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The N900 is now 15 years old! (9)
to Nokia N900 by Arno_11 - 7 hrs, 48 mins ago -
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2008-01-06
, 16:50
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#22
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Let's not slam Nokia too much. I think they did a pretty good job of selecting the basic N800 software package and making it work well out of the box. I was actually quite impressed with it - a newcomer could pick up the N800 and use it right away without any knowledge of Linux. Most of the included software works very well - perhaps a bit limited in functionality, but for the most part clear and easy to use without needing to read any documentation, and with very few bugs and crashes. Now I'm talking about a late generation (November) N800 as my first encounter, so perhaps the maturity made it better than it was for the early adopters, but even so I think some people at Nokia did a heck of a job to produce that experience.
If Nokia has decided on a "support Lite" model for the Nxxx because it's Linux-based, I can live with that.
If Nokia has decided on a "support Lite" model for the Nxxx because it's Linux-based, I can live with that.
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2008-01-06
, 17:04
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Posts: 566 |
Thanked: 150 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#23
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I think Nokia isn't really sure what they want. On the one hand they say to be competing with Apple with the nxx series but at the same time they are not meant as a mainstream product, even after three generations.
All of this is supposedly part of a 5-step plan to mobile-internet domination, which seems kind of akward and soviet-like to me. As if the future of the internet can be controlled and planned in stages. Maybe they should just put a big 'geek' warning sticker on them.
Last edited by iamthewalrus; 2008-01-06 at 18:30.
Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President for Multimedia at Nokia, made no bones about his company's newly emergent relationship to Apple. "We are competing with Apple on all fronts with all cylinders," he remarked. "There is a very deep philosophical difference between us and Apple ... we're all about openness ... we encourage people to tamper with our devices." Indeed, the N-Series tablets have to this point been as much about growing a developer community as they've been about moving units. Vanjoki also made it clear that the N810 is not yet a mainstream gadget, declaring, "This will not be Nokia's most successful product," but rather a product for the "Tech Leaders," a group positioned as a stepping stone from the Ultra Geeks who bought the N770 and the mainstream consumers who are interested in other Nokia products.
(source)
Last edited by iamthewalrus; 2008-01-06 at 18:30.
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2008-01-06
, 17:40
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Posts: 12 |
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Joined on Dec 2007
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#24
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May I just add a couple of lines to this interesting topic? My own personal experiences are on a 770 using OS2006 & 2007HE during the past 6 months. Like the user starting the 1st post in this thread, I am also a user of the tablet with very small/ limited linux programming knowledge. I fully understand the frustration of this user. I have been through similar experiences several times during the past 6 months.
In my experience the problem is obviously not Linux nor the Open source community of programmers that do a FANTASTIC job providing great software. The problem is the way Nokia run Maemo. The Maemo organisation need a THOROUGH SHAKE UP. Nokia need to literally hold them upsidedown & SHAKE them for a couple of hours!! They then need to pick up whatever falls out, put it all back in a proper organisation, staff it adequetly, provide much better resources & infrastructure & then I am sure we end up with a much better situation than we are in now. A situation where :
- The servers don't fall over as soon as a few people try to download OS2008!!
- Half of the repositories don't go down for days because everone in Maemo seems to be on Christmas vacation!
- Every software that is put on the 'download' list is at least tested to make sure it is a self contained package & doesn't complain that it needs libthis & libthat!!
- Provide at least some kind of e-mail support to ordinary users??! Not all people that have a tablet are LINUX PhDs!!!
I could go on more but stop at that & that was my 2 pennoes worth!
In my experience the problem is obviously not Linux nor the Open source community of programmers that do a FANTASTIC job providing great software. The problem is the way Nokia run Maemo. The Maemo organisation need a THOROUGH SHAKE UP. Nokia need to literally hold them upsidedown & SHAKE them for a couple of hours!! They then need to pick up whatever falls out, put it all back in a proper organisation, staff it adequetly, provide much better resources & infrastructure & then I am sure we end up with a much better situation than we are in now. A situation where :
- The servers don't fall over as soon as a few people try to download OS2008!!
