Hi all. I really started researching teh N800 yesterday, and I am really excited about it. I am considering buying it today, but I have some questions first.

1. I understand it it mainly used when there is an internet connection, and I intend to use it this way. But, what kind of things do you use it for without an internet connection? (not including music or video).

2. Does web browsing work pretty well? Not too small, not many problems connecting to networks?

3. Also, would this SD card work?
http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-2gb...202743332.html

Any encouragement that this is a good purchase, I would love to hear. I am a computer science student, so I love gadgets. I am also looking forward to how this device runs linux. Thanks in advance for any advice you can give. Hope to be joining this community soon! Aaron.

1 - anything cached like RSS feeds can be viewed offline, as well as documents you tote with you. gnumeric to open spreadsheets, PDF viewing. there is also a GPS nav app called maemo mapper. you can cache the maps, download a route, and with a seperate GPS device track your movements. you can also watch movies on it.

2 - with the high res screen, there are few pages that you have to scroll left and right with, and it 802.11g enablesd. getting onto hotspots via wifi works well.

3 - yes it will. i actually have 2 8GB SDHC (next gen SD cards) in my n800. many here do, and there is a kernel patch to enable that, should you be so inclined.

1) without internet it is a fantastic book reader provided you install FBreader.
2) browsing is close to perfect, great high-res screen, flash works decently (but not with utube), the downloadmanager sucks, but you can get wget to make things work.

I really recommend you get it, it is much more of a mini-computer (running GNU) then an internet-tablet (you can install nmap, kismet, nessus, etc. although some of these are not ready for the 2007 OS yet).

It is not quite a full Debian, alas. For example, the unit must be flashed for updates.

But it still is a great purchase. Go for it!

Cheers,

VS

What about third party apps for things to do offline? Are there many good ones? Like games for entertainment, and also some productivity. I assume you can get a text editor? I am wondering if I would be able to write C programs for school, and either compile directly on the N800, or over SSH?

the 4 games on the unit are decent, but no more. you might be able to get better ones though. You have to realize that unless you have an external keyboad AND some glasses (unless you have awesome eyes) you will not want to do too much work on this unit because while the screen is awesome its size is still small. I saw that you can get a version of abiword and gnumeric on this, but I frankly would use a laptop for that.

SSH works great and there are editors like VIM so you can code just fine (I would not try compiling on a 300+MHz proc though).

HTH

True about the compiling...though the remote server would actually be doing the compiling and running, the N800 would just have to SSH to my school's server. And, I ordered it...so everything else is irrelevant I suppose. At least until I have the unit and have questions. Are there any for sure things to do

Backup often

Your response seems kind of knee-jerk to me.

Unless you're making changes to the N800 itself - ie: not just saving data to the SD cards - a backup when adding/deleting programs should suffice. Your data on the SD cards remains regardless.

R.
==

In terms of the N800 being an 'online' device it is simply outstanding. Rhapsody for one is a terrific value. For the price of a CD, per month, you have access to 2 million songs. For the offline qualities it is very nice as well. There are games, yes. But it is a terrific media player (Canola, mplayer). I have Movies, Music and pictures stored accross two 4GB SD cards. Amazing capacity for a handheld (and you can get larger SD cards!)

For games try scummvm if you like old lucasarts games.