I like a lot my thinkoutside bluetooh keyboard, why do i need a builtin keyboard?

Really? How is a real keyboard different from the virtual keyboard we have now? How does that generate more options as far as applications?

Ton.

That's pretty much how I feel with my BT keyboard... sometimes I just want to use the tablet and not bother with any keyboard, other times I can whip out the BT keyboard - fullsized - and make use of it. Chicklet sized thumb boards are ok, but really pretty useless to me for any serious text entry/editing, and just add weight and bulk when I don't always need it.

R.
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I would think if Nokia wanted to add a clamshell like keyboard to the N800, it would start feeling, & weighing like Casio's Casiopia A-11 HPC, which I used for years and still do on occasion. The A-11s keyboard was very useful while I was in school, to quickly take class notes and such, and was much smaller/lighter then my laptop.

However in my day to day usage of the N800 (out of school now), I rarely have a need/desire to use a full keyboard on the N800 (once fav sites are bookmarked & passwords saved). Since most of the time, I simply want to surf the web, check some email (see if anything important came in), look at the occasional RSS feed & do a little IM'ing once in a while.

And I feel that unless the user replies to a lot of emails & enters a lot of data into their N800, a clamshell physical keyboard is not really necessary; especially for the basics/casual web surfer (which is Nokia's target audiance from that I read).

The lighter weight, less thick N800, and lack of physical keyboard are some of the points of why I selected the N800. And since bluetooth keyboard solutions exist for the N800, is adding a physical keyboard directly to the N800 really necessary?

What I believe would be a better immediate solution is as follows:

-- add a way from the main app menu to force the virtual keyboard to appear. This way no matter what app you are using, you can still send keystrokes to the whatever program is open and in focus. And this works around the whole issue of recognizing input fields within remote apps (like when running apps remotely over an SSH connection or VNC session), so the virtual keyboard can pop-up.

-- add a way to easily create/callback custom keystrokes/macros within the virtual keyboard. As such, you can use this to send a commonly used lists of commands (for you sys admin/hacker folks) or a single special key combos (for us more average users) to whatever app that has the focus.

I feel these 2 things would really go a long way, in resolving the current usage issues with the virtual keyboard & make it more useful overall for users.

And should Nokia add a clamshell keyboard feature in the future, perhaps it should be designed in such a way that it can unclipped from the N800. This preserves the current N800 tablet/virtual keyboard usage, but also includes the extra physical keyboard when its needed by those more demanding users. (for example, in school, I could use the clamshell keyboard to more easily take notes with & during weekends when I'm out and about, I can unclip the keyboard, and be left with a more streamlined, lighter tablet device.)

And to ask the all important question again, is a physical keyboard really necessary or is simply resolving some of the current virtual keyboard issues required to make the N800 more user input friendly?

Since there is no real office suite (i.e. OpenOffice/MS Office) available for the N800 right now, I don't really see much high demand situations where a physical keyboard feature must be built into the N800.

After a complete office suite has been released, I could defiantly see extra interest being drummed up for a possible included physical/clamshell keyboard. But for simple web surfing, occasional email replies, some RSS feed reading, maybe a little IM'ing, I see little benefit for the average/casual N800 user to be forced to have this ability.

Of course this is just my 2 cents. And I'm just basing my comments on my N800 usage; which I have used for about an hour or so each day, over the last several months - on top of my normal linux desktop, laptop & HPC usage. Other viewpoints are of course appreciated & considered...