Err... you recoup the R&D money spent by profiting off it from your other devices. For example, you sell the tablet (you may get some money back, or you may lose money). You see what features are seen +. What are seen as -.

Then you put those + features in your new products (Say an N95 or N96, or whatever device you want to sell to the masses). While minimizing the - features. This saves them the trouble of messing around with their main series phone much and they get the benefit of real user experience and input by having the internet tablets out in the wild.

People who buy those products (like you) then see the N95 or whatever as a great product. Therefore you've helped Nokia recoup the costs they spent on R&D for the internet tablet (if they haven't already recouped the costs) when you pay for your phone.

fatalsaint, I was simply stating what someone had posted earlier in this thread. I had never my self thought of the N8XX as an R&D project however after having heard a post that only 700K has been sold and that its "R&D" then I concluded that this can't go on for too much longer.

I cannot find anything from Nokia indicating that though. It just seems like common sense.

Laughing Man, sure R&D projects have parts of whats leaned show up elsewhere. I dont see any of the fruits from the N8XX show up anywhere else in a Nokia product. Have you ?

*shrugs* I wouldn't know. I don't keep track of what features make it in and which don't. I don't even look at the Nokia phones often (I use Sprint which usually gives away free Samsung phones).

Maybe the GPS I guess. You'd have to ask someone else who knows more about it.

For your luddite-friendly needs, I suggest an incredibly small, lightweight solution for storing your contacts. I have been using it for years, so I can guarantee its reliability. Never be "screwed" again, even when all you have is a landline!

It is the qPIM!

The "qole Paper Information Manager"!

Print out 10 or so of your most frequently-used contacts on a tiny slip of paper. Include your calling-card information so you can make long-distance calls. Cut out this piece of paper and slide it in beside one of your credit / debit cards. Every 6 months to a year, when your contacts change enough to make it worth it, print out a new slip of paper.

There. Problem solved. Next!

Haha, how true. I keep a paper copy of my emergency contacts just in case.

Heh.. my take...

1) Is an opinion. It could be construed as puffery and patronizing. I like puffery and patronizing. Please, continue.
2) Is an opinion, but generally that seems to be the gist. My opinion is that it's not awesome--but it is pretty neat and certainly better for me than most other devices. I'm still waiting for the AWESOME.
3) It's no more and no less a convergence device than a desktop or laptop PC with a built-in VGA (640x480) webcam, microphone, memory slots. You could MAKE it a convergence device--but it's not really designed as such. It's more of a computing device, near as I can tell, so that you can use it to connect up to the Internet and browse, listen and watch multimedia, sit down with a BT keyboard and do scripting, remote network and system administration (ssh, vpn, etc), browse the web, read your email and so on.
4) Where did you read that Nokia said that? Near as I can tell, it seems as if they're selling out all of their inventory pretty quickly. If anything, it seems as if they're not making enough of them. But that's just the impression I get from watching people (myself included, then I needed to replace my old N800) who're trying to pick up N800's and sometimes N810's.
5) This depends. Lightweight versions of these programs are definitely practical. If your statement were true, the Documents On The Go software for the Palm OS's wouldn't be such a selling point to business people. Near as I can tell, gnumeric and abiword are doing pretty well on the tablet. I also suspect that there NEEDS to be a bluetooth keyboard on N800's to make it worthwhile since screen real-estate is so precious for these types of applications. If anything, MORE desktop apps need to be ported and existing ports need to be tweaked a bit more for maemo to make the N8XX even more attractive to the business users.
6) But Symbian OS is even less capable of handling desktop apps, has NO support for Linux apps at all and it's effectively a lightweight 'specialized tasks' OS whereas the tablets with Linux are infinitely more expandable. Symbian OS is a good MOBILE PHONE operating system with support for some other things. Linux on tablets is a good general OPERATING SYSTEM to do pretty much anything. There's advantages to both.
7) Possibly--I've never had nor used one. Can I use it to run Python scripts and is OpenSSH available for the N95? Considering my heavy use of the N800 as both my fun ilttle podcast aggregation device that just magically GETS podcasts to listen to without the need to sync to a PC.. and it also doubles as my work-minded ssh terminal when I'm suddenly paged or called to duty and need remote access to the company's network to fix a server, switch or router problem.. I'm not sure that I can see the N95 filling that need but even if it does, for the cost it doesn't seem worthwhile for me.
8) This is all fine and well, but again increases the cost so as to make it not worth the cost for me. What it really needs is expandability instead of building in so much. I can at least afford to buy better and better radio for 3G or 4G or 5G as I go along. I can also afford to buy better webcams if it was an expansion offering. And so on.

And so there you have it, opinions differ and the feeling I got is that you're proposing opinion as a summary of fact. Maybe I'm wrong--just my impression.

Here we go again.

These are not opinions however they are my assessments of the device market as it pertains to the N8XX and the N95 8G. My assessment is based mostly on feedback received inside this thread from experts, including all of you reading this post, that have posted inside this thread.

My assessment is unbiased and FINAL. It cannot be changed. Please reread my 8 points posted earlier if you would like to be informed about the state of convergence as it pertains to the N8XX/N95.

I have spoken.

Now shhhhhhhh !!!

I just shhhhhhhhi 'ed you.

Sorry. Typo.

Its Shhhhhhhhhhhish.

I just Shhhhhhhhhhhhish'ed you.