I'm also considering buying a n810 with the new lower price, however paying for the gps too kinda cuts too much price wise being a college student and one of the things i'd really like about it is gps navigation.

@thesandlord how well does roadmap work? it seems all the free versions of maping can't route on the fly, and some can't update without internet access. care to explain more how roadmap routing works?

i saw on their site they offer a download to maps for the entire country and by state. if these files are downloaded can it update on the fly? or just visually can see a route if pre-planned and routed by internet earlier?

Thanks!

Ordered mine, should be delivered 7/22
The first thing i am trying to find is how to tether using N95-3 because i will be carrying N810 with me so i want to surf web by tethering to N95-3. So far have not found a tutorial on how to do that.
Still looking...

There is an app "Navit" which will read unlocked Garmin maps. Sort of.
Worked for me with some topographic maps.

The Nokia Media Player plays realmedia streams, but not Windows media. Mplayer plays those AFAIK, but is not yet an integrated app
(I haven't managed to launch it from a web link)

Typically use scratchbox cross-compile environment on a desktop. Yes, infinitely hackable though source code is not available for all the Nokia apps and drivers.

Yet another FAQ :
http://andrew.daviel.org/N810-FAQ.html

Looking at your block of questions as a hole, have you considered an eeePC? It's not quite pocketable but it about the side of a book and definitely does the stuff you want. If you're a Linux guy as #7 eluded to, you can chuck full fledged distros onto it if you like. Mine is running the latest version of Ubuntu and it's fine.

Those damn elusive block holes!

I am also thinking of buying one, but i have had second thoughts about iPhone
Can anyone help me decide? (you can also offer a alternative device)
I have my nokia 5700 for calling so that isnt important..
What i would excpect from my device?
Good video playback, nice web browsing experience(maybe playing sum games too if the device can handle it), gps would be great, also i use my device to listen to music.. And also, some fun apps would be great(games maybe).. Iphone nails the video playback with tv-out, tho the n810 has a better screen for single person viewing.. I don't know about apps and such but the nokia n810 pwns iphone by texting, since it has qwerty and afaik the iphone isn't very friendly against new hardware (keyboard, hdd aso) and i don't like on-screen tipping (at least i think so, since i havent really tried it).. So can you guys please help me to decide?

One weakness in your list is video playback; I don't watch video on my N800, so no real first-hand experience, but recoding for 400x240 and moderate bitrate is often recommended. This situation is, if you don't mind a little fooling around, improving, as mplayer has a relatively new and little-known option for decode-time downsampling.

Web browsing is different on the two devices; they both make some effort to bring you "the real web"; the N8x0 does an excellent job of delivering the experience of a pocket laptop (and is fairly stylus-heavy), while the iPhone does zoom-and-pan stuff that works on the same pages, but is... different. My impression is it's easier to pick up and check the headlines quick, but you wouldn't want to read tech docs online. (I've never actually used one, so FWIW.)

Some games are around; depends what you're after of course, but the addictivity of Tyrian is never to be underestimated. Q2's not actually that bad, though you can feel it's getting towards the upper end of capabilities... Doom suffers a bit from the peculiar stylus control, for me, but on an N810, I believe you can remap all that to keys. Q1 plays smoothly and awesomely.

GPS performance is variable, some report horrible troubles, some report 'works fine here', and some reported troubles that are solved with Diablo and/or the AGPS tool. Can't comment on HW, myself, but SW-wise, Maemo mapper does everything I really want. (Oh, that and cyborg.py, of course...)

Music-playing? Mpd FTW, IMO, but we have mpd with a variety of clients, canola (slick finger-friendly interface), and a slew of others. The N810 pretty much matches the iPhone in capacity, although the N800 can take up to 64 GB right now (2 32GBers); I'd guess these are pretty much a match, unless your idea of listening to music requires watching a bunch of covers flipping past...

iPhone at present has zero BT capabilities. (OK, it does HSP and HFP, but AFAIK that's it, even with the new firmware.) So no external peripherals at all, typing is on screen or not at all...

We've got some USB flash/HDD drives (direct connect), all other (high-current) flash drives and HDDs via powered hub.
USB and BT keyboards, limited capabilities with USB/BT mice.
USB or BT-RS232 (some models; pl2302 works great), USB-100baseTX (Linksys USB100M and others), and even USB CDROMs and the odd USB webcam, DVB-H tuner, WWAN card, or VGA adapter... (Some of these need a powered hub; pretty much the things you'd expect to need more power.)

Honestly though, I have an N800, and the lack of a built-in keyboard doesn't bother me much. My BT keyboard's been dead for almost a month, too, which is only mildly annoying. So I'm not sure the iPhone is all that bad that way. Of course, it's a smaller display, though, and you can't use a stylus.

the 800 or 810 is what it is, an internet tablet. quick story, I was at the Microsoft Partner event in Houston.

My hotel was swamped with people going online and downloading videos (or whatever) so I wasn't able to get enough bandwidth to VPN and couldn't get to my work email. So while I was at the event and had wifi there, I thought "why not? and used my 800 to connect to the internet version of my work email.

No problems! I have an Apple BT keyboard which connects without fail to my 800. So I left my laptop in my hotel room. I do Google docs (tho slow) and hotmail all the time. For this and for looking at Websites, the 810 or 800 is just fine. Beyond that, you really need something larger to do heavier work.

I'd love one of these with a 8" screen and a little more horse power and the ability to print from the machine (Nokia, are you listening?).

So your saying that it's no good for video playback and james ur saying that the internet tablet is ONLY and ONLY for internet?

It's fine for video playback (as long as you work within its limits) and it can do plenty of other things besides internet.