I was on here looking for a way to make the default desktop font in the LCARS PADD theme a teeny bit larger to make it easier on my middle aged eyes (can anyone tell me how?) when I came across the October ’08 thread about the closing of the Internet Tablet School.

Say it aint so!!!

Holy Smokes! “ITS” is one of the main reasons that i bought an N800!

during christmas '08 i played around with my 74 yr. old dad's ipod touch he got for a gift. i liked the internet connectivity but found both the screen and physical size of the device too small to REALLY do much online comfortably. plus it was tied to apple and could only expand in a direction that APPLE wanted.

when i got home I started googling for a wifi & BT capable device that would let me do my online work plus all the little extras like media and games and POOF! The Nokia Internet Tablets popped up in all the top search results and seemed to address most of my needs in a portable device.

I am a middle aged man and didn’t want a phone that can do what the N800 can do. I only want a phone to make a quick call or have someone reach me and that’s it. phones are not ergonomically meant to be computers. Even the largest phones are not as comfortable to use for computer activities as a tablet is. And those aspire or asus EEE are too big for pockets. I wanted something to shove in a pocket, or overnight bag or center console of my car. Not to be attached to my hip but to be there for when I needed to stay close to my online life (roughly half of my life takes place online now)

My biggest THRILL about finding the N800 is ALL OF YOU out there MAEMO/ Nokia Tablet land, who read about, support, write programs for, and help newbies (like me) learn to wade in the shallow end of the Linux pool. The need for this type of device and running on an open platform is almost like a little miracle to me.

For years I read about the freedom of linux and open source projects. I am self taught to navigate around in the windows based PC world so felt trapped in windows and refused to go over to mac because I didn’t want to be “owned” by yet another company. I wasn’t able to dip my toe into the water with linux because I didn’t see an entry level system with widespread support by the community….UNTIL I found you all and tablets running with maemo.

I read all of the stuff on internet tablet talk, thoughtfix’s blog and the neoncherry videos on youtube which brought me to the internet tablet school. When I watched those videos I said “oh wow!” because it was exactly the tool that I was looking for. The info on these sites also made me decide to go with the N800. I opted to go without the built in GPS and keyboard because of the two regular SD slots which allowed me to give this thing 10 times the memory of my first 3 Gig HD PC I bought in 1994. a GPS chip would be nice but I figured the slide out keyboard would be one more thing to wear out or break and the onscreen keyboard and BT ability would be good enough.

Anyways…..it was these forums that helped me to make an INFORMED decision.

Someone needs to PLEASE keep the ITS going! I watched all the videos while I waited for my N800 to arrive ($159.99 on eBay) and knew that even though it was going to be an activity with a learning curve, I KNEW that there were other people who were invested in seeing these internet tablets survive and thrive and that it is community driven.

Once my N800 arrived I learned how to get started with the tutorials and if I got stuck I would watch the videos and had a couple of “duh!” moments but got through them because of the info you ALL have posted. Googling dumb questions led me to smart answers.

As a small businessman, I feel that there will be a niche for tablet devices. i say let phones be for voice communication and a tablet take care of all our visual communication needs. Hello…….lets not forget a lot of ours main inspiration (Star Trek) went from flip-phone style communicators to the badge communicators that had almost no physical interaction with them….except to tap to activate them…..BUT……they still relied on PADDs for portable visual communication because there is no practical workaround for the human eye.

Anyways……I am now in it up to my ankles. I want to move ahead into the realm of linux based, community driven computing. Hopefully someone can tell me of a home computer system that can get me further into linux. An entry level, out-of-the-box, affordable home computer that also has a community that can help out when I get stuck.

I would like my N800 to be an extension of my home computer when I am on the road. Something that lets me touch base with my home system plus go out into the web in its own right.

Thanks to the people who ask questions and those that answer them and special thanks to the individuals who take the larger steps to promote internet tablets. Maybe the market segment isn’t big enough for nokia to keep developing hardware for but it IS big enough to maintain a device that has the functions of the current models. A growing wireless web and a lowering of device costs due to scale will make an open source tablet/padd market going indefinitely. The N8*0 family is like the middle bear’s bed in goldilocks….just right.

Hopefully my N800 will carry me through for the next few years doing the job for which it was designed. My daughters and I STILL enjoy playing games on our SNES console that I bought in 1992! I went BACK to using my old Sony Mavica FD92 for work photos because the strong optics and features make this measly 1.6 MP camera outperform most modern 7 or 8 MP cameras I have worked with the past couple of years. Good quality technology that does what it was designed to do stays around and I see no reason why I wont be able to use my tablet for its intended purpose for the foreseeable future .

Sorry for the long post but had a lot to say.

First off: Welcome to the family!

iirc the ITschool is not going away merely not being updated by krisse with new content.

That being said, Pretty much anything you might need to do can be found in this forum. (search search search) I live by the search function

I have found that the members here are quite helpful (though some get grumpy if you ask something that a quick search could answer)

Also: http://wiki.maemo.org/