- Half of the repositories don't go down for days because everone in Maemo seems to be on Christmas vacation!
- Every software that is put on the 'download' list is at least tested to make sure it is a self contained package & doesn't complain that it needs libthis & libthat!!
- Provide at least some kind of e-mail support to ordinary users??! Not all people that have a tablet are LINUX PhDs!!!
I could go on more but stop at that & that was my 2 pennoes worth!
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BahBah
BahBah
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2008-01-06
, 18:34
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Posts: 5,478 |
Thanked: 5,222 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ St. Petersburg, FL
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#25
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Originally Posted by bahbah12
It's not the maemo guys that are the problem, it's the managers in charge of their resource allocation. maemo and its personnel have been doing a fantastic job, but they don't have any support and very little in the way of resources from management.
The problem is the way Nokia run Maemo. The Maemo organisation need a THOROUGH SHAKE UP. Nokia need to literally hold them upsidedown & SHAKE them for a couple of hours!! They then need to pick up whatever falls out, put it all back in a proper organisation, staff it adequetly, provide much better resources & infrastructure & then I am sure we end up with a much better situation than we are in now.
Things will improve when Nokia's management gets their heads out of their collective asses and give maemo the resources they need.
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2008-01-06
, 19:30
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Posts: 304 |
Thanked: 32 times |
Joined on Nov 2007
@ somewhere in the far south
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#26
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Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles
Humbly, I dissent about the term "fantastic"...just thinking about the bugs of the final ITOS2008 release, among other things, I could say fantastic sounds very generous.
It's not the maemo guys that are the problem, it's the managers in charge of their resource allocation. maemo and its personnel have been doing a fantastic job, but they don't have any support and very little in the way of resources from management.
Things will improve when Nokia's management gets their heads out of their collective asses and give maemo the resources they need.
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2008-01-06
, 19:49
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Posts: 87 |
Thanked: 6 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#27
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Originally Posted by linuxrebel
Linuxrebel:
Despite the claims to Wh.I.N.E. (whine is not effective) I see something else in here. The true underlying point, is I believe, that the n800/n810 are not garage products. Clem and his second cousin one his fathers side (fourth on Mom's side) didn't create it. One of the largest personal electronics firms in the world did. Amazon had the n800 listed as the #3 computer (Not PDA but COMPUTER) in Christmas sales. Yet when support is needed (downloads/repairs/etc) The product falls flat on it's face.
You have got the point written in plain english that makes more sense than all of the expressions of noob-isms and RTFM remarks combined. The product is certainly worth the $ and should work as expressed in advertisements and from the manufacturer's claims. Nokia has started something great and we are early adopters (although the platform has been around for a while in N770 clothing.) I expect some issues due to the open source nature of the firmware. But like you have stated, the device needs to have a solid base of apps and OS that just work from the start to build on. When I got mine, I was under the impression that the device was going to perform this way. Maybe a few minor issues, but mostly gold in release. Ubuntu and Mandriva are at this point IMO. Why not Maemo? Why do the repos act the way they do? Why does Microb still fail to connect during extended browsing? Why do my SD cards occasionally fail to be mounted, even in the middle of a song? Why does the Map application built into OS2008 crash on me when it's loaded? Everything feels so "beta." And that's before you even add any 3rd party or extra apps. I bought this device as a replacement for Windows Mobile devices. There are three major things I need it for: Web browsing, MP3 playback, and maps. All three fail miserably when compared to any other pocket device I've ever tried. The word "reliability" comes to mind here. That's ever more important to me than all of the available free apps or the much better screen on the N800. I'm upset that Nokia couldn't do better, and embarrassed at times when trying to show others how great the product is and it fails for the reasons listed above. I know the product will be better over time and I will wait and help out as much as I can to achieve that goal.
Originally Posted by linuxrebel
Yeah, I see your point. When geeks like you or me come in here for answers we can usually get what we need or figure it out by deductive reasoning. And when others have questions that we can answer, we try to express those solutions as best we can. Again, Nokia has to step up and make an impact if they want a successful platform to continue with.
