Because the office has guest Wi-Fi. In addition my E90 has bluetooth DUN and 3g....

By tethering to a cellphone?

- - -

Anyway, I posted my "Goodbye Maemo" message here a month or two ago, but now I'm back with an N810 and have sold my N800.

How could I have had a tablet for a year and a half without discovering Maemo Mapper? For some reason I got it into my head that the NIT mapping applications were all crippled demos that required a subscription. How wrong I was!

For a year I've been doing mapping for the Open Street Map project using my wife's Garmin Forerunner GPS, but now I can use the N810 and it's so much more convenient.

So, to answer the question "What do you use your N810 for?":

- Web browsing when I'm travelling (MicroB tethered to an LG Viewty), and
- Mapping for OpenStreetMap (Maemo Mapper & GPS)

I'm not using the N810 as a music player because my music collection is more than 16GB, and is sitting on a 32GB SD card. Sigh.

Regards,
Roger

MaemoMapper single handedly kept me from the iPhone/Touch.

Perhaps it's my 2 year old battery but one go at a video and my battery is dead in 2-3 minutes. If that long.

A decade or so ago, users of the HP200LX and its predecessors used to say this: a laptop is a tool you can carry with you, but a pocket computer is the tool you WILL have with you. That still applies today.

However, if you are comfortable carrying a laptop (including Netbooks and similar devices not made by Psion, as well as non-pocketable MIDs) so that it's always close at hand when you need it, then you probably have no need for the N810.

For myself, I am far from a hard core user of my N810. I just keep it in my pocket at all times. It reminds me of my appointments (thanks to former developer Gene Cash, who came up with a workaround for the broken state of alarmd). I use it for some web browsing when I'm not at my desk, sometimes just checking the weather forecast. I keep a few ebooks on the device, so some reading is available if I'm stuck in a waiting room somewhere. Even when I'm out of wireless range, I've got several dictionaries and a Wikipedia dump accessible through sdict reader. And it often functions as a desktop clock, or as a stopwatch, or time calculator. And occasionally as a music player or internet radio.

At home, I find I prefer keeping the N810 with me, rather than the eee pc. As others have pointed out, the IT's instant accessibility is a great advantage. For me, it often outweighs the inconvenience of the small screen size.

Nothing exciting or innovative in my usage report. Just a lot of mundane but dependable usage.

Chatbox, you're asking the wrong question. What other people use it for is irrelevant. The question is, what do you use a mobile computer for? What do you want to do?

Myself, I use my n810 for reading ebooks (FBreader), surfing the net (MicroB), listening to podcasts (Canola), games (VGBA, Nethack, others), and as a PIM (GPE). I seldom use it for email or IM, and almost never for videos. I'd be reasonably happy with it as my only computing device for a few months. But that hardly means it would suit you best.

Make a list of everything you'd want a computer for on your cycling tour. Figure out which device is better at each task. Figure out how much the size, weight, and charge options are worth to you. Which works better for you overall? Take that one.

I have only had mine for a few weeks, so I'm still learning its potential. Thus far I am using it for...

• Book reader - fbreader can read decrypted mobipocket formats...I have a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy books from http://www.baen.com/library as well as ebooks from other sources.
• Media player - I'm using mplayer to watch various content that I have converted with tablet-encode.
• mp3 player - I'm using canola to listen to podcasts. I tried panucci, but the keys were not car-friendly. I have, at this point, semi-retired my mp3 player.
• Linux terminal - I am a Linux sysadmin/security engineer by trade, so I use the command line tools like OpenVPN, the terminal etc, and can work using them and my bluetooth keyboard.
• Bible Study - Rapier.
• Games - I have used a lot of aislerot solitaire while waiting on various things, but I have Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Boswars and Freeciv installed...Its just a matter of finding time to play with them.
• GPS - I use MaemoMapper, and would like to start getting into OpenStreetMap. I have OSM2go installed, but haven't really used it yet.
• Occasionally I also use Pidgin for IRC.

Some of the stuff I would like to play with includes:

• Multiboot and kde on the NIT.
• Debian chroot and various Debian native apps.
• USB networking and USB control to manage/use usb drives.
• Tethering to my cell phone. I have a Blackberry and AT&T, and have had no success getting this to work.
• Security tools. I would like to be able to wardrive, do security scans, etc. I just haven't had time to research it yet. I would also love to have things like the Nessus client and FWbuilder installable on it, which may be something for the Debian chroot.

Ideally, my goal for my NIT is a 90% laptop replacement. I know I am not going to be able to process video or a few other things that a laptop/desktop would be able to do.

I use mine almost constantly.

Hope it helps,
--vr

mostly for kinky pron videos and hacking the gibson

you too?

seriously, i once forgot to hide the media player away when i had to search for my ticket on the train. i put the n800 on the table in front of me, face up for everyone to see, and only later found out that the movie was still playing. i was alone in the compartment, but an elderly couple had passed by and the conductor sure had a smile on his face when he left again. glad i had earphones plugged in and the volume low

was it midgets?

Web browsing performance: With the releases of Chrome and Safari on the Windows platform, nothing much else can compete close to them.

Battery life time per charge: The U1010 has an extended battery which will last me 5h and 20 minutes of DivX playback via a wi-fi connection (shared from a home system. My own benchmark). It can go into standby for 5 days, and lasts me 1.5 days of (my) typical usage (not constant, non-stop usage).

Podcasts: Yes, the N810 wins here. I used to pair my E71 to the N810 for podcasts. But for the trip, I'll be in a different country, data plan will be expensive.