First there were complaints that the 700 was too slow, allowed too little external memory, lacked features, etc. So hardware improvements were implemented in the N800 that now require an OS break between the two devices.

Now the complaints are to the latter issue.

Come on, folks, it can't be both ways. As more information is revealed you should come to understand the necessity for the break. And as some have already acknowledged (while saying it "doesn't cut it") there will be an extension to maemo 2 that will bring the 770 closer to the N800. However, the devices are distinct enough that maemo 3 is warranted.

I think what misleads some people is that the generaion gap was much, much shorter than has been in the computing past. This is for at least 3 reasons:

1) development and product lifecycles are shorter;
2) this is a new type of product and will require a feature "shake out" period;
3) designers took (some) user feedback and incorporated it into the new device

I fully expect we may see one more generation of the product that possibly breaks with the N800, and then the design will settle in to the sort of maturity PCs enjoy and see OS upgrades that apply to more than one device. Or maybe the N800 will be it. But it's unrealistic to expect feature solidification at this point, guys. And even when the 770 reaches its point of no further support, that factor alone doesn't cause obsolescence; that's entirely dependent on users.

I expect we'll see some pleasant surprises in the 2007 OS, some that can't possibly work on the 770. Webcam functionality is certainly one area that won't.

is the usb port powerd
if not.. any intention for the future?

Oh, lest I forget: Reggie, ask those guys if any form of PRINTING is ever going to be supported! I couldn't get management blessing for my own trip to CES...

That doesn't mean that OS 2007 can't be released for the 770. No, the same firmware image couldn't be used (bootloader differences etc.), but the user-space components could certainly be run on the 770 with an appropriate kernel.

As for non-existent hardware, that's just a case of defining the appropriate conditions in the code to deal with it.

Unless the differences between v2 and v3 are more of a point release change than a major update (e.x. v1 to v2 = major, v2 to v2.1 = minor) I agree entirely with aflegg.

Think of all the libraries that have been ported over with fairly minimal effort to v2. It might not run -perfectly- but it will run: developers can branch to deal with the presence and absence of hardware and hardware features (webcam, ARMv6, etc) but it takes some major incentives to keep developers working on disparate platforms that have more than packaging-level breaks.

My question....will the N800 support SDHC. If so, then you can get into some serious storage with 4 GB out and 8 gb's coming.

One other thing that was not clear is does IT2007 also support a swap file? If so, I'd put that on the internal card.

Also, theoretically, you COULD mirror the cards if they were the same size. This could provide for better read/write performance if something like that is done or even possible.

This is not rocket science. Unless the overall footprint of the OS has increased significantly, it should simply be a matter of target build configuration. i.e. no webcam (I/O), no floating point, different CPU and memory map.

Having recently acquired the 770 as a distraction for doing some development work at home, I sure hope the Nokia team realizes how crucial it is to support the community and legacy products.

All the more reason to avoid the N800. Excuse me if I don't appreciate being used as a beta tester only to be alienated later on.

The 770 boat is sinking, and many of us are left onboard. If this is the way Nokia's platform is going to work, then I'd rather drown now and cut my losses than spend another $400 (and a lot more of my sweat and tears) to delay the inevitable for just a little longer.

My 770 works just fine for my purposes, anyway. It's not myself for whom I lament. I don't need the N800 or OS 2007. I feel bad for the open-source supporters among us that figured that a linux-based platform would mean a slew of 3rd-party software applications. Now those 3rd-party developers are going to move to an "upgraded" platform, potentially forgetting Maemo 2.x entirely. It's one thing to upgrade an operating system via free download, but quite another to make it dependent on a new set of expensive hardware.

I feel bad for those of us that invested in a whim and stuck with its bugginess in quiet (or in some cases not-so-quiet) expectance of fixes and maybe even the occasional enhancement. After all, no company would knowingly alienate their best customers, the early adopters, would they? Well, in this case, they have. I guess Nokia is only looking out for the early re-adopters.

The 770, for me, was an experiment in hopes to replace my Palm-based PDA. Although that experiment mostly failed, I found something novel in it that turned out to be a whole lot better than the proprietary Palm OS. The flexibility of the 770 and its linux-based operating system afforded us with options that the Palm OS could never provide. And for that I am appreciative.

I don't, however, appreciate being abandoned, and although it isn't clear yet the extent of the abandonment, I am reluctant to believe that it will be insignificant.


(Apologies for the off-topic rant. I don't mean to sound so vitriolic. I'm just trying to get over this bitter taste in my mouth.)

You say the hardware changes require an OS break. I don't see how this is true when I can run the same OS+Software on an old Intel Pentium with little RAM (you know, the ones that were considered fast at 90Mhz), an up to date AMD and a PowerPC, all of which have different hardware: graphics card, network controller etc. differ, one has no sound at all, only one of them is wifi-enabled, anther has a webcam attached...

Of course we're not talking about a binary image that can blindly be flashed onto the 770 as well as the N800. We're talking about the software as such (=the source) that should be compiled to run on both platforms. A 700 and a N800 are probably closer in hardware than the three desktop devices I took as an example above.

Is VPN support planned? Ideally supporting both PPTP and L2TP. The wi-fi capability of the web tablets are rather wasted on my campus network, which uses VPN instead of WEP or WPA.