Even in here there is a considerable amount of excuse mongering, finger pointing and snob like behavior. Looking always to pass blame off onto that dumbass consumer. .
Originally Posted by linuxrebel
Nokia should accept this platform as something to invest in rather than just go through the motions to sell just a few and then move on. I really do think that the small, pocketable devices (cell phones, smart phones, PDAs, UMPCs) are the future due to portability and Moore's law gaining ground every day in the performance-to-size ratio. Microsoft is spending enormous development clout on bloated, overblown GUIs and has focused attention away from the PDA except in the very limited WM Smartphone OS. With the limited development in making a truly versitile small-footprint OS for mobile use and lack of full Web plugin availability, they have left the door wide open for Linux to take over in this format. Since less full-sized desktops are being sold, and more mobile devices are being developed and purchased, this gives Linux a fighting chance to succeed and eventually take over should the development of open source software for mobile devices achieve a level of professionalism similar to what Ubuntu and Mandriva have accomplished on the desktop. This will benefit all users with a lower cost of ownership, lack of licensing fees for software in most cases, and a less impirical outlook on the future of computing.
Misspelled directories, unverified and unsigned downloads, unwillingness to follow proven technologies,(deb's/apt), actions interpretable as anti-oss (OGG), efforts to drop support for a product still in the pipline (770) these are some of the actions costing Nokia hard dollars, and hard won support in the geek/gadget/Linux world.
I mean is it to much to ask a commercial product, to appear commercial. Linux is not a shield against professionalism, it's actually a call to open professionalism. Rather than being an excuse against quality, Linux is designed to hold itself to the harsh light of fully open no stone left unturned scrutiny..
PS: Great list of possible answers to questions newbs have! It's the "canned response repository" for those of us who refuse to answer user's questions but still smugly post anyway (I'll never understand that...)
Nokia and other Linux developers need to look toward the future of OS potential on mobile devices as THE future of consumer computing needs!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If all of us send emails to Nokia support concerning our needs it may become apparent to them that they need to invest a bit more.
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zeusenergy is:
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Delusions of grandeur not included. Do not use product in a manner not specified by the Terms of Use. Avoid prolonged exposure to intellectually flawed thought for best results.
Last edited by zeusenergy; 2008-01-06 at 19:59.
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2008-01-06
, 20:06
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Posts: 19 |
Thanked: 2 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#28
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Originally Posted by piku
As the originator of this post - can I just say thank you for the help offered and the suggestions. I totally agree with the sentiments on this posting! I am an IT and Media technician at a Secondary School in the UK. I fix and repair Windows XP machines, install software, and maintain networks (God, does XP need fixing). My home machine is a Apple G5 and I run Final Cut Studio + Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. So I don't class myself as stupid - but when it comes to Linux I know next to nothing. I don't know why I have to look elsewhere for missing libraries that then aren't compatible with OS2008.Why can't (forgive my ignorance) Apps be zipped with the libraries required to make them run? The Nokia Nxx might be fine for folk who want to run them 'as is' but because part of the mechanics is to offer other (free) Apps, I suggest that the non-technical will simply give up if they can't get simple things to install.
This is true. I've used Linux for the past 10-odd years, so when it breaks I'm off into the terminal without a second thought, or I'll spend half an hour fiddling on the Internet looking for the answers.
And most of the time this works quite nicely... for me.
But god, imagine the regular end users doing this. Look at all the whining and griping when the repositories went down during the OS2008 release. We, "enlightened" people knew to turn our tablets off and do something else for a few days, then turn them back on and try again.
The regular end users aren't stupid, as such. They're just not interested in what goes on inside their devices. Installing applications shouldn't take more than a few clicks to do really, should it? We're only installing stuff, not compiling it from source. This is 2008 Linux in a mass-consumer device created by a mobile phone manufacturer, not 1994 Linux hand hacked together from Linus' own sweat.
