I was disapointed in the OVI site because they don't even allow you to select the N8x0 as a device for participation.

fragos, in what aspect?

Sorry to hear that. I'm a huge fan of the tablets too since I was gifted on last year. I really think Nokia is onto something with these devices, and am nothing but excited about what I hear about the forthcoming designs. Hope you find good work soon.

When you enter the site it gives you a series of steps to prepare for use. 1st is to identify your device -- Internet Tablets weren't in the list. It appears that the site expects user devices to be smartphones with cell modems. Perhaps some of the features will work but they imply they won't by excluding the tablet.

They don't even support their phones. I have a 6110 Navigator, which is a S60 3rd Edition device. It's not in the list. Neither is my N800. Obviously, they don't want me to use Ovi.

It's ridiculous. They announced Ovi on August 29th, 2007. Now it's January 2009 and I still can't use it with any of my Nokia-devices. Browse through support forums about Ovi, and you'll see that people complain about various problems like complete loss of data etc.

I wonder how much malice it takes to make somthing so simple (basically it's upload/download & sync, isn't it?) so completely unusable.

I got the following from OVI support wwhen I left them a message on my disapointment:

Please be advised that Ovi.com supports SyncML enabled mobile phones. SyncML is a data synchronization capability which is required to synchronize data from mobile device to Ovi and vice versa. Nokia N800 and N810 Internet Tablets does not support SyncML, therefore these devices are not supported by Ovi.

For more information, please visit our website at the address below for more information and support on OVI:

http://www.ovi.com/care

But-- SyncML is simply an XML standard! WTF???

From the wiki page:

Also, Maemo currently supports SyncML for Contacts and calendar at least (just not the other aspects).

Someone at Ovi is blowing smoke. Time to blog again! grrr...

(Fragos, you should email them back with what I show here) Nevrmind I did.

Here's one for fans of college football and/or ironic humor: http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com...n-in-oklahoma/

This is one of the typical nonsensical answers you get from support people. I do sync my N800 via SyncML with scheduleworld.com, so yes, it does support SyncML. (Via a third party add-on, but this only proves that SyncML is only a matter of software, not a matter of the device supporting it.)

The underlying problem with ovi is that they restrict it to certain models at all. This is not how SyncML works. SyncML is an established standard, and clients only need to know a few settings about the server in order to make a connection and exchange data.
For whatever reason, Nokia doesn't tell you these settings for Ovi but insists on sendig you a text message that will configure your - phone. Phone because "sending a text message" of course by definition rules out all other devices such as Internet Tablets or desktop PCs.

This means you cannot (by design) use Ovi to

• sync your PC with your laptop
• sync your phone with your N800
• sync your N800 with your PC
• sync two phones if one of them is not in the list of supported devices (even though it perfectly supports SyncML)
• ...

and will never be able to do so, no matter how much they improve it.

I don't see much use in this service, then.

(BTW, I tried Share on Ovi during the last days. They fail to interpret geotags in the EXIF-information of images correctly. The bug is known since early 2008, but is not being dealt with. Support forums are closed until further notice. What is this? A tiny startup with 3 people working on it in their spare time?)

Thank God for open source and Linux on my desktop, laptop and in my pocket. I do as I please and everything plays together nicely. Using GPE on all of them makes it even easier.