Here are my thoughts.

The main theme here is convergence. This is why the Nseries internet tablets could be a winner for Nokia. In other words, lots of separate technologies are all colliding.

FIrstly, wifi is becoming ubiquitous. It's everywhere. So getting a Net connection while out and about, or at home, or at a friend's house, is very easy. All my family has wifi. My favourite pub does.

Secondly, online video is exploding, but it's usually in the form of relatively small and low-quality Flash video. This is idea for an Internet tablet!

Thirdly, Facebook and MySpace are the number one hangouts for anybody under 30 nowadays.

So if I were Nokia, I'd be looking at optimising the internet tablet series for playback of ONLINE video, and I'd be building-in community linkups for sites like Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and so on. FWIW I wouldn't be trying to create my own community a la MOSH. Go for something that's already successful.

Note that, when it comes to video, few people outside of the geeksphere care about quality. Video doesn't have to be full-screen DVD quality. What's needed on the Nokia Internet tablets is the ability to play Youube videos smoothly, without the system grumbling too much (ie system slowdowns when visiting the site).

All the other requirements are in place, although Wimax will make wifi even more accessible. A built-in keyboard is a dubious idea because it'll probably be too small to be practical. Much better to let people either use the on-screen keyboard, which isn't too bad for short stretches, or to let them buy a Bluetooth keyboard if they want to.

To be honest, I really do believe that internet tablets are the future. This is the end of the desktop Internet experience. From now on, we'll expect the Internet to be portable, although it might take around 10 years for this to become ubiquitous.

I don't agree with everything you say rs-px but you're right about the mobile internet. We're moving into a society where we'll expect the internet to be available everywhere we go and we'll need the devices to support it.

In the UK we're seeing the emergence of very reasonably priced mobile phone data plans and I expect these to get cheaper as they become more popular. I have my N800 tethered to my Sony phone on what is pretty much an unlimted data plan. I have access to the internet wherever I have a mobile phone signal and that's almost everywhere these days.

I do think relying on wifi alone (As Apple seem to be doing) is a mistake. Outside of the big cities public wifi is pretty limited (And expensive). Unless I'm in a pub I generally don't see a sniff of wifi I can access while I'm out.

10 years is nothing :-) I started using internet 21 years ago (next month). When things really started to fly 11-13 years ago, it was amazing. I can wait another 10 years for one of those to happen again.

Though, really, I expect it to happen faster than that. Maybe not next year, but closer to 5 years than 10 years.

As for built-in hardware keyboard vs software keyboard, I think it really depends on what you're giving up in order to include it vs the things that the implementation gets you. I like the idea of using ssh, with full screen, on the fly (not having an external keyboard out). I like the idea of actually seeing what I'm typing in to in VNC, without having to use an external keyboard.

When I want to really sit down and crank out a lot of text, I'll certainly switch to the external keyboard ... but lets say I'm in line to buy something at a wifi hotspot (or within a wimax zone), and I get an IM. I want to answer, without having the application obscured, and I can't pull out the external keyboard while I stand in line.

I've said before that while I like the full screen keyboard, a built-in hardware keyboard has real advantages. Faster typing than the stylus keyboard, you can see what you're typing into while you type, and you've got an actual tactile feedback for your typing (most of my mistakes in the onscreen keyboard can be attributed to not having a feel for whether or not I actually hit the "key" hard enough).

And, hopefully, Nokia did actual usability testing on the different approaches, and has found that a slide out keyboard isn't just popular, but is in fact a usability win. Though, as a corporation, they can't ignore popular, either.

Me, I'm just hoping for the htc shift/at&t tilt type arrangement for the slide-out keyboard.

Support for presentation graphics could be added to existing N800 and 770 units through the addition of software and drivers. See the Impatica ShowMate.

ooh!

I wonder what bluetooth profile(s) it needs. That would be useful not just for presentations, but for displaying your IT on a monitor. That way you really could use it as a light desktop workstation, using one of those and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse (though you'd have to add mouse support to the IT as well).


I hope nokia sees this. I think having support for that thing would be amazingly useful.


I was going to say "VNC server displayed out to another device" would work too. But I think that thing is much more useful/appropriate.