From reading this forum it seems the problem consists of two things:
* New users not knowing where to find help
* New users confusing this place with somewhere to moan and vent their frustrations (which is fair, you go and spend £250 on something that doesn't work as you'd expect without some confusing and technical fiddling. It'd be like buying a new car and realising you need to fit all the lightbulbs and battery yourself, but only after some smug car owner has pointed this out to you in a "you're a bit thick for not knowing what a screwdriver does" way)
I think it'd help if there were some nicely printed and simply worded documentation included in the box that tells new users where to go for help, basic terminology, nice places to visit on the Internet and more importantly - how to politely ask for help. After all, being rude to newbies is a bit like kicking your puppy when it pees on the carpet - it doesn't know any better.
Once we've got that we can give constructive "RTFM, Page 6. Come back and ask questions if you get stuck" type answers, rather than the utterly pointless and unhelpful "Go search the forum it's been asked before".
It'd also be great if these types of threads didn't turn into a Linux/Windows OS war. They were boring and tedious in 1997
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2008-01-06
, 20:14
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Posts: 12 |
Thanked: 0 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#29
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Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles
Thanks for reply GeneralAntilles, my comments were indeed intended at Nokia's management of Maemo and not at any individual/s at Maemo.
It's not the maemo guys that are the problem, it's the managers in charge of their resource allocation. maemo and its personnel have been doing a fantastic job, but they don't have any support and very little in the way of resources from management.
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BahBah
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2008-01-06
, 20:40
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Posts: 68 |
Thanked: 23 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#30
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It's a computer. not a toaster. If you don't know how to work with computers, this is not the toy for you. It's not advertised as a PDA, so don't expect it to be one.
I'm new to Linux and new to the N800. When OS2008 came out I installed it right away. Without this forum it would have been a disaster, but almost everything you need, to get it working, is right here. While other people were complaining about the supposedly unresponsive repositories, I was successfully installing every program I wanted.
This is an amazing little computer. It's truly a laptop replacement (for those of us who have desktops). It hurts me to see so many complaints about Nokia and Linux and Maemo. My N800 is just loaded with fantastic free software. This is, by far, the best electronic toy I have ever seen at it's price point.
The only potential 'mistake' Nokia may have made is with the N810, positioning it as a GPS navigation unit. Maybe someday it will be a good one, but in the meantime I'm afraid people are going to be disappointed. At this point in time, a dedicated GPS unit is the best way to go in terms of capabilities and bang for the buck.
These N8x0 units have a lot of untapped potential, and I am really happy to be on board, and I'm enjoying the amazing things it can already do.
Last edited by Aciv; 2008-01-06 at 20:45.
I'm new to Linux and new to the N800. When OS2008 came out I installed it right away. Without this forum it would have been a disaster, but almost everything you need, to get it working, is right here. While other people were complaining about the supposedly unresponsive repositories, I was successfully installing every program I wanted.
This is an amazing little computer. It's truly a laptop replacement (for those of us who have desktops). It hurts me to see so many complaints about Nokia and Linux and Maemo. My N800 is just loaded with fantastic free software. This is, by far, the best electronic toy I have ever seen at it's price point.
The only potential 'mistake' Nokia may have made is with the N810, positioning it as a GPS navigation unit. Maybe someday it will be a good one, but in the meantime I'm afraid people are going to be disappointed. At this point in time, a dedicated GPS unit is the best way to go in terms of capabilities and bang for the buck.
These N8x0 units have a lot of untapped potential, and I am really happy to be on board, and I'm enjoying the amazing things it can already do.
Last edited by Aciv; 2008-01-06 at 20:45.
Let's clear this up for the Linux veterans out there who do at times, come across as holier than thou.
We are not talking about support for yet another Linux distribution...
We are not talking about support for a device that can load and run other OS's...
We are not talking about support for an OS designed for multiple devices and configurations...
We are talking about support from a company that produces a "closed" source OS, on a device that they manufacture, and...
Nokia has enjoyed the help of this forum, and the open source community at large for supporting the tablets for the past few years.
Now that sales of the N810 are more mainstream (Amazon!.. who'd a thunk?) it is time to tell NOKIA, et al, the free ride is over.
Let this forum get back to what it does best...support for the tablet community.
Not a 24 hour live help desk for new N810 customers.