Gnuite: Based on the christian-summer-camp-counselor-attitude replies, I'd say PR guy...

But in all seriousness I'd side with something along the lines of QA. I like texrat which should immediately rule out anything in sales.

A few observations:

1. The fact that Opera on the N800 is better than Opera on the 770 means absolutely d*ck to me, a 770 user. Besides, we've but received an official communiqué that there will be no better Opera for the 770, so your pleading to Nokia's common sense comes a bit late.

2. It's okay for Opera to suck vacuum because nobody else produces anything worthwhile?

3. Netfront ain't half bad. At least 3.4 didn't crash on my SimPad. Then again, it'll be a cold day in hell when I'm paying for a bleeding webbrowser, so Netfront is completely out as far as I'm concerned. The fact that they don't even know what "Linux" means, doesn't help either.

Nooooo... I did not say anything close to that.

Just keep close to the actual wording (ie, avoid reading between the lines!) and you'll be more on target.

As for my role, I'm shutting up now because you guys are sharper than I'd thought. :x (oh, and thanks Hedgie )

The comment from Nokia seems fairly vague to me, and could be interpreted a number of ways.

The way I read it, Nokia won't be releasing upgraded functionality for Opera on 770 (ie. they won't be upgrading the current 770 v8.02 to the v8.5 provided on N800/OS2007) however they could/would/should provide bug fixes to the current 8.02 build in any future 770 firmware.

If you read it this way, Opera may still receive updates to make it crash less often or prevent it from forgetting what to do with hyperlinks, but it won't receive any major functional updates. Seems fair to me, to be honest.

And to be honest I don't see much difference between Opera 8.02 and Opera 8.5, although the latter does seem more stable but that could be due to other OS2007 improvements than any changes in Opera itself.

Here’s the thing - the Internet is a complicated and constantly changing/upgrading beast. I had no idea that the 770 would be left behind so quickly and completely, as in, uh, less than a year. It is similar to the Newton - a great device in its day, but it became obsolete in a few years. Problem is, the 770 was obsolete in less than a year! If I knew what I know now, I would never have kept it. There - I've said it. If I could return it now, I would. If I could sell it for any decent money on eBay, I would.

I said this before – if I could simply fall back to the 770 as a PDA, I would be okay with it, and I honestly thought that would eventually happen. I thought somebody would write a decent PDA app, or Nokia would just toss one in there. Nope. All of the PDA programs for the 770, in my opinion, are cr@p. Sorry if I hurt anybody’s feelings, but, in my opinion, it is true. All I wanted was a to-do list, a calendar with audible alerts, and integrated contacts, with fields like: wife’s name, kid’s names, multiple email addresses, multiple phones, multiple locations; you know, a usable contact management app. The built-in contacts app is cr@p; it is the sort of thing that students write in college classes. Admit it – even the hundreds of freeware contact manager programs all over the web are better than the built-in contacts app that came with the 770. True.

I have bought multiple Newtons, Palms, Psions, PalmPCs, PocketPCs, and every single one of them kicked the 770’s butt, big-time, in the simple arena of PDA functionality. Every single one of them has an OS that is capable of waking the CPU up to alert the user of a scheduled event. That one simple feature is impossible on the 770. I have a Newton Original MessagePad in my office drawer, and even it is infinitely better as a PDA.

Every handheld computer in the world has the ability of waking up at a particular time. At the very least, we could schedule in cron, a bunch of tasks to pop up a message. Even the IBM 8080 could do that. Even my Motorola Razr can do that. Even my wife’s old Nokia phone can do that. Even my old Nokia phone from 2000 could do that. Even my 6-year old iPod can do that. This computer cannot perform that one simple duty. You can do this much with a 40-cent notepad, or a stack of post-it notes. A paper day-timer is infinitely better at managing information than the 770.

If I had the avail of a larger hard drive, I could fall back to the 770 as an MP3 player. If it had [real] Bluetooth support, I could use my Motorola Bluetooth stereo headphones with it. Nope. 1-2GB is nothing compared to my vast array of music. A $50 iPod Shuttle is better at playing music than the 770.

If the 770 had an integrated camera, like my ‘old’ Palm Zire 71, I could fall back to using it to photo-catalog our antiques business (my wife is an antique dealer). That is something I do with the Palm Zire, which has an integrated camera.

I finally got Minimo to install; I got lucky and figured out the Application Installer thing, and now I can run Google Calendar. That is the saving grace, because I was about to stick it in the drawer, next to the Newton.

