Surely you must receive some sort of bonus for taunting us and increasing the rate of baldness.

Ah, it'll never work. He'll just imitate Chunk from The Goonies:

No, Nokia is releasing it then, so that all the gadget sites (and texrat) can play an April Fool's joke on us by denying it, and the only person to buy one the first day will be an Apple dude who mistook it for an iPod Touch, only to return ir in disgust when he finds it has a <disgusted-fanboy-voice>keyboard</disgusted-fanboy-voice>.

Well, that'd be better than the infuriating, ambiguous, doublespeak hints, wouldn't it? Then we could just ignore him for a while.

Hey, great idea!

/me scurries off to propose new bonus incentive...

I'm not sure how anyone can release a product based on WiMax today due to the multiple frequencies that are used to support WiMax between licensed and unlicensed spectrum throughout the world and I seriously doubt Nokia is going to spend the time and effort to support all the frequencies on a product that, on the revenue scale, is nothing more then a drop in a 100 gallon bucket. http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/02...ployment-maps/

You guys need to quit thinking about the status quo, and picture the future.

Can someone explain what wiimax is in layman's terms?

texrat I love you, but WiMax is three years out from full scale adoption if even possible. Even then it conflicts with Europe and Asia. Sprint nearly went under last year because of WiMax costs. Google has a better plan and it couldn't even follow through because it was too costly. The new spectrum auctions offer a solution again three years out. This is an area that only the federal government can finance and help build, states will also need to play a major role. It would be wiser for Nokia to focus it's resources on software for this linux platform and adding additional features that are usable now not three years out(ex: the mini usb port n810 has. No one really has been able to get them in any quantity to satisfy n810 owners-Rob who builds the otg can tell you how hard it is to secure those, minisdhc too far out, etc...). I and other user(present and future) want technology that is useful today. A phone would be a welcome addition, full usb support for (charging, external devises), IR, better gps, tv chips, better graphics card, strong processor, rotation in kernal, etc... These are practical technologies that we need now and that will bring in many more new users. They bought that software company that helps with kde. KDE and others like it should be ported natively. Nokia supporting companies like the Canola project are giving Nokia instant rewards. N8xx users rave about Canola. WiMax should be ported when it's up and running. There are more pressing needsnow - like how to keep you fed. Dan

So?

It's a chicken and egg scenario, granted, but won't the spoils go to whichever companies grit their collective teeth and get started?

Do we wait for WiMAX to be pervasive before making devices that use it, or try to seed areas where it's already taking root?

Do we give up due to incompatibilities, or try to find ways to overcome or otherwise resolve them?

If people had always historically given up for the reasons WiMAX is currently doubted, then we wouldn't be typing this over a global networking medium.