word Documents or EMails to check for conflicts.
I can also take some basic notes on the N810 as to what i have to do when i get home.
On the train ride back i can either watch videos or start writing down a basic log of the weekend.

Does this seem doable? I'm just getting a bit tired of lugging around my laptop when all i do is watch videos, open word documents and take notes.

On an unrelated note:
- How is developing on the Internet Tablets, as far as i know gcc runs well, but how are compile times for reasonably small projects < 100 000 lines of code
- Are there any Image Manipulation Programs on the tablets yet?

Thanks for all the answers so far,
NsN

There is a big advantage to the N800/N810 if you want long battery run time: an extra battery is small and cheap (comparatively to a laptop battery). Original Nokia batteries for the N800 are 10€, original Nokia batteries for the N810 are much more expensive but compatible batteries are also about 10€...

yep, the n800 use the same batteries as the larger nokia phones iirc...

You'll get better battery life and performance if you format the videos for 400x240 - The IT doubles the pixels to match the screen size of 800x480, without incurring CPU overhead.

As using the IT as a PIM, the various software package are good (I'd install any you find & try them out), but syncing / importing / exporting are still works in progress. It may take a bit of work to find a reliable importing method, as certain PIM packages can be very picky of the file format / structure.

thats the funny thing, we have multiple calendars, todos, contact lists and whatsnot, but no working sync feature. whats up with that?