Installing apps is ludicrous on the 770. True. Everybody knows it. Seriously, who in the heck is going to go to all that trouble, just to install an application? I would bet that hundreds of 770’s were/will be returned for that reason alone. I am a career software developer, and I even have trouble with it.

I got the 770 for my wedding anniversary a year ago, and I was about to buy a Palm Treo at that time. I didn’t feel right, returning an anniversary gift, you know? But I should have. I thought I would have been able to replace my Palm Zire with the 770 PDA software that would be coming next week, next month, etc. But it never came, and I still use my Palm Zire, a year later – I cannot remember all my meetings without it. I work in a corporate environment, and a PDA is as important as a pen and a phone.

I work in a building with 100 or so programmers; most of them are talking about the Apple iPhone. Most of them will buy one, because their iPods are getting old, and their phones/plans are ready for replacement. I believe the iPhone will be like the PS2, in June. What can Nokia do, to boost their N800 (and 770 sales), and also protect their cell phone business? Save the Internet Tablet from a bleak eBay future. How?

a. Re-think the PDA thing. All you need to do is standardize the format, in XML, for all the PDA apps, and create some sort of syncing app. Bluetooth sync would be nice, but heck, it could even be where you sync via the USB cable. Resolve the wake-up feature. I know it is in there; I did a paper in college on the Apple Newton’s OS, which also ran on the ARM CPU. By the way, Apple saved the ARM company from going out of business, with the Newton. The ARM will wake up, but the OS must tell it to.

b. Fix the browser. If Minimo can run Google Calendar, why can’t 770’s Opera? It doesn’t have to run Ajax, but it should be able to do what Minimo can do. Hey, if you are selling an Internet Tablet, shouldn’t it be, uh, really good at doing the Internet? Hello?

c. Don’t abandon the 770. If you do, who will buy the N800? If you don’t want the N800 to be the last tablet you sell, you need to consider the current customers. The internet will broadcast your foibles to the world, on the mouths of discontented customers.

Just so you know, I work for a large un-named global company. In the next year or so, my team is going to replace thousands of Windows CE devices that have reached end-of-life. Those devices originally cost $1500 a unit. The possibilities are Windows CE, Palm or some custom embedded OS device. If I thought the 770/N800 was something that we could develop for, I would recommend it, but honestly, I am not getting a warm fuzzy, here.

d. Give us Java. If Java can run on my old HP Jornada 548 PocketPC, why can’t it run on the 770? This is where your users want to be. Java is the new Visual Basic. Talk to Sun; they will help you; they want everybody to use Java, (I guess?). If I had Java, I would have built my own PDA software. I am not going to learn a new language – who has time? Hobbyist programming is the domain of college students, who have lots of time. I code J2EE, C++ and VB (and still a lot of COBOL, unfortunately), 50 hours a week. If I had a tool for any of those languages, except COBOL, I would use it. Java is already a Linux staple.

Now is your time to shine, Nokia!

Mr Pedantic here! The 770 became available in November 2005 and became (potentially) obsolete (though I disagree with that - for now) in January 2006 so that means it had a 14 month life span (and may yet continue for many more months to come!)

770s all go for above £150 on ebay, they seem to be very much in demand there still.

Micheal - the 770 is called the Internet Tablet. It runs the Internet Tablet Operating System. And you know what? It's not a PDA!

According to Nokia - who stated this when they launched the 770 - it is not a PDA because it's primary design goal is to connect the user to the web. Any other function should be considered a bonus, but if you don't like them then develop something better - that's the point of the Maemo platform!

I actually thought installing apps on the 770 remarkably straight forward - certainly better than having to connect my device to a PC so that I can install the app on the PC in order for it to then install itself from the PC on to the mobile device (think: WinCE madness).

The trouble with Java is that it's utterly cr@p for building desktop apps, it's getting it's arse spanked by C# every day of the week - nobody is interested in developing Swing apps anymore. Mono would be a better bet on a mobile device, Java as far as I'm concerned (and I'm a Java tech lead in a major investment bank) is rapidly becoming useful for server platform development only, by and large. Practically every Java GUI app I've used (apart from Eclipse) has performed appallingly on the desktop, I just don't see it performing well on the Nokia devices.

He does make a solid point about the Internet experience on the 770 (and, albeit to a lesser extent, on the N800 also) being way too limited to warrant the moniker "Internet Tablet".

And although application installation on the 770/N800 should basically be hassle-free, due to the Debian foundation, the Abominable Application Installer makes it a lot harsher than